WEBVTT

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English, like all languages,

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is a messy business.

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You can be uncouth but not couth.

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You can be ruthless,

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but good luck trying to show somebody

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that you have ruth

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unless you happen to be married

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to someone named Ruth.

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It's bad to be unkempt

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but impossible to be kempt,

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or sheveled as opposed to disheveled.

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There are other things

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that make no more sense than those

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but that seem normal now

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because the sands of time

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have buried where they came from.

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For example, did you ever wonder

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why a nickname for Edward is Ned?

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Where'd the N come from?

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It's the same with Nellie for Ellen.

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Afterall, if someone's name is Ethan,

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we don't nickname him Nethan,

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nor do we call our favorite Maria, Nmaria.

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In fact, if anyone did,

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our primary urge would be to either scold them

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or gently hide them away

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until the company had departed.

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All these nicknames trace back to a mistake,

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although, a perfectly understandable one.

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In fact, even the word nickname is weird.

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What's so "nick" about a nickname?

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Is it that it's a name that has a nick in it?

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Let's face it, not likely.

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Actually, in Old English, the word was ekename,

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and eke meant also or other.

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You can see eke still used

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in Chaucer's Canterbury Tales in a sentence like,

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"Whan Zephyrus eek with his sweete breeth,"

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which meant,

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"When Zephyr also with his sweet breath."

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Ekename meant "also name."

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What happened was that when people said, "an ekename,"

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it could sound like they were saying,

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"a nekename,"

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and after a while,

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so many people were hearing it that way

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that they started saying,

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"That's my nickname,"

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instead of, "That's my ekename."

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Now, the word had a stray n at the front

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that started as a mistake,

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but from now on was what the word really was.

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It was rather as if you had gum

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on the bottom of your shoe

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and stepped on a leaf,

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dragged that leaf along for the rest of your life,

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were buried wearing that shoe

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and went to heaven in it

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to spend eternity wedded to that stray, worn-out leaf.

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Ekename picked up an n and never let it go.

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The same thing happened with other words.

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Old English speakers cut otches into wood.

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But after centuries of being asked

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to cut an otch into something,

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it was easy to think you were cutting a notch instead,

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and pretty soon you were.

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In a world where almost no one could read,

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it was easier for what people heard

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to become, after awhile,

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what it started to actually be.

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Here's where the Ned-style nicknames come in.

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Old English was more like German

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than our English is now,

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and just as in German, my is mein,

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in Old English, my was meen.

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You would say meen book,

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actually boke in Old English,

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or meen cat.

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And just as today,

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we might refer to our child

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as my Dahlia

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or my Laura,

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in Old English, they would say, "Meen Ed".

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That is mein Ed,

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mein Ellie.

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You see where this is going.

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As time passed, meen morphed

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into the my we know today.

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That meant that when people said, "Mein Ed,"

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it sounded like they were saying my Ned.

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That is, it sounded like whenever someone

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referred to Edward affectionately,

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they said Ned instead of Ed.

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Behold, the birth of a nickname!

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Or an ekename.

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Hence, also Nellie for Ellen

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and Nan for Ann,

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and even in the old days, Nabby for Abigal.

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President John Adam's wife Abigail's nickname was Nabby.

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All sorts of words are like this.

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Old English speakers wore naprons,

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but a napron sounds like an apron,

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and that gave birth to a word apron

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that no one in Beowulf would have recognized.

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Umpire started as numpires, too.

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If all of this sounds like something sloppy

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that we modern people would never do,

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then think about something you hear all the time

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and probably say,

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"A whole nother."

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What's nother?

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We have the word another, of course,

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but it's composed of an and other,

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or so we thought.

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Yet, when we slide whole into the middle,

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we don't say, "a whole other,"

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we clip that n off of the an

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and stick it to other

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and create a new word, nother.

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For a long time, nobody was writing

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these sort of things down

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or putting them in a dictionary,

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but that's only because writing

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is more codified now than it was 1,000 years ago.

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So, when you see a weird word,

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remember that there might be

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a whole nother side to the story.