We don't have great records of pagan traditions practiced on Yule, but we have some glimpses here and there.
With feasting, drinking, mythical beings flying through the sky, solemn oaths sworn on a boar, and ritualistic blood sacrifice, early Yule wasn't so different from the modern Christmas.
Jolly Yule Everyone!
Did you know the words 'jolly' and 'Yule' are (probably) related?
Yule is the original Germanic midwinter holiday, dating back to before the pagan holiday was absorbed into the Christian Christmas. It's still the most common name of Christmas in all the Nordic countries.
The best lies always contain a kernel of truth
Note: My map does not include Northern Ireland, as Christmas figures there can be controversial.
But for the sake of completeness:
In Northern Ireland, the Christmas figure is called “Santa” or “Londonsanta”, depending on the background of the speaker. Make sure you don’t say the wrong one.
I've made a map of who brings Christmas presents in different British regions!
Who brought your presents as a child?
Full post here with an explanation of each:
starkeycomics.com/2019/12/24/w...
#christmas #map #uk #british #gefthetalkingmongoose
A new addition to my "Indo-European words for ___" series, this time showing the word for "ten" in over 100 Indo-European languages, both past and present.
For a short article on this image, and a HD version of it, click here:
starkeycomics.com/2025/06/23/i...
#etymology #linguistics #language
I think this is a very fitting etymology for a celebration of people being themselves.
Go forward, be open, be yourselves, and be proud of who you are.
Happy Pride Month everyone! 🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈🏳️🌈
-🌟🗝️
"Pride" is derived from the French "prod" (brave or valiant). This was from Latin "prosum" (to be useful, helpful, or good).
Prosum is composed of two words:
"pro-", which relates to moving forward, being prominent/in the open, and giving advantage;
and "sum" meaning "I am".
#pride #etymology
It is a weird one. I imagine it sounds especially weird to me because, like most English people, "cross" and "sauce" don't even rhyme to me.
Gandalf is a total prankster, so my headcanon is that when he brought a dragon firework to Bilbo's birthday, it was to prank Bilbo by triggering his traumatic memories of Smaug.
Maybe he later brought similarly traumatic fireworks to Frodo, Sam, and Pippin's birthday parties.
#lordoftherings
New post!
I collaborated with Danny at Linguistic Discovery to make a huge image about English words related to the word "one".
Danny wrote a detailed article on the topic that you can read here:
linguisticdiscovery.com/posts/one/
In the UK and Ireland an enclosed piece of grassy land next to a house is called a "garden", whether or not any flowers or vegetables are being grown there.
In the USA and Canada, this would generally be called a "yard".
Interestingly both these words come from the same Germanic source!
#etymology
When a very polite and proper person swears, it always feels far more powerful than when a foulmouthed person swears.
This post is the poltical equivalent of a very polite person issuing a rare but very heartfelt swearword.
Good question, and one I have a good answer for:
The word *did* survive into Modern English, albeit dialectally, and even in those (Northern) dialects it is now archaic. It is "blow", and is pronounced as its spelling would suggest.
The etymology of colours in English
Full article with explanations here: starkeycomics.com/2024/12/31/t...
Nice to see a continuation of the tradition of creating episodes seemingly designed solely to fuck with Brennan
'Grimm's Law' is the collective name for a series of sound changes that happened as Proto-Germanic evolved from Proto-Indo-European.
They explain some of the differences between related words in the Germanic languages, and other Indo-European languages.
#etymology
I love how the captions have changed "so ambitious" to "so obnoxious"
Basically it's a translation of the Hebrew word, not a borrowing from it.
Similar is the Biblical name "Peter", which is from Greek "Petros" (a name literally meaning "stone"), which is a calque of the original Hebrew name Kephas, also meaning "stone", given to the Apostle 'Peter' by Jesus.
You're in luck, I have an image on this very topic:
bsky.app/profile/star...
The word “grimace” is also cognate, coming from French “grimace”, from Frankish *grima (mask), from the Proto-Germanic *grīmô.
It could therefore be argued that Yəhōšūa Māšīaḥ (Jesus Christ) may be alternately translated into English as “Grimy Josh”.
But… probably best not.
Grime, Christ, and ghee share the same Indo-European root!
Greek Khristos is a calque of the Hebrew מָשִׁיחַ (māšīaḥ), also meaning “anointed”. Māšīaḥ was also borrowed into Greek and Latin, eventually reaching English as the word “messiah”.
#etymology
The words ‘avocado’, ‘guacamole’, and ‘mole’ (the Mexican sauce) all come to use from Classical Nahuatl, the language of the Aztec Empire, via Spanish.
"How every other organism is related to humans"
See the full image and article on my website for and explanation of what I'm showing here, and what we can learn from it:
starkeycomics.com/2025/03/31/h...
The words "host" and "guest" are from the same source, with "host" reaching us via French, and "guest" reaching us via Old Norse.
#etymology
Fun fact: catfish are more closely relate to cats than they are to dogfish!
In fact, all bony fish are more closely related to all mammals, birds, reptiles and amphibians than they are to all cartilaginous fish.
#taxonomy #zoology
Well spotted about lupa, that's fixed on by website now.
As for the specific etymologies of the words: some words may have multiple inspirations. But I worked closely with Sonja Lang on this, so all of these were suggested or approved by her as the etymologies of these words.
My biggest image yet: I made a graphic displaying the etymology of every word in an entire language!
See the image in HD here, and learn about the Toki Pona language:
starkeycomics.com/2025/03/02/t...
#tokipona #etymology
Some other examples:
🐈Vietnamese "mèo"
🐈Bahnar (in Vietnam) "meo"
🐈Khasi (in N.E. India) "miaw"
🐈Uab Meto (in Timor, Indonesia) "meo"
Indo-Aryan:
🐈Bengali "মেকুৰী/mekur" (the "me" part is from cat noises, the "kur" part means "dog")
🐈Lao "ແມວ/mǣu"
🐈Shan (in Myanmar) "မႅဝ်/méao"
🐈Zhuang (in China) "meuz"