My mother was once stopped at US customs control for attempting to import meat into the USA. She had a hard time explaining to the official that mincemeat was actually fruit and she was taking a jar to my aunt for Christmas. If I ever have the same experience I will now be able to explain and probably confuse the poor old official even more, lol. Thanks Rob.
@@RobWords All the Scandinavian languages swe/da/no/is still have mat/mad/mat/matur meaning food. Swedish and Danish have flesh as fläsk/flæsk meaning pork. Meat is kött/kød/kjøtt/Kjöt of unknown Germanic origin, though it may be related to cut.
@@RobWords I used to think Christmas Mince Pies had meat also. Of course are Christmas Fruit Mince Pies. Don't think ever seen a meat mince pie at Christmas Lunch [or if I was in UK 'Christmas Dinner' (at lunchtime) ] Maybe we don't meat ones at Christmas since the small Four N Twenty (& many like it) are eaten all the time here in Aus, & at the footy (aussie rules) of course. Talking of sport, what about a vid of some of those words, such as soccer, fencing, golf, badminton, etc come from. Words that don't really match the visual like other sports. Though thinking about it, what's etymology of boxing, rugby, fencing
God loves you all! The Father sent the Son to die for you and your sins so that you could experience freedom to the fullest! Believe in Christ's death and resurrection (which sealed the work done on the cross) for your salvation and the forgiveness of sins! Amen! God loves you all! The Father sent the Son to die for you and your sins so that you could experience freedom to the fullest! Believe in Christ's death and resurrection (which sealed the work done on the cross) for your salvation and the forgiveness of sins! Amen!
Changes in vocabulary, and indeed other aspects of language, don't become permanent in a flash. It takes years or even decades of common usage among its speakers to become part of the language. Not one person or institution can or should be the final arbiter of what's "right" or "wrong." That's why for me, as a descriptivist observer of language, I accept the current usage of "literally" for exaggeration or emphasis if it is clear in context.
@PBNkapamilya I wouldn't be so sure that it still takes decades these days. I think the internet is causing an overall global standard English to develop. So I bet you it's faster. Well, colloquially at least.
The word for barber in Japanese is 床屋 _tokoya_ literal meaning "floor store". When the profession became widespread, they usually didn't have a permanent shop, instead they set up a simple floor in the streets and moved about. Thus they became known for the floor they set up.
It is an abbreviation of 髪結床 (kamiyuidoko) + 屋(ya 'store'). A person who works as a Japanese-style "barber" (髪結職 kamiyui-shoku) for men works at a 床店 (tokomise). Early examples of the profession are depicted in drawings from the mid-16th century, while the word "tokoya" only start to appear in early 19th century with this sense. The western sense of "barber" does not appear until the late 19th century.
@@gaoxiaen1 probably because the characters appeared in japan more than 1000 years ago, and then the meanings of the characters kind of drifted apart in both languages. It can mean both bed and floor in japanese but in chinese it just means bed
Yes, indeed, 'mango' in English comes from 'māngā' in Malayalam (my mother tongue)! Robwords fan here, from Kerala, India. More power to the best etymology/word power channel on RU-vid!!
Tamil and Malayalam both share same word and etymology - mā (prefix for anything relate to mango for example mā + maram meaning mango tree) and kāi meaning unripe fruit
There is a rare Japanese family name called 筋師 _Sujishi_ literal meaning "muscle master". Apparently its an old word for people who butchered whales, as you needed to be really strong to do that.
There is a fiction author named Terry Pratchett and in his fictional books he made up the family name Strong-in-the-arm which meant a Smith or metal worker. In Scotland (not fiction) there exists the family name Armstrong because a knight on horse reached down and picked up his armored King and put him back on his horse after the king fell.
