This is a transcript for Lingthusiasm Episode 63: Where to get your English etymologies. It’s been lightly edited for readability. Listen to the episode here or wherever you get your podcasts. Links to studies mentioned and further reading can be found on the Episode 63 show notes page.

[Music]

Lauren: Welcome to Lingthusiasm, a podcast that’s enthusiastic about linguistics! I’m Lauren Gawne.

Gretchen: I’m Gretchen McCulloch. Today we’re getting enthusiastic about etymology and why people find it so compelling. But first, thank you to everybody who recommended the show as part of our 5th anniversary celebrations. It really does make a difference. We appreciate all of you so much.

Lauren: This month’s bonus episode is all about linguistics Olympiads for high schoolers and the fun of solving linguistics puzzles for people of all ages. You can listen to this bonus episode and 57 more by going to patreon.com/lingthusiasm.

Gretchen: If you’re a high school student or you know someone who is, you can check out the website of the International Linguistics Olympiad to find an Olympiad happening every year in your country, so you can join one near you.

[Music]

Gretchen: I have some words, and I wanna know if you think these words are related.

Lauren: Okay.

Gretchen: The first set of words is “pasta,” “paste,” “pesto.” Are any of these words related? If so, which ones?

Lauren: I’m very observant, so I notice they all start with a P, and they have a similar shape to them. I like pasta and pesto in combination. I don’t think that has anything to do with where these words come from.

Gretchen: It’s very valuable of you not to let your personal aesthetic judgements interfere with your search for etymological truth, yes.

Lauren: “Paste” and “pesto” feel like they should be related because they’re both goopy things that you mash stuff up in. I’m gonna say “paste” and “pesto” are related. Then “pasta” has me completely stumped in this one because I feel like I could make up some reason there’s a relationship to do with how pasta is like a goopy dough that you cook, but I feel like I’m definitely just inventing connections between these words at this point. I’ll say “paste” and “pesto” – yes. “Pasta” – I’m not sure.

Gretchen: Interestingly, you’re wrong.

Lauren: Oh, no! That’s okay.

Keep reading

Lingthusiasm Episode 63: Where to get your English etymologies

When you look at a series of words that sorta sound like each other, such as pesto, paste, and pasta, it’s easy to start wondering if they might have originated with a common root word. Etymologists take these hunches and painstakingly track them down through the historical record to find out which ones are true and which ones aren’t – in this case, that paste and pasta have a common ancestor, but pesto comes from somewhere else.

In this episode, your hosts Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne get enthusiastic about English etymology! We talk about where the etymological parts of dictionaries come from, the gaps in our knowledge based on the biases of historical sources, how you can become the Etymology Friend (with help from Etymonline), and which kinds of etymologies should immediately make you put your debunking hat on (spoiler: anything containing an acronym or formatted like an image meme. Just saying.). Now you too can have etymology x-ray vision! (Aka, where to quickly look up etymologies on your phone!).  

Click here for a link to this episode in your podcast player of choice or read the transcript here.

Announcements:

Thanks for celebrating our 5 year anniversary with us! We loved seeing you share all your favourite Lingthusiasm episodes and moments. We’re looking forward to another year of sharing linguistic joy with you.

This month’s bonus episode is about linguistics olympiads! These involve a series of fun linguistic puzzles, sort of like sudoku for linguistics. Since linguistics isn’t commonly taught in high schools, the puzzles can’t assume any prior linguistics knowledge, so they’re either logic puzzles as applied to language or they teach you basic linguistics concepts in the preamble to the question, making them great for ling fans as well. Alas, we were not in high school recently enough to participate in any olympiads ourselves, so we also talk about how people can get involved if you’re not a high school student, from helping to host a session at a local high school or university to just doing puzzles for fun and interest (they’re available for free with answer keys on the olympiad websites, plus there was a recent book that came out compiling some of them). Plus: how Lauren has made a few olympiad puzzles herself!

Get access to this and over 50 more bonus Lingthusiasm episodes (and help keep the show ad-free) by supporting Lingthusiasm on Patreon.

Here are the links mentioned in this episode:

• Etymonline
• Superlinguo post on macarons, macaroons, and macaroni
• Etymonline entry for *dekm-
• Etymonline entry for fish
• History of the Oxford English Dictionary
• Superlinguo tweet on fact checking acronyms
• Jesse Sheidlower’s tweet on fact checking acronyms
• Lingthusiasm Episode 8: People who make dictionaries: Review of WORD BY WORD by Kory Stamper
• Superlinguo’s By Lingo etymology posts

You can listen to this episode via Lingthusiasm.com, Soundcloud, RSS, Apple Podcasts/iTunes, Spotify, YouTube, or wherever you get your podcasts. You can also download an mp3 via the Soundcloud page for offline listening, and stay tuned for a transcript of this episode on the Lingthusiasm website.

To receive an email whenever a new episode drops, sign up for the Lingthusiasm mailing list.

You can help keep Lingthusiasm ad-free, get access to bonus content, and more perks by supporting us on Patreon.

Lingthusiasm is on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and Tumblr. Email us at contact [at] lingthusiasm [dot] com

Gretchen is on Twitter as @GretchenAMcC and blogs at All Things Linguistic.

Lauren is on Twitter as @superlinguo and blogs at Superlinguo.

Lingthusiasm is created by Gretchen McCulloch and Lauren Gawne. Our senior producer is Claire Gawne, our production editor is Sarah Dopierala, our production manager is Liz McCullough, and our music is ‘Ancient City’ by The Triangles.

This episode of Lingthusiasm is made available under a Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike license (CC 4.0 BY-NC-SA).

What’s the etymology of this word? When did people start using that thing? How is this new slang term used?

Answering common linguistic questions is often a matter of where to look. In this bonus episode, Gretchen and Lauren talk about our favourite freely accessible linguistics research tools, from Etymonline to corpora, and how to get access to other kinds of linguistics resources when you’re not at a university and don’t have a research budget.

We also talk about the kind of research we’d like to see more of if we weren’t constrained by money.

To listen to Bonus #7 support Lingthusiasm on Patreon!