Posts Tagged ‘trivia’

- The basic meaning of klots, from where the English word klutz comes, is “wooden beam”
- “Jezebel…means ‘daughter of garbage’ [in Hebrew]; her name was probably [really]… Jebaal, daughter of Baal…” (Born to Kvetch pg 22) 

- “Beelzebub…,lord of the flies,was a takeoff of Baal Zevul, lord of heaven” (Born to Kvetch pg 22)
- “Schlong” is a yiddish word (it also has the innocent meaning of “snake”), and “schmuk” and “putz ” also means penis
- “Chutzpah” is an entirely negative word in Yiddish
- “Bubkes” as in “He isn’t worth bubkes” literally means “beans” or “goat droppings”
- “Glitch” possibly comes from the Yiddish word “glitsh”, from glitshn ’slide’, similar to the German word “glitschen”- “slither”
- “Maven” comes from the Hebrew word “mevin” “one who understands” via the the Yiddish word “meyvn”
- The London slang word “nosh” comes from the Yiddish word “nashn”, similar to the German word “naschen”
- Another Cockney classic is “schlep” from from the Yiddish “shlepn” to make a tedious journey, similar to the German word “schleppen”
- The original (Yiddish) meaning of “schmaltz” is melted chicken fat
- “Schnoz/ schnozz/ schnozzle” comes from the Yiddish word “shnoits”, snout, similar to the German word Schnauze
- “Shtick” comes from the Yiddish word for ‘piece’, similar to the German word “Stück” 
- “Spiel”/ “shpiel” comes from the Yiddish word “shpil”, play, similar to the German word “Spiel”
- “Glitch” comes from the Yiddish word “glitsh”, meaning slip,” “skate,” or “nosedive,
- “Kibbutz” is the Hebrew word for “collective”
- “Tush”, the American slang for bum, comes from the Yiddish word “tuchis”/ “tuches”/ “tokhis”
- “To keep shtoom” comes from the Yiddish word “shtum”- silent or speechless
- “Shyster” and “gazump” also come from Yiddish

Other random facts from Born to Kvetch

- Why brideGROOM? It was a completely different word that disappeared from the English language, so they just changed the pronunciation to make it the same as the closest word by pron (technically, assimilation) pg 35

- The showbiz term ‘a turkey’ means a show that “flaps its wings but never flies” pg 23

New words (for me) from Born to Kvetch
the Tetragrammaton- YHVH- the real name of God
antiphrasis- saying the opposite of what you mean, as a kind of euphemism

All from the book The First Word, that rare gem- a popular science book about linguistics. It drags a bit at the end, but these are from the interesting middle bit (just after the bitchy beginning bit where she lays into Chomsky- hurrah!)

“it appears that dolphins name themselves. [They] produce a distinct individual sound that develops in their first year of life whenever they meet another dolphin. It’s always the same, and always distinct from any other dolphin’s whistle” pg 118

“dolphin babies also pass through a babbling phase [like human babies before they produce their first word]… baby bats babble as well.” pg 143
 
“elephants in Kenya have been recorded making almost perfect reproductions of the sound of trucks from a road nearby” pg 145
 
“Hoover, a harbor seal at the New England Aquarium… surprised visitors by saying ‘Hey, hey, you, get outta there!” pg 146

“researchers found that humans aren’t the only species with the ability to identify different [human] languages based on their characteristic rhythms” pg 151

“no animal communication system has an equivalent for ‘no’”
 
“vervet monkeys use a fall in pitch to mark the end of an utterance and… other vervets seem to interpret this as a signal to take a turn in vocalizing, like humans do” pg 155