Meat still means food in Scots. When Dad turned the cows into a fresh field of grass, he'd say " There's plenty of meat there for the cows". When someone put too much sugar in my great-grandmother's tea she said it " was just bee's meat ! "
Norwegian "mat" for all food is the same root. Norwegian meat is "kjøtt" going back to a proto-germanic root "ketwą" from which a word "ket" used in some regions of England for "candy" is also derived.
Have to agree with tobias. Considering the Scandinavian influences on Scotland through the centuries, mat/mad from Danish, Swedish and Norwegian really seems most likelyas the influence here. The other one I still remember in Scottish is bairn, or child in Scandinavian languages, save finish
God loves you all! The Father sent the Son to die for you and your sins so that you could experience freedom to the fullest! Believe in Christ's death and resurrection (which sealed the work done on the cross) for your salvation and the forgiveness of sins! Amen! God loves you all! The Father sent the Son to die for you and your sins so that you could experience freedom to the fullest! Believe in Christ's death and resurrection (which sealed the work done on the cross) for your salvation and the forgiveness of sins! Amen!
The name Schneider is the German equivalent of Taylor, again referring to cutting. The concept leaves clothing for culinary endeavor as "snitzel" is the translation of " cutlet."
@@georgedunn320 In the southern US we have a kind of schnitzel that came from Germans in Texas. We call it "chicken fried" steak or "country fried steak". You pound the hell out of a tough cut of grass-fed beef, dip it in egg batter and spiced flour, and fry it fast. It's probably more like original German schnitzel 200 years ago than anything in Germany today. Except that we serve it with "cream gravy" we got from the French in Louisiana. And I assure you our cream gravy is more like actual béchamel from 200 years ago than any French béchamel sauce today.
I believe that the word "retail" comes from someone cutting pieces of cloth from a roll for customers, while the word "wholesale" comes from someone selling complete rolls of cloth.
I think that may be incorrect. There are two uses of "retail" in Pride and Prejudice suggesting a more general meaning: re-trading or passing on something that you've acquired (rather than created). In the novel it refers to passing on information that you heard from someone rather than learning first-hand; it also implies gaining social status in the process. That concept is consistent with the modern meaning of retail: acquiring something from a wholesaler rather than creating it, then passing it on to someone else and gaining in the process. I guess in the cloth context, the wholesaler sells cloth to a retailer, who then cuts it into quantities appropriate for individual sale. So it's entirely likely those terms were used in the cloth industry, but they might have originated in a more general context. Here are the Pride and Prejudice uses, heavily abridged: Instance 1: In describing to her all the grandeur of Lady Catherine and her mansion... he was happily employed...; and he found in Mrs. Philips a very attentive listener, ... who was resolving to retail it all among her neighbours as soon as she could. Instance 2: Their party in the dining-room was large, for almost all the Lucases came to meet Maria and hear the news: and various were the subjects which occupied them; ... Mrs. Bennet was doubly engaged, on one hand collecting an account of the present fashions from Jane, who sat some way below her, and on the other, retailing them all to the younger Miss Lucases... Maybe RobWords can find out the origins of retail and wholesale and enlighten us! They would make an excellent complement to the Job Words series. :)
@@graceboucher2682 The OED has citations for "retail" going back to the 14th century, meaning to sell goods in relatively small quantity to the public (as distinct from wholesaling). This is straight from the Anglo-Norman retail/retaile/retaill/retaille/rettaille. The two uses you mention in _Pride and Prejudice_ are figurative uses that evolved later, in the late 1500s. The second instance has the meaning of recounting or retelling in great detail, or repeating to others. The first instance could be either the same thing, or parcelling out (the meaning is now obsolete).
Re milliner having its origins with reference to Milan, in Australia linen (bedsheets, pillowcases etc.) can still be referred to collectively as 'manchester' due to the old association with cotton goods being made in that part of Blighty. You still see department stores with a Manchester Department to this day.
When I went from NZ to work in Australia back in the 1990s I had never heard this term before (although I had been in Manchester). Imagine my dismay that it has crept in here. We didn't *need* a new term for bed-linen!
