Conjecture

[digitS']

Language has always interested me altho I'm poorly suited for it – having impaired hearing from an early age. It may have something to do with having only one book in my childhood home other than the family bible. The dictionary was always there for the most simple of research on any subject. As a young teenager, my parents bought a set of World Book encyclopedias, oh boy!

The 2 linguists in the faculty of the university where I showed up for graduate school taught me to do field work. What choice? Otherwise, there was the museologist and 2 archeologists while I was doing social anthropology?? Anyway, I was happy with the linguists. Huh ?

I was curious about a word origin the other day — Stafford. Okay, I understand the ford part. I often drive past What I understand was a commonly used ford in the river, before a bridge was built nearby, about 130 years ago. The ford is almost in view from what was my distant garden of years past.

So, what is the "staf" or "sta?" The writers of dictionaries have apparently determined that it is a landing. So, it's the landing beside the ford. Okay. Through a body of information and the odds that there are connections, etymologists have traced "ford" and "landing" back to Old English and Old French. But "sta" ..? Well, how about "stay" as for ropes etc. for holding a boat?

Perhaps I am now in the realm of conjecture, to "infer, predict, form (an opinion or notion) upon probabilities or slight evidence." Perhaps not but it was just a name I was curious about and not as clear as Clifford or Redford or Kingsford ... not something that I want to go down the rabbit hole for .

Conjecture.

 

[flowerbug]

*nods*

 

[ducks4you]

Language and words are what most people decide to use. It is always in a state of flux.
For example, When I was a little duckling, we used to wear "flip flops."
A couple of decades ago middle schoolers were language shaming me to call them "thongs."
Now, they are again, "flip flops."
There is No rhyme or reason, although reason Should prevail.
I have a pet language peeve, things "recur".
To "reoccur" is to happen repeatedly, specifically twice.
On an episode of "The Neighbors", one of the aliens (truly alien beings who can look like people) is trying to understand "Halloween."
In the efforts she ends up calling it "Halloween-ween, one ween."
You can recognize posers who pretend to understand fields of work or study but do not understand the specific terminology used in those fields.
It isn't like the areas are closed clubs . It is just that in a field of study or business, you really look stupid if you don't know the lingo.
For instance, when you are riding a horse in an arena and you change the direction, you are "changing reins." and you almost always turn to the inside track, and describe a teardrop shape to your travel.
When you play a piece of music and you play the piece in a different key, you transpose.
When you play a piece of music originally written for a specific instrument or, like Modest Mussorgsky, who wrote "Pictures at an Exhibition" for the keyboard, and then rewrote it for Orchestra, That is called Transcribing.
For a composer (including modern composers, like popular music writers) take a musical motif (musical thought) and rewrite it and repeat it, THAT is known as Theme and Variations, which has been a staple in music for many centuries.
WE know that cloning plants from cuttings is called propogation.
Words that have specific meanings are valuable.
This practice makes for better communication.
Everything isn't a "thing", or, "you know."
It is fascinating to study the evolution of a word, as @digitS' was referencing.
I always think it's interesting that "melonin", a word so closely spelled as "melatonin" is not at All related.

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