Word Facts for Apr. 16-22, 2011
Word origin for the weekend of Apr. 16-17, 2011: nimrod - In the Bible, Nimrod was both a great hunter and a king powerful enough to get the construction of the Tower of Babel going. That project ended badly for Nimrod and for humankind as a whole. Nimrod came to be a metaphorical term for any skilled hunter, but was also used to mean "tyrant." Today, "nimrod" is used to mean a dense, bumpkinish person, the underlying prejudice being that a hunter - a country person, likely - cannot possibly be intelligent.
Word origin for Apr. 18, 2011: habitat - "Habitat" (the place) and "habit" (the custom) share an origin: the sense of the Latin original habitare is "to live in," and (by extension) one's normal way of life, a habitus being something that one does because they know no other way. Animals habitually inhabit a "habitat" because it is in their nature to do so, in other words.
Word origin for Apr. 19, 2011: Mercedes - In 1896, Austrian businessman Emil Jellinek became one of the first distributors of a line of automobiles built by the firm of Gottlieb Daimler, on whose board he later sat. Company engineers named a new car after his daughter, Adriana Jellinek, in 1901. Her nickname was Mercedes, the Spanish word for "mercies." Her father changed his name to Emil Jellinek-Mercedes in 1903.
Word origin for Apr. 20, 2011: kaolin - Also called china clay or paper clay, "kaolin" is a fine clay of hydrous silicate of aluminum, used in manufacturing paper, ceramics, and pharmaceuticals. "Kaolin" takes its name from the Mandarin Chinese kau ling ("high ridge"), after a place where the clay was mined.
Word origin for Apr. 21, 2011: Gibraltar - The British colony of "Gibraltar," in southernmost Spain, takes its name from a long-ago historical moment. IN 711, the Saracen chief Tarik destroyed the army of the Spanish king Roderick. Tarik built a castle on the Rock of Gibraltar, so named for being the Gebel-al-Tarik, which means "Tarik's mountain" in Arabic.
Word origin for Apr. 22, 2011: recycle - It is perhaps ironic that the word "recycle" comes from the language of the petroleum industry, referring to the reuse of industrial coke to process gasoline. The term in that sense dates to the 1920s, and it came to refer to the reuse of any material in an environmentally responsible way only in the 1960s.
Word origin for Apr. 18, 2011: habitat - "Habitat" (the place) and "habit" (the custom) share an origin: the sense of the Latin original habitare is "to live in," and (by extension) one's normal way of life, a habitus being something that one does because they know no other way. Animals habitually inhabit a "habitat" because it is in their nature to do so, in other words.
Word origin for Apr. 19, 2011: Mercedes - In 1896, Austrian businessman Emil Jellinek became one of the first distributors of a line of automobiles built by the firm of Gottlieb Daimler, on whose board he later sat. Company engineers named a new car after his daughter, Adriana Jellinek, in 1901. Her nickname was Mercedes, the Spanish word for "mercies." Her father changed his name to Emil Jellinek-Mercedes in 1903.
Word origin for Apr. 20, 2011: kaolin - Also called china clay or paper clay, "kaolin" is a fine clay of hydrous silicate of aluminum, used in manufacturing paper, ceramics, and pharmaceuticals. "Kaolin" takes its name from the Mandarin Chinese kau ling ("high ridge"), after a place where the clay was mined.
Word origin for Apr. 21, 2011: Gibraltar - The British colony of "Gibraltar," in southernmost Spain, takes its name from a long-ago historical moment. IN 711, the Saracen chief Tarik destroyed the army of the Spanish king Roderick. Tarik built a castle on the Rock of Gibraltar, so named for being the Gebel-al-Tarik, which means "Tarik's mountain" in Arabic.
Word origin for Apr. 22, 2011: recycle - It is perhaps ironic that the word "recycle" comes from the language of the petroleum industry, referring to the reuse of industrial coke to process gasoline. The term in that sense dates to the 1920s, and it came to refer to the reuse of any material in an environmentally responsible way only in the 1960s.
Labels: 2011, bible, characters, chinese, emily, good friday, greg, history, languages, page-a-day, teunis, visitors, words
posted by Flami at 12:31:00 PM
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