Similarly the paisley pattern is named after the town of Paisley in Scotland where they were producing cheap knock-offs of the Indian prints, known as "mango" after the fruit seed. (The traditional prints have either a symmetrical point or only slightly curled.)
@@richardokeefe7410 Manchester as a term for linen was around in NZ in the 1970s - I remember a shop in Dunedin having a manchester department when I was a kid.
I always thought a milliner exclusively made women's hats and fascinators. This could be media bias as the only time you see milliners on the news or telly is during the Spring Racing Carnival in Melbourne for me. Is it the same for other key racing events like Royal Ascot, The Golden Slipper, etc?
Probably not from German. Double b is not so much ours. The translation Spottpreis is a further indication. Krats could be a cognate of kratzen (scratch).
@@aramisortsbottcher8201 Still, that would be a handful of words. Also in the North. F, V and W are candidates to be changed into B, but not very often as double B. We use more the double P instead.
In portuguese, the word for someone born in Brazil is "Brasileiro" wich uses the "-eiro" suffix, which is mostly used for professions. The correct suffix to use would've been "-iano", thus "Brasiliano" (similar to the english "Brazilian" and the french "Bresilien") The way in which it became a gentilic is because back in the day, "brasileiro" was a word used in Portugal to describe someone who traded brazilwood, the tree that gave its name to the country. In fact, the first emperor of Brazil, Pedro I, was nicknamed "O Brasileiro" by the Portuguese Cortes because of his affinity to the country.
'Grocery' is still the default word in the UK for what we buy at the supermarket/grocery store, even if we don't shop at the local grocer's shop so much these days. A gross (144) is a very useful quantity for bulk purchases. A carton usually contains 24 or 48 cans, hence six cartons of 24 is a gross.
In Australia we use the term "grocery shopping" when we go to the supermarket, and we do have some "green grocers" left. Both sell retail, not by the gross, although green grocers will sell by the carton and most also supply restaurants etc, so larger quantities.
I really like how you use "bits and bobs" to describe what a haberdasher does, because I'm pretty sure that in a few centuries someone will be explaining what that means in the exact same way as you're explaining haberdasher right now. I find the idea of that very amusing.
I’d like to know if Rob has anything to say on the word “caddis”, because although it refers directly to the larva of a sedge-fly, it was also used of sellers who came round remote villages and farmsteads selling haberdashery. What do you think Rob?
I love your channel.. I encourage you to continue doing your thing -- people clearly love it, and you're clearly talented at delivering information in palatable form. Keep up the good work! -AK in NYC
I've never heard it pronounced like that. I think this is one of those words that has been adopted (incorrectly) and used so much in English that the original pronunciation has been totally lost (to us). It's usually a food item! Another example is 'chorizo'. Spanish pronunciation, I believe, is something like chuh'ritho. But it is almost always said as chuh'ritzo or, less commonly, chuh'rizo. At least we get the first syllable of it right!
@@oldnelson4298 words like tagliatelle and paella have begun to be pronounced by English speakers in their original way. People are being introduced to these recipes online
George Mikes in his classic examination of the English "How to be an Alien" did this joke. "Fishmongers mong fish. Exactly the same as ironmongers and warmongers with iron and war. They just mong them."
I'm so glad you covered the term 'costermonger'. I knew a little about it, thanks to Gilbert and Sullivan, namely 'A Policeman's Lot' from 'Pirates of Penzance': When the coster's finished jumping on his mother, he loves to lie a-basking in the sun...' And then there's the song 'A Little Priest' from 'Sweeney Todd'. As Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett discuss the various types of pies, she insists that one 'has to be grocer; it's green'. If I recall correctly, by the 18th century, 'milliner' referred specifically to a maker of women's hats, men's hats being made by a hatter.
