Questions tagged [historical-change]
For questions about how the English language has changed over time.
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Has "shut" ever meant "open"? (Bear with me, please)
I'm an English language/literature student in a non-English speaking country. As a final project for a literary translation course, my class is taking turns to translate some of the fairy tales ...
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How did "dream" become a verb without the same thing happening to "nightmare"?
You can say I had a dream and you can say I had a nightmare. But then you can say He is dreaming, yet you cannot say He is nightmaring....you have to say He is having a nightmare.
Why is that? How did ...
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Use of the word "tongue" to refer to a specific language
One of the meanings of the word "tongue" is "language". The word is still in use in certain expressions ("mother tongue" being one of them), and I know that in the past, ...
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How did we come to use at, on, in for time as we do now?
Contact me at 5 o'clock on a Monday in the new year
There are many resources which explain the rules about which preposition to use for time phrases to English learners, e.g.
We use at with: with ...
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Etymology of Mecca
Most dictionaries just list it as "from Arabic", with the better ones providing the script مكة or a transcription showing that it's actually pronounced Makkah in classical and modern ...
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Grammatical Coherence in Hanna Arendt's Writing [closed]
I've recently come across a quote by Hanna Arendt in her 1963 book Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil that looked quite interesting:
"It is in the very nature of things ...
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History of "Featherstonehaugh"
How did the surname "Featherstonehaugh" acquire its modern pronunciation /ˈfænʃɔː/, in spite of regular English sound changes?
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Up until when did pronouncing the "wh" digraph as just "w" was considered substandard speech?
Just read this on Quora:
Yes, it is true that historically, pronouncing the "wh" digraph as
just "w" was considered substandard speech in English.
The question is: when, exactly, ...
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When and where did 'hospice' in the sense of 'palliative care facility or program for the terminally ill' originate in English?
Merriam-Webster's Webster's Collegiate Dictionary, first edition (1898) has this entry for hospice:
Hospice, n. {F., fr. L. hospitium hospitality, place where strangers are entertained, fr. hospes ...
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"died at New York" [duplicate]
While doing archival work I bumped into a few instances where the awkward verbiage "died at New York" appeared. Research using Google Books led me to these examples from over a century ago:
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When did the word 'palatable' start being used for not-related-to-food things?
I'm trying to trace back the etymology of 'palatable', but what I'm really looking for is the process of semantic expression over time. When did the word begin to be used to speak of things unrelated ...
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Are 'biggity' and 'briggity' kin?
(Motivated by the question How common is "biggety" in Southern and Midland US?)
The DARE entry for briggity has the following (edited):
briggity: (also brickaty, brickety, brigaty, ...
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Is Erich Fromm's claim that the extended use of "have" corresponds to the rise of the market economy and Protestantism accurate?
In the book To Have or to Be Erich Fromm claims using "have" in English increased due to the rise of the market economy and Protestantism. Where one is alone in the market, with their ...
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Why did "pigeon" replace the native word "culver"?
Pigeon is a borrowing from Anglo-Norman where the etymons are French pigon, pigeon. The earliest citation is found in Middle English, from 1375 per OED:
1375
Thomas Blont..hath indowed Dame Isabell.....
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Was the o in "go" and oe in "toe" pronounced differently in early 19th century Gloucestershire English?
No modern dialect makes the <o> and <oe> distinction, but when reading Medhurst's Hokkien dictionary of 1832 i came across (page 34)
Furthermore, <o> seems to be a monophthong and &...
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