I was on another thread and got deep into learning about the history of certain words and thought I’d post here. What word history origins / facts do you know?
I’ll start with two that I recently came across:
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“‘Wer’ (meaning ‘man’) came from Old High German with the Anglo Saxons 1,500 years ago, and was part of Old English. It then became ‘were’ in Middle English and remains as part of werewolf (‘man wolf’) in modern English.” (Source: BillTongg@lemmy.world)
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“Sculptors in antique Rome could fix mistakes they made by mixing marble dust with wax. If a sculptor was especially gifted and made no mistakes that needed fixing, they would market their art as “sin cera”, which means “without wax”, which is where the word “sincere” comes from.” (Source: Pooptimist@lemmy.world)
Early 1800’s France… Printing presses were very common and flyers and placards were being produced en masse.
The printing presses would make a clicking sound repeatedly. Or, in French “cliché”…
Cliché… a repeated phrase or word that has grown mundane.
Also, working at a flour mill, as I do… If you want the best, purest flour, you get it from the head (start of) the milling process before flakes of wheat bran (the skin of the wheat kernel) can get ground up and mixed with the pure, white flour.
Head of the mill flour is more expensive and aesthetically pleasing but not always necessary.
If you are making breading or pretzels, you are not worried about color or rise, so you buy flour that runs the whole process of the mill. “Run of the mill” flour.
Run of the mill… Average, commonplace