real-etymology

[real-etymology]

Vicinity: "the area near or surrounding a particular place"

The word comes from "Vicinus", meaning neighbor in Latin. The person who created the word "Vicinus" was neighbors with Victor Frankenstein and his monster, who's real name was... Ness from Earthbound (1994)????

She called them "Vic and Ness", which eventually shortened to Vicinus, then became Vicinitas, then Vicinity

Source:

Trying not to bust out my degree whenever ppl try to claim some bullshit abt etymology or grammar or translation as true in my vicinity

[real-etymology]

Piggy banks were invented by a young Tyra Banks, who was saving up to have the lifestyle of Miss Piggy. Her original plan was to change her name to Piggy and pretend to be a muppet, but she unfortunately became a model or something instead.

[real-etymology]

Retrospection used to just be called spection, and before that, was called anterospection.

All three words mean "The action of viewing events or situations from September 10, 1752," that day being the only time people used the word "spection."

The word was created by Heather Specter, an oracle in ancient Greece who could only see what would happen on that one specific day.

[real-etymology]

Today's word of the day is pasture, meaning a land covered with grass and other low plants suitable for grazing animals.

Pasture and pasteurize are both named for Louis Pasteur, who invented pasteurization, the process of treating packaged food with mild heat to eliminate pathogens. Louis had so much faith in his invention that he pasteurized himself before his death, expecting it to either keep him alive longer, or make him even stronger when the zombie apocalypse came.

To protect his body from outside variables, Louis was buried in an undisclosed field, and fields similar to that one were named "pastures", so that people who did know where Louis was buried could have an excuse if they were overheard talking about him, and could say they were just talking about fields.

[real-etymology]

Is it true that ferries are call that because they are pushed by fairies?

Whoever told you that is a dirty liar.

Similar to how sailors thought manatees were mermaids, some sailors who saw ships in the distance thought they were small fairies. Glasses had not yet been invented, and the sailors were typically seasick, sleep-deprived, and scurvied, so they mistook the large boats for small, winged, magical people.

As a bonus bit of etymology, SOS actually originally stood for "seasick, sleep-deprived, and scurvied".

[real-etymology]

Sneezing should actually be pronounced "Atch-oo" because it comes from the Greek Atch, meaning to expell, and Oo, meaning "towards the listener." The onomatopoeia "Achoo" means "I expell myself at you."

[real-etymology]

The word "milestone" has been around since the 1300's, many decades before cars would be invented. Back in those days, people had to travel by horse. For every mile traveled, the rider would feed their horse a stone, giving it the energy needed to travel the next mile. This works because, like ostriches or cows, horses have gizzards where they grind up food using stones or rocks, letting them digest more nutrients and gain more energy.

Unfortunately, once a horse had a milestone, they would not be able to stop moving until they walked exactly a mile. This led to a young horse walking into a gift shop at the Great Wall of China and destroying $26 worth of merchandise ($5,223.91 in today's money), this was the origin of the well-known phrase, "Like a foal in a china shop."