IFC Season 1 : Round 24 entry - Etymology Of The Words 'OK' And 'Nightmare'
Did you ever wonder about the origin of words you use every day? You might be surprised!
Artwork credit - @yeszuzia on steemit and instagram
They Tricked Me Into Playing
Although I had made a pledge not to enter the Information Finding Championship again, here I am writing an entry post.
I simply can’t resist any challenge that has something to do with words or language in general.
The Topic
The topic of the 24th round of IFC is ‘etymology*’, which in layman terms is the origin of words, or to be more precise:
The study of the origin of words and the way in which their meanings have changed throughout history.
Etymology of ‘etymology’
The word ‘etymology’ is a combination of two Greek words: etymos, which means true, and logós which means word.
So the etymology of the word etymology is ‘true word.
Language Barrier
It would be an easy one if it would be in Dutch, but I was pretty surprised by the lack of knowledge I had of the origin of English words.
Fortunately, my best friend Google-guy always knows more than I do. ;0)
The Search
Google guy gave me a lot of examples, but to be honest, they were all rather boring. I was looking for something funny, something exciting, something out-of-the-ordinary...
The most interesting one I found so far was the etymology of the word ‘nightmare’.
I’m a horror freak, and as soon as I found out about the origins of the word, I was instantly attracted to it.
An Evil Spirit
I’m not a native speaker, and I always had a vision of a female horse that would ride through the night. My vision was pretty innocent.
You can imagine I was a little shocked to find out that the word ‘mare’ actually originated from Germanic folklore and was not an innocent horse...
A “mare” is an evil female spirit or goblin that sits upon a sleeper’s chest, suffocating them and/or giving them bad dreams. (...)
On top of that it rode horses in the night, leaving them sweaty and exhausted next day, and it even wreaked havoc with trees, twisting their branches.
Source
Sounds pretty horrifying to me...
Just one More...
After I had written down all the previous text, I stumbled upon another funny one.
'OK' - it’s a word we use several times every day. I think none of you knew that it was originally used by the American military.
It was used to indicate that there had been no casualties after a mission.
It was short for ‘0 Killed’.
Source
I know, the word will never be the same again now you know about this :0)
Sorry about that.
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Thank you for teaching me yet another thing! I am glad you brought this entry to us! Who would have thought ok meant 0 killed, things that make you go hmmmm.
That’s exactly what I thought - lol
I love learning about the root meaning of words - crazy that I just learned that etymology is the word for that - thanks for expanding my mind
OK, I think you killed it with Nightmare. :-}
Well, okey dokey and mares eat oats...
Enjoyed your post and I'd never heard either before.
thanks!
We tricked you into playing? Lol.. And why would you make a pledge to not play? I'm confused.. But anyways.. Whoa.. I never knew that about "OK".. That's fascinating.. Also didn't know that about nightmare either. interesting stuff,kinda creepy too, heh.. Thanks for another great entry and for teaching me and others something new!
I think the obligatory title is too long. If you use it in full, it takes up the entire viewable title, which limits the chance of a post to be read by other people than the ones involved with IFC.
For some posts, I feel that it is a shame. Like for example the ‘making money online’ posts. The displayed title was ‘Information Finding Championship - season 1 - round ?? Entry: ‘Make...’
This means that the valuable info shared in that round reached no one else than IFC members, which is a shame, because a lot of people could benefit from that info.
I dropped the remark in the Discord channel once, but it was completely ignored.
So I decided that - for as long as the obligatory title was kept in place, I wouldn’t enter anymore.
Then you guys came up with these word games, which I simply can’t resist.
So I decided to try to find a mid-way solution, and shortened the title by using IFC instead of Information Finding Championship. For the word games, the title isn’t of that much importance, but it is good to know I can do this for other rounds too, so other people can benefit from the info in what is written.
I haven't noticed that issue on my computer, I just checked and it shows me the full title for even incredibly long ones.. So I'm not totally sure where the problem is, but.. I am willing to try to work on the title to make it shorter. Maybe we could do IFC and then S for season and R for round So it would be like.. IFC S1 R26 or something like that.. I think that might help a lot. Though.. A long title never stopped me from opening a link, if I couldn't read all of something I think it would make me want to click on it just to see what it says, lol.. But.. I appreciate your feedback and I do sort of seem to remember someone mentioning that once before. Was it ignored? I'm not sure.. If it was I apologize. Maybe I just didn't understand. But thanks for the info and that you consider that to be an issue preventing you from wanting to play.. I will look into it and try to make it shorter or something like that.
I’m working on my phone, so I assume the smaller screen size has something to do with it. But you allowed me to enter two rounds with only IFC in the title instead of the full name, and that solved the problem
I just thought I’d give it a try, since rule-bending seems the new trend here lately 😉, ans apparently I got away with it, so problem solved.
After the proposal being agnored, i must admit my image of you was not so great anymore, but you proved me wrong on many occassions afterwards. Sometimes things get lost in the information overload - no need to worry about it.
As long as IFC is accepted in the title: keep those word games coming. I’m in again :0P
Of course I realize that you are trying to build a brand here, which I admire fully.
As long as I don’t start my title with KFC instead of IFC, I think everything will be fine - lol
(I did just a while ago: in the title about APPICS, it took me 3 hours to realize my title said KFC instead of KYC - lol. The slug will be branded on the blockchain forever, hahaha)
Bummer to hear you got the impression I was ignoring you or that my image decreased of how you view me. I don't remember exactly what happened, but I try to respond to virtually everyone in an OCD like way, so I wonder if maybe it was just an overload of information like you mentioned cause I'm practically going blind trying to respond to everyone. So yeah. Again. Apologies. I really like you and am honored to have you play in our game. And lol about the KFC thing.
In regards to you shortening your entry names, I didn't even really notice, but I there were a few others now I remember that did that also in hindsight and it doesn't bother me. I think as long as we understand what we're looking for it works and I will look into shortening the descriptions in the future for those on their phones and such! Thanks for the important feedback! Woulda been a shame to lose someone as awesome as you over a misunderstanding. I'm pretty certain I didn't mean to ignore you. I try to respond to everyone but at some point, I admit I lose some stuff. i can't keep up with it all anymore. Some messages get lost. That sucks, but.. It's only going to get more difficult as this all grows.. So I dunno what to do. ;\ Glad you told me this though! Thanks!
I understand. And it must have just been bad timing, like on a day when I was in an awefully bad mod, ‘cos normally I’m not the one going around judging people. Lol, now that I think of it, it so feels like not-me.
Must have been that time of the year... lol
Glad to hear you understand! And yeah.. It's a bummer cause I used to be able to keep on top of all my messages and I prided myself in it. Cause.. So many people don't respond and it annoys me and I don't wanna be like that.. But.. Now that I get too many to even keep up with.. I'm having to reflect on that a bit.. Even though most of those people who ignore me probably don't do it because they can't keep up.. Still.. I dunno.. It helps me to try to be more understanding for sure.. Since I can't even keep up with it all anymore. And heh.. Yeah sometimes I'm kind of more aggressive than others, perhaps something astrological going on like that retrograde thingy they talk about or something like that, heh.
Glad you joined on this one good luck!
Thanks!