The Dark Histories Behind Your Favorite Scary Words (Interview with Jess Zafarris)

Рет қаралды 14,228

Күн бұрын

Пікірлер: 60

@LymanPhillips 12 күн бұрын

What a wonderful collaboration! I've been following Ms. Zafarris on Words Unravelled, but it's interesting to hear her expounding on her encyclopedic knowledge of myths and legends in a different arena.

@Paul71H Жыл бұрын

12:00 - I had always assumed that "arctic" comes from "arc", since an arc is part of a circle, and the arctic is associated with the arctic circle. I'm amazed to learn that it actually has a completely different origin.

@kh23797 5 ай бұрын

I saw Jess collaborating with Rob (of Robwords) and was impressed by her profound knowledge. Her vocal 'fry' interests me, too-as with the Chinese 'perfect pitch' theory discussed here, I'm researching how this voice feature originates in early development. In particular, one wonders why (unlike a local dialect) it is not adopted quasi-universally by girls raised in one area. Here in England, it is still much rarer than in the USA.

@michaelsommers2356 2 ай бұрын

That story of Jack and the devil reminds me of Sisyphus tricking Death twice.

@tedblack2288 2 ай бұрын

Jess, I agree that you have a love of words, but you also have an absolutely delightfully wicked sense of the ridiculous!

@bobmephitis8206 3 ай бұрын

Thank you for this absolutely fantastic discussion!

@daviddickason6729 2 ай бұрын

Victor was the monster - Adam was a victim

@bernard2735 2 ай бұрын

My favourite Irish name is 'Caoilfhionn' - pronounced 'keelan'. It is beautiful and magnificently Gaelic.

@LymanPhillips 12 күн бұрын

How wonderful! It would make a wonderful middle name, although I would never encumber a child with that for a first name.

@jasonharris2006 5 ай бұрын

Also remember that after the witch trials in America we had a vampire craze here in the 1800s. Many think some of the elements of this time period were also used by Bram Stroker. Look up Mercy Brown....

@richardayers6607 Ай бұрын

Halloween and etymology: Heaven.

@tracy3812 Ай бұрын

I was sad that Grendel didn’t make it into the dragon category although he may have been (just) a beast. I seem to like most creatures such as gargoyles, hunkypunks & omadhauns. Def not the Beautiful People set.

@stevenskorich7878 3 ай бұрын

On the topic of "fell beasts", J.R.R. Tolkien, in "The Return of the King" described the winged creature ridden to the Battle of the Pelennor Fields by the Lord of the Nazgul thus: "A creature of an older world maybe it was, whose kind...outstayed their day, and in hideous eyrie bred this last untimely brood, apt to evil. And the Dark Lord took it, and nursed it with fell meats....and he gave it to his servant to be his steed." So, fell meats for a fell beast who planned for a fell swoop. but had not planned for an armed shieldmaiden and a hobbit. 😎

@daigreatcoat44 6 ай бұрын

I 'm fairly sure that one of Mary Shelley's inspirations was the recent experimentation by Galvani - making the legs of dead frogs twitch by applying an electric current. Somewhere, I read about an electric shock administered to a recently-hanged criminal, which resulted in the corpse becoming briefly animated - grim, indeed - and I hope this was only a physical reaction.

@rezzer7918 5 ай бұрын

I doubt it

@anvil5356 3 ай бұрын

It's Fronk-in-steen, not Frankinstien. Young Frankinstien, Oppps sorry 'Young Fronk-in -Steen.'

@keithdavies52 5 ай бұрын

I do know I can't stop the flood, but I got my heart broken when Grammar Girl said " close proximity to" when it could have been said " in proximity with "

@Brunoburningbright Ай бұрын

You have a refined ear. You must often feel like someone with perfect pitch consigned to a Karaoke Bar. As a language is passed down the generations we hear the things lost more readily than the things gained.

@keithdavies52 Ай бұрын

@@Brunoburningbright I don't know. I'm just annoyingly fixated, and no one should really listen to my opinion. I'm like that crazy uncle that thinks seatbelts are tyranny, or the lady that fact checks you for saying canola is bad.