I love this channel! Swedish "mat" (meaning food) is pretty similar to English "meat". Swedish "fläskkött" (pork meat) is very close to Flesh meat. Swedish "mat och dryck" is the same as "meat and drink". Swedish "grossist" very similar to "groser" and meaning wholesaler/bulksaler.
Groceries - at least where I lived in Scotland, we always called the weekly food shop groceries. The change was supermarkets selling non foods in the mid 80’s. If you add a pack of t-shirts and a pressure cooker into that basket, it’s no longer groceries. It’s ‘the’ shopping. Frozen food shops (or freezer markets as they were called also played a part) because groceries assumed a decent percentage of fresh food. Love your videos Rob. 10 minutes watching, 5 hours mulling it over 😂
I do have to say Rob, that I wouldnt normally in interested in any of your content asa subject matter, but ive just about binge watched most of your videos and I find them a mixture of facinating, and humorous. Your dead pan delivery along with the informative content is spot on.
Another great video Rob, thanks. Re: haberdasher. There are lots of cloths from the early Middle Ages that are named after the place they were made, typically these places were in the low countries area (e.g. cambric, denim, duffel, holland itself). Hapert is a place in the Netherlands - I wonder whether there was a specific type of cloths or garment made there. Something to ponder...
Rob - the ancient Livery Companies of the City of London have some interesting job titles - ie being guilds of trades, crafts and merchants. The Weavers Company is the oldest recorded. Company of Grocers and of Butchers, but hat makers are the Company of Feltmakers. The Pattenmakers made the wooden undershoe to protect your silk shoe. Cordwainers made shoes of Cordova leather. Loriners are the makers of horse bits - a lorin - and the makers of leather belts are the Company of Girdlers, girdles. There is a Lightmongers company, but it is modern and involved with illumination, older references are to dealers in offal - ie 'lights'.
Scandinavian languages still use a cognate of "meat" for food in general. For example the Norwegian word for food is "mat". In modern German there is the much more specific cognate "Mett". It refers to chopped/minced/ground pork which is also referred to as "Hackepeter" (something like "chopped Peter") in some regions. It is eaten raw as a spread on bread or buns, usually topped with onions and sometimes garnished with pickles. Mett is also called "Maurermarmelade" (brick layer's jam) sometimes, as it is considered a favorite dish among hard working, down to earth people.
Was so grateful to the RU-vid algorithm for recommending me your channel! Could you also make a video about Grimm’s law? It would be fascinating to hear you tell about it
sadly, sadly you missed the famous quote in Asterix in Britain.... "My tailor is rich!" Which was taken from a French schoolbook for English from the 60s, where this was one of the very first , and still sooo usable sentences... 😂🤣😂
@@kellydalstok8900 A famously useless one from an old English to French phrasebook, supposedly at least, was: "The postillion has been struck by lightning".
Great video as usual. Ethimology is a field of study that is practically never-ending, in the sense that there is always more things to learn. This because, as I learn some more of a new language, there are hundreds of ethimology connections to be made between English and the other languages. Thank you Rob, your linguistic videos are the best on RU-vid. Greetings, Anthony
I found your channel last week and, having watched all of your videos, I can say that you're one of my favourite content creators and educators on this platform. Side note--I'm autistic and love learning about etymology (it's one of my "special interests," but I find that term diluted and boring), so watching and rewatching your videos (sometimes for hours) is tremendously fulfilling. Thank you very much for making these.
The segues into each of the topics in this video were so smooth they sounded very QI-esque. I can imagine them coming out of Stephen or Sandi as they're reading from the teleprompter.
