[HN Gopher] Who Did This?
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Who Did This?
Author : dredmorbius
Score : 152 points
Date : 2020-02-09 10:04 UTC (12 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.etymonline.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.etymonline.com)
| FabHK wrote:
| Quick tip: On DuckDuckGo, you can search on etymonline with !ety
| (or !etym).
| smichel17 wrote:
| A handful of sentences that really stood out to me:
|
| > Ask me why I did it and I'll give you a solid answer. And
| tomorrow I'll give you a different one. They're all correct. I
| tease myself along through the drudgery with a combination of
| guilt and vanity. If I did this right, I can say at the end of
| life I bundled up my worst qualities -- obsessiveness, impudence,
| narcissism -- and made something vaguely useful with them.
|
| > It is useless to try to hide these things. Any site done by one
| person is going to be in some deal eccentric and reflect the ego
| and cultural limitations of the creator. It is liable to the sort
| of blunders only an individual can make; because if you had had
| another mind riding shotgun with you you wouldn't have gotten so
| far lost or missed that turn. A dictionary written by one person
| hangs the maker's mind naked in public, exposed in all its
| intellectual flab and moles.
| sixdimensional wrote:
| I was lucky to have a class on linguistics when I was in school.
| It was there where I learned the concept of etymology and
| realized how interesting the origin of words is.
|
| I am constantly amazed at how relevant it is every day. I am a
| currently an enterprise architect, and every day, the "naming
| things is hard problem" is front and center.
|
| Understanding how the use of words developed historically, say,
| even within a single organization/culture, and how to research
| that is an amazing skill and really helpful. That is in addition
| to understanding how to use tools like etymonline or other famous
| etymological dictionaries to find out the origins of even old
| words, that we have been using for thousands of years.
|
| You'd be surprised by the insight, and even sometimes inspiration
| you find when you see the origins of words. Things are not always
| as they sound/seem.
|
| Thinking practically, consider the implications of these skills
| for data modeling/data dictionaries, business glossaries, naming
| variables, etc. Really valuable and interesting!
| lordleft wrote:
| I love this site; I refer to it constantly. Thank you for
| creating and tending to it so lovingly.
| ssivark wrote:
| Love this. Etymonline is one of my favorite websites, and often
| my first-choice dictionary (even though its word corpus is
| smaller than other dictionaries), because IME understanding the
| roots and origins of a word help me remember and use it better.
| It's the one dictionary I _enjoy_ looking up.
|
| Just in case someone hasn't seen it before... ;-) If you're an
| etymonline fan, I would venture that you might find interesting
| "You're probably using the wrong dictionary" by James Somers:
| http://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary
| bradknowles wrote:
| I regret that I have but one upvote to give.
|
| I thank you and the OP. Until now, I didn't know that I needed
| these things in my life.
| jacobolus wrote:
| Let me recommend people interested in words check out C.S.
| Lewis's book _Studies in Words_ https://amzn.com/B01GEROZMQ/,
| which takes a handful of words and extends their analysis far
| beyond anything you could find in a comprehensive dictionary.
|
| People might also get some use out of Garner's _Modern
| American Usage_ https://amzn.com/0195382757. DFW sorta-review
| https://harpers.org/wp-
| content/uploads/HarpersMagazine-2001-...
| beerandt wrote:
| In a slightly different direction, there's also _The Mother
| Tongue_ by Bill Bryson, which is more of a humourous
| explanation of English quirks.
|
| https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/29.The_Mother_Tongue
| egypturnash wrote:
| I can't upvote this enough, that dictionary link is so
| wonderful. I've had the 1913 Webster's dictionary on my Mac for
| years thanks to that blog post and it's so useful for helping
| to find just the right word.
| btrettel wrote:
| On this subject, what are some other good website about pages?
| hprotagonist wrote:
| etymonline is a perpetual delight.
|
| The maintainer answers emails fast, too: i asked him to provide a
| RSS feed for blog posts 6 weeks ago and it was live 90 minutes
| later!
| edjrage wrote:
| Just nitpicking - it's _her_ (at least according to the linked
| page, second last paragraph).
| FearNotDaniel wrote:
| > When I played World of Warcraft I found I generally chose a
| rogue. Human. Female.
|
| Doesn't say anything about the author's actual sex, gender or
| preferred pronouns in real life. Only the character they like
| to play in a video game.
|
| In the footer though, it does say:
|
| > (c) 2001-2020 Douglas Harper
|
| Make of that what you will.
| fanf2 wrote:
| I was just looking for an RSS feed but I can't find a link on
| the site. What is the URL?
| dang wrote:
| It's a great resource for HN:
| https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=false&qu...
| dghughes wrote:
| I always seem to end up on etymonline.com at least once per day.
| Another good site is Omniglot.com.
| longtom wrote:
| I've been several times disappointed by the lack of references in
| this dictionary. For example, it claims the meaning of some words
| shifted around a particular time without linking to data that
| proves so.
| sswaner wrote:
| I loved this bio. In particular, it reinforced the value of blogs
| and websites that are independent of closed systems like Medium,
| Facebook, etc. This site exists as a passion and gift to the
| world. With the Internet Archive it is much harder for this to
| disappear compared to serving the same content on Facebook.
|
| It was a joy to read the bio of the creator and to learn of the
| interests, background and desires that led the the dictionary.
| Adding to my list of favorite sites.
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(page generated 2020-02-09 23:00 UTC)