Quasar Bazaar

Linguistics - Etymology

Madison

Madison was one of the ten most popular first names for newborn girls from 1997 through 2014. But that popularity came, kind of, out of nowhere -- if you look at Wikipedia's list of notable women named "Madison," there are only three who were born before 1984. The reason for that may be a joke. In the 1984 movie "Spalsh," Daryl Hannah plays a mermaid who is a literal fish (or fish-person) out of water -- and doesn't have a human name. She's walking down the street in Manhattan with Tom Hanks' character, and as they cross Madison Avenue, she decides to adopt "Madison" as her name. (You can watch a low-quality version of the scene here.) Hanks notes that "Madison isn't a name" but begrudgingly accepts her decision. According to Yahoo! Entertainment in 2014, the scene "led to a surge in popularity of the female baby name 'Madison,' a trend that quietly gained steam in the years immediately following the film's release before skyrocketing to the top of baby name lists in more recent years."

You're Toast

Handicap

It was a game and then applied to horse racing

Radical

Means pertaining to roots although the word for "root" here, radix in Latin, was also used to name radishes so it kind of means pertaining to radishes. Radical original was used to describe root veggies. It evolved in the 17th and 18th centurty to mean radical reform as in reform from the roots, like the word grassroots now. These types of reforms tended to involve complete overhauls / changing things from the bottom up which people saw as extreme so it came to connote extreme movements. In the 1930s it got its slang meaning of cool and outside the norm. Also, radicals in math are related to roots e.g. square roots. The radical symbol is probably supposed to come from either the Arabic word root or the letter r in the latin word radix. In chemistry radical describes various atoms or molecules that are rooted together.

Respiration, Perspire, Aspire, Inspire, Conspire, Expire, Spirit

The latin word for breath was spirare, leading to respirare meaning to breath again. You can also per-spirare or breath through something or if your reaching towards some goal you can metaphorically a-spirare or breath toward it. Alternately something can be breathed into to you to in-spirare you. If you breath with someone you conspire. When you breath out your last breath you ex-spirare (out - breath). Unsurprisingly spirit is the breath inside of you

A Taste of your own medicine

In Aesop's fables there is a guy peddling fake medicine but then gets sick and people try to help him with his own medicine

Doubt, Debt, Island

The latin root dubitare became the French douter which became the Middle English douten but then people wanted to feel fancy and went back to Latin and added the b back in. Same thing happened for debt. It came from the latin debitum which went to the Old French dete which became Middle English dette and then they added back the b. The word island had a similar problem. There was a protogermanic word awojolanda and evolved until the 16th century where they added the s because it looks like the word isle (from the latin insula) although they were not related

Pet, pet peeve

We pet pets because they are pets. In the 16th century pet meant "beloved small person or animal", like "oh my sweet pet". It is influenced by the french petit which means small and is also a term of endearment. Pet meaning small is also why its a pet peeve. By the 17th century it started to mean to dote on someone as you would to a beloved animal or person. By the 19th century it evolved to mean stroking said beloved creature

Chai tea, naan bread, ramen noodles, Lake Michigan

All of these result from colonisation. Someone will show up where they don't know the language, ask what something is called, and get told those people's word for bread or whatever. The colonizers will then start to use the native term to refer to that specific type of food. This also happens a lot with place names because locals will say thats a lake and then the colonizers misunderstand and think thats the name. Examples include Lake Michigan (Lake Big Lake), Lake Tahoe (Lake Lake), Mississippi River (Big River River), Ohio River (Good River River), and the Connecticut River (Long Tidal River River)

The extended restaurant metaphor

There is a long tradition of associating food with success steming from the fact that money and food are both needed for survival. Theoretically we could have built up metaphors around something else essential like breathing, but it must be a shared metaphor for it to be effective and we went with food. For example: Lets get this bread Bring home the bacon Earn some dough When doing something well you can say you ate, served, or slayed

The extended war metaphor

Most argumentitive phrases are war related: build strategies to attack and defend weak points in our position and shoot down arguments