Hey, I've been binge-watching your entire channel out of order and I thought I'd pop a suggestion in the comments to the most recent video to increase the chances of getting noticed. What about a video about the English (and beyond) words for family members? A lot of them will just go back to Proto-Indo-European, but it's an opportunity to explore why English has the concept of in-laws, i.e. sticking "in-law" onto existing family words to get new ones, while other languages have specific words for those same relations. It might also be worth mentioning that some languages are more specific than others when it comes to describing family ties, such as how the word "nipote" in Italian can mean a grandchild of either gender, but also a nephew or niece, while Latin, to my knowledge, was precise enough to have two separate sets of words for aunts and uncles on your mother or your father's side. AND it's a chance to take a little detour to Iceland for a look at their surnames! Hope you'll take this into consideration. Keep up the good work!
I first encountered “monger” in Hamlet, and I believe that at least part the reason that “monger” has become pejorative is the association of the suffix with Polonius.
I feel compelled to point out that mincemeat pies traditionally did contain meat, in the flesh meat sense. The tendency to leave the meat out is a product of the early 20th century, though some people - my old Yankee grandmother, for example - still make theirs with meat. The aforementioned grandmother always made her with venison.
I read down the comments to see if someone had mentioned this. Many recipes for mincemeat still call for beef suet although commercial ones tend to be vegetarian these days.
Hi Rob, great video, as usual. Please note that the group “gli” in “tagliatelle” is pronounced as IPA [ʎ], not [gl]. There are a few exceptions to this rule, like the word “glìcine” where it’s pronounced [gl] . Ciao!
To weave in spanish is tejer, tejer is related to textile (woven fabrics), text (as in weaving a story), and technology (as in the craft and tools used to weave). I am truly fascinated by this etymology. Like weaving has been around since we spoke indo-european.
I grew up with a mother who loved words and word play, as do I. So we often investigated either the origins, or the earlier meanings of words. To my understanding, then, a haberdasher was a maker/seller of men's hats, while a milliner was a maker/seller of women's hats. The tailor and dressmaker handled the rest of the garments: mens' and womens', respectively. ;-)
@@uingaeoc3905 Yes. English is a Germanic language. The word "English" refers to the Angles, a people from the area around the modern Danish-German border; the Saxons (as in "Anglo-Saxon") were from the area between there and what is today the Netherlands.
@@beeble2003 What sort of half wit are you to think someone whose user Name is in Anglo-Saxon script does not know this??!"! NO - English is a language with the same roots as the Germanic languages. It is NOT 'German' any more than German is 'English'. DIKC #6@D
urnavabhi - is a spider but the origin is different. It literally means thread (urna) being spun out from the navel (nabhi). So this is a compound word (formed by sandhi or compounding; like in German)
"Groceries" seems to me like it is at least loosely connected to the German word "groß" meaning big or large and earlier coarsly gainy, for it was also used to specifically describe the basic ingredient for porridge or semolina pudding. Today we have the words "Großhändler" (trader/monger of large quantities, or "wholesaler") and "Großmarkt" (trading place for goods in large quantities), which are not only used for foods and groceries, but describe the companies in the supply chain that generally deliver goods to super markets and retail traders. So in Germany the majority of peasants and farmers bring their harvest and their crop to such "Großhändler" who then distributes it to the singular super markets, discounters and such. Also big portion of farmers and peasants attends a "Wochenmarkt" (weekly market) and sells their harvest directly.
"Excellent well, you're a fishmonger!" As for "meat" meaning any kind of food, Norwegian can probably explain that (the Norwegian word for food is "mat")
Also the origin of 'mate', as in comrade or (now) friend: late Middle English: from Middle Low German māt(e ) ‘comrade’, of West Germanic origin; related to meat (the underlying concept being that of eating together).
“So off to the haberdasher she did go, As fast as she could ru-u-un. She bought him a pair, The best that was there, And the soldier put them on.” 🎼🎶🎵 great song :) 😋🌷🌱
Very interesting video as usual! In French, “grossier" used to mean someone who sell food in big quantity but now it rather qualifies someone with poor manners. “Grossiste” is the modern term for a wholesaler.
