If you start a new job, or agree to buy something, you might have to sign a contract.
The word contract was originally usually used to refer to marriage, and comes from the Latin com (with, together) and trahere (to draw). Which makes sense really: if you give marry someone, you’re agreeing to draw closer together, and if you sign a contract with a company, you’re agreeing to draw together with them.
Isn’t if funny though, when we use contract as a verb?
Reading about Anglish yesterday, I realised that one of the most useful methods for proponents of this form of English is creating calques.
What’s a calque, I hear you ask?
No, not English. Anglish.
A little earlier, I came across the following video:
This is a question whose answer surprised me when I first heard it many years ago. I was well aware that many words had more than one meaning, and could think of a few obvious examples. Still, the answer, though it certainly has a few obvious different meanings, was not what I was expecting.
Sloths are slow.
Sloth, meaning laziness, is also one of the Seven Deadly Sins in Christianity.
Unsurprisingly enough, the sin came first, and the animal was named after it, because it seems so lazy. They’re not actually lazy of course, just slow. Though some individual sloths probably are lazy, but it’d obviously be unfair to tar them all with the same brush.
It’s a funny word, sloth, and not one we really use beyond these two contexts. Where does it come from?
Writing about dogs yesterday (something I’m surprised I don’t do more often) made me think about the new Wes Anderson film Isle of Dogs. I’m not going to write a review or anything, because obviously that’s not what I do here. Instead, I’m more curious about that title.
English-Language Thoughts 