7/30/2004

Some history and definition to a few words

So came a boring Thursday. Wasn't really feeling productive enough to do anything academic so I was explaining how one dictionary described the word cute as 'ugly but adorable'

I thought giving examples like the pug dog wasn't quite good enough so i picked dictionary.com to check the meaning of 'cute'

So they state...
1 Delightfully pretty or dainty.
2 Obviously contrived to charm; precious: “ [He] mugs so ferociously he kills the humorit's an insufferably cute performance” (David Ansen).
3 Shrewd; clever.


and here came the word history...
Word History: Cute is a good example of how a shortened form of a word can take on a life of its own, developing a sense that dissociates it from the longer word from which it was derived. Cute was originally a shortened form of acute in the sense “keenly perceptive or discerning, shrewd.” In this sense cute is first recorded in a dictionary published in 1731. Probably cute came to be used as a term of approbation for things demonstrating acuteness, and so it went on to develop its own sense of “pretty, fetching,” first recorded with reference to “gals” in 1838.

interesting bit yah?

out of curiousity I searched for the F word

Word History: The obscenity fuck is a very old word and has been considered shocking from the first, though it is seen in print much more often now than in the past. Its first known occurrence, in code because of its unacceptability, is in a poem composed in a mixture of Latin and English sometime before 1500. The poem, which satirizes the Carmelite friars of Cambridge, England, takes its title, “Flen flyys,” from the first words of its opening line, “Flen, flyys, and freris,” that is, “fleas, flies, and friars.” The line that contains fuck reads “Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk.” The Latin words “Non sunt in coeli, quia,” mean “they [the friars] are not in heaven, since.” The code “gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk” is easily broken by simply substituting the preceding letter in the alphabet, keeping in mind differences in the alphabet and in spelling between then and now: i was then used for both i and j; v was used for both u and v; and vv was used for w. This yields “fvccant [a fake Latin form] vvivys of heli.” The whole thus reads in translation: “They are not in heaven because they fuck wives of Ely [a town near Cambridge].”

I also tried 'shit' from which only i only learnt the idiom, when the shit hits the fan.

Inquinsitive, I searched my last name 'YIM' which one result popped out... an acronym with a link to it...

Guess what?

-Yahoo Instant Messenger Hehe

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