In Swedish we have the word Grossist, that's a word for what in English you would call a wholesaler. Even though your videos mostly are about the English language, I still go oh I didn't know that about the Swedish language. Swedish is my native language. 😊
Yeah, most European languages are very much intertwined. It's too bad we all had to go our own way and can't even talk to each other anymore. But every new generation of people find their peers and conspire to make the world their own.
It's so interesting the way words evolve. In portuguese we have: Grocista - the shop where you can buy in bulk Talho - butcher (shop) Talhante - the person who cuts/sells meat Entalhe - sculpted wood
"mat" means "food" in the scandinavian languages. In French also, the old word "carn, car, char, chair", meaning "flesh" and "meat" was replaced by "viande", from Latin "vivenda", from "vivere" = to live. We also say "des vivres" for "supplies, provision" (to eat).
Mature coming from ripening foods / mats ? In dutch we have the term maatje (a mate or buddy in english) for a 'salted herring' but in german they say 'matjes'. It are litterally ripened or fermented raw fishes whereby only salt is used for the maturing proces.
@@b.a.erlebacher1139 According to my dictionary, "mets" comes from the Latin "missum" = sent (on the table). The "t" is not etymological, and seems never to have been pronounced. It was added by scholars just to complicate the spelling, probably by attraction of the verb "mettre" = to put.
@@Frilouz79 Thanks! Which makes me wonder whether "mess", the military term for place to eat, comes from French by the same derivation. It was once used for a serving of prepared food in English, as in the King James bible, where Esau eats "a mess of pottage", pottage of course from "potage". Etymology can really send you down a rabbit hole...
@@b.a.erlebacher1139 medieval cook books sometimes use the term "mess it forth" although "serve it forth" is more common. A recipe will occasionally tell you "for X messes" - ten serves.
When preceding an "l" in Italian, the "g" moves the middle of the tongue of the "l" sound to the the middle of your hard palate instead of at your teeth. The "g" is not pronounced and the "l" is tongued from the middle of the hard palate. Love your stuff!
In Iceland we still call vegetables “green meat” or grænmeti which literally translates to green foods. The -meti part is an archaic version of mat, the Icelandic word for food and is related to the English word meat
My children always teased me with, “Mom, words are your life.” I always insisted on proper usage (avoiding “ruined” words). You,Rob, have really made words your life! I applaud you, sir.
I've always loved the term groceteria. The term is unnecessarily convoluted. It seems to have faded in Canada post-WWII, and I assume it is due to the rise of supermarkets.
Interesting. I thought a groceteria was a small store that sold both groceries and prepared food like sandwiches and hot drinks, a combination of grocery and cafeteria. I haven't seen one labelled as such for a pretty long time. Of course, supermarkets do that now, and often convenience stores, too.
When I was a kid, the first time I heard someone refer to “millinery” I thought they were saying “military”. Hearing you explain the origin of millinery coming from Milan made me wonder if there’s any ancient military connection to Milan. The answer to that as far as I can tell is no, not particularly. But this sent me down a rabbit hole. I started wondering how Milan got its name, and now I am about 17 links deep in a Wikipedia chain learning about Celtic Insubres. I had no idea until now that Celtic referred to anything outside Ireland. This also sent me down a path learning about Gauls and Gaels, and honestly I’m so deep in all these tabs I’m getting a bit lost! Anyway, I guess what I’m saying is if you ever wanted to make a video about like….really really old European languages, and their movement through history, I’m fascinated but don’t even know where to start asking questions. Not sure if that’s in the scope of this channel, but just thought I’d share and see if it sparks anything.
I was presented with a map of Milan in which every house is labeled with the resident's name. As it was a semi-precious gift, I have framed and hung it on my drawing room.
The Celts now live in Ireland, Scotland, Wales, Cornwall, Manx, Brittany, and many of the islands. At one stage they inhabited most of Britain and northern France, but they were pushed to the edges of the world by later waves of immigrants. From memory they originated in eastern Europe. (Eastern Europe must have been crowded. It seems like every group to ever inhabit western Europe came from there.) And just to make it weird, apparently the word Celt comes from the Greek word keltoi, hence the hard k sound at the start.
@@fionaanderson5796 Thank you Fiona. It's often overlooked that the Welsh are Celtic, though Brythonic rather than Goedelic, from whom the Irish and Scots are descended. That Brythonic Celts inhabited most of what is now Great Britain can be seen in some Scottish place names such as "Aberdeen" ("aber" being the mouth of a river) and "Ben Nevis ("Pen, mutated to "Ben" means the top of a mountain). You are right about the hard "C" sound in "Celtic", and in Welsh all "Cs" are hard. We have no letter "K". The soft "C" sound is replaced by "s" in Welsh.
I believe costermongers we common up to the 1950's selling apples from a barrow hence barrow-boys. As you were wandering the streets you could buy an apple to slake you thirst as there weren't many places except public houses selling drinks back in the day. (Ladies couldn't enter a pub without a male companion)
8:20 Millenia from now, future anthropologists will wonder, completely baffled, at the mysterious meaning of “misc.” (miscellaneous) and what specifically it was.
I've only just noticed that although I know grocer and grocery are pronounced with an "s" sound, I actually pronounce it groshery and grosher. I think it's a regional dialect thing because my whole family says the word this way.
Lemme guess-Gileadites? 😜 Of course, pronouncing 's' as 'sh' ( /s/ → /ʃ/ ) is quite common around the world. Bengalis in India do that all the time. Throws you off-guard the first time you hear "Take a seat." 🤣 Germans also do that in words starting with 'st' and 'sp'. Strudel, Spaghetti, ... Naturally, the opposite-pronouncing 'sh' as 's' ( /ʃ/ → /s/ ) also happens. The most famous legend being, of course, what I alluded to earlier: The Ephraimites-counterparts to the Gileadites-who pronounced 'shibboleth' as 'sibboleth'. But even in modern times, I know of some regional dialects of Hindi (in India) where the same thing happens. Examples: • The Hindi word for 'noise' is pronounced as _shore_ in Standard Hindi, but as _sore_ in certain regional dialects. • The Hindi word for 'city' is pronounced as _sheher_ in Standard Hindi, but as _seher_ in certain regional dialects.
Hello from NY. "Monger" here is only used in the negative sense, as in "warmonger" and "gossipmonger." We don't use it for stores. An ironmonger is a hardware store; a greenmonger is a fruit store, etc.
♥️ your content! Thanks for this and all you’ve taught us across your videos. FYI- the “G” in tagliatelle is silent. Or rather “GL” in Italian is pronounced as “LY” in English
Milliner... a very similar history to the Australian definition of a department where you buy bed linen... They call this Manchester, as back in the day Manchester in the UK was the leading supplier of these items, so crates marked Manchester went to Australia, and so now they have, in major department stores a department called... Manchester
I love hearing happy people in the background! Sets a nice mood. It's way better than some of the annoying and distracting music some videos have. Love these videos!
I like the idea of filming on-location in public, but the background noise was pretty loud/distracting at parts. Might need a better noise-isolating microphone if you want to do it again.
We had haberdashery shops or sections in department stores. They sold bits and bobs related to making things. So: pins and needles, buttons, scissors, tape measures, thread, wool, lace and other bric-a-brac . Some would even carry a small selection of cloth.
One of my pet peeves when it comes to English is how people mis-use the pre-word "pre". For example, baking instructions will often tell you to "pre-heat the oven to 350 degrees F." Well, you don't pre-heat an oven, you just heat it. A "pre-heated" oven would be an oven that hasn't been heated yet.....wouldn't it? If you look around a bit, you'll find many more examples. Pre-sliced, pre-diluted, pre-fabricated, etc. Even if you claim common usage, I think it would still be an interesting example of how our language has changed over time, and I would love to see an episode on it.
Very good comment. I guess people just get used to using words and phrases that really aren't needed but are redundant in the context of their use. Why do people say I have to wash and get cleaned up before dinner? Why the use of the word up?
@@ragnkja totally agree! pre- relates to what is done after the action. pre-slicing meat prior to slicing is nonsense. pre-slicing meat prior to eating just means not eating with knife and fork
I took a shot at summarizing: Monger Comes from the classical latin Mangō meaning a trader Old English changed it to Manger (pronounced monger) or Magnere, Mongere, Mongar etc. Grocer Post-classical latin had Grossarius meaning someone who sold in large quantities Changed into the French Grossier before changing into the English Grocer Tailor Comes from the medieval Latin word Tailiare meaning to cut Changed to the old French word Tailleor meaning someone who cuts. Haberdasher Comes from Aglo-norman as someone who sells Hapertas. Hapertas exact definition is unknown but may have meant a type of fabric, or assorted small items. Milliner Comes from renaissance Italy Milan, where merchants selling garments were called Milliners. Changed from garments in general to hats. Weaver Comes from the indo-germanic word Webh meaning web.
Another fantastic episode. Like I said before, I could watch a whole channel of _just_ job words. They tell us so much. Also, now I know I've been understanding haberdasher wrong. Having really mostly encountered it in written work set during the period that it meant "hat maker", I assumed it still meant that. Interesting to see that it both changed and diverged.
My grandma was a seamstress, so haberdashery to me has always meant the buttons, zips, ribbons, threads, hooks and eyes, Velcro, lace trim, etc that you need to complete garments. In Australia the large fabric shops all have a haberdashery department, which is often now shortened to "haby".
@@fionaanderson5796 Oddly enough, my mom was a seamstress for a good number of years (then a waitress, then a nurse). But that didn't help me much in North America, given which way we went on the definition fork.
One of the most famous members of the Grocers Company was John Heminges because of his second job as an actor. Heminges and Henry Condell spent years collecting the plays written by a friend and colleague. Maybe you’ve heard of that playwriting chap-William Shakespeare. “Macbeth”-to take just one example-wouldn’t exist without their efforts.
I’m sure this comes as no surprise, but Dutch and German both have the same meaning in their words for Tailor. Snijder and Schneider both literally mean “one who cuts.”
@@aramisortsbottcher8201 'Kleermaker' is the common word for a tailor in Dutch. 'Snijder' does indeed sound extremely old fashioned (as in I've never heard anyone use it in this context).
@@aramisortsbottcher8201 in Belgien benutzt mann es öfter aber in Niederländisch "Kleermaker" The word is mostly used in Belgium, in the Netherlands the word "kleermaker" is more common.
In Shetland dialect "maet" is still sometimes used to refer to food generally, and meat is sometimes still referred to as flesh... (I say this as a non native resident who studies the local dialect informally)
In the north east of the U.S. , there is a slang word for recyclable metal “found “ at construction/ job sites : “mongo”. Some one might say of a collection of damaged copper pipes, “ that’s good mongo , there”. Meaning one could sell the copper to a scrap dealer.
@@Pocketfarmer1 I should have mentioned that I speak German. And I think "Mongo" is short for "mongoloid", which is some sort of race? Like caucasian or so. And I am not sure on this either, but I think there is a birth defect that lets people look like, well, mongoloids and also impacts their intelligence. Tho I have no source for it besides what I was told way back when I learned this insult... Still, interesting idea you had.
when I was a kid I spent a lot of time at the arcade with my friends. There was a guy who worked there that would patrol the area and provide change when needed. His job title: Quartermonger.
and again something funny ... Grosshändler = wholesaler in German well, granted, nowadays it´s written Groß and it also simply means "big/ huge/ large" but it´s interesting to see where that probably stems from... That part about the "Grossarius" was an eye-opener I´d say :)