@AdDewaard-hu3xk 5 ай бұрын

Bear. Arctos. Ursus. Bruin . Brown. Taboo. Our ancestors had issues.

@danielcraft3727 4 ай бұрын

The name Karen is an issue today.

@webwarren 3 ай бұрын

A propos word play where a word with a negative meaning acquires a positive meaning: the 1980s uses of "wicked" to mean "good, excellent" and "gnarly" (gnarled, twisted) to mean, again, good or excellent...

@SRDuly2010 5 ай бұрын

My understanding of “fell” was always in the sense of being damned. Fallen angels come to mind. Felon hadn’t crossed my mind. But other than implying evil, there’s also the idea of hills/mountains. I live not far from a road called the Fellsway. And I’ve done some fell running, as well.

@williamyalen6167 5 ай бұрын

Seriously, only 5 comments, after 7 months in (as of June 1, 2024)??!! Come on, Word-Lovers, show some love - feed the Almighty Algorithm!! :-)

@MignonFogartyGrammarGirl 5 ай бұрын

Haha, thanks for the encouragement!

@EmilyTienne 5 ай бұрын

Most people are too busy watching the game on tv. 🙄

@danielcraft3727 4 ай бұрын

The name Karen. For the algorithm.

@LymanPhillips 12 күн бұрын

Liked and adding this comment to feed the algorithm.

@ShawnNac 3 ай бұрын

Do you want to know what gets my goat in this video? El Chupacabra!

@michaelsommers2356 2 ай бұрын

Irish spelling makes English spelling look sane.

@bernard2735 2 ай бұрын

Also, a grotesque is not a gargoyle.

@vickhines6302 14 күн бұрын

The Frankenstein story comes from the eastern European Jewish golem story. The Rabbi Judah Loew Bezalel (16th century) of Prague built the golem to protect the Jewish citizens from a progrom. The golem escapes from the rabbi’s control, forcing the rabbi to destroy it.

@dursty3226 28 минут бұрын

little brain: Frankenstien is the monster big brain: Frankenstein is the creator galaxy brain: Frankenstein *is* the monster

@harveycovey2215 3 ай бұрын

I may just put Wiefwolf in one of my "Haunting Season" poems!

@grammargirl 3 ай бұрын

That would be fabulous! If you do, be sure to let Jess and me know.

@clareomarfran 3 ай бұрын

I see a kitty cat.

@natebalcerak1659 18 күн бұрын

❤👍

@ainenaoife1 4 ай бұрын

In Irish, bear is math-ghamhainn. Roughly translates as "dog-like bull". Pronounced like: mah gown. And yes, Irish spelling diverges a lot from English. There's no letters v or w or x or y and these are replaced by other conventions.

@Loctorak 3 ай бұрын

My sister's friend named her daughter Ceilidh, which to you I'm sure isn't anything out of the ordinary, but to me who had always just assumed Irish people spoke English since forever it was mind blowing to learn that this was simply pronounced like "Kay-leigh" 😅

@Games-il4vl 2 ай бұрын

Always thought there was something off about brown bear black bear.

@stewartmorrison6290 3 ай бұрын

Re Terrific and "smashing" being used as opposite from their original meaning - I have always thought of smashing as being Scots Gaelic. "Is math sin" means, "it's good, that" and it is pronounced pretty much as "smashin".

@kencory2476 5 ай бұрын

Love your cat.

@AdDewaard-hu3xk 5 ай бұрын

Fell beast.

@LeeCarlson 3 ай бұрын

English speakers always assume that the Gaelic people are using the Latin alphabet when they are using the Gaelic symbols which just happen to resemble the Latin.

@webwarren 3 ай бұрын

Daemon... hmm... That original meaning is so close to what daemons are in the UNIX and Linux operating systems (ongoing background routines and calls for specific system functions)...

@AdDewaard-hu3xk 5 ай бұрын

Fell. Hmm. What about 'wandering the fells'?

@webwarren 3 ай бұрын

"bear" and words that have become lost... The eighties slang, "that's a bear", to mean something is not good, or problematic, and the loss of the original word - or more likely, phrase - represented by the tetragrammaton (yod-heh-vav-heh). In the first, we have the attributes of the animal (unless "bear" there comes from the same root as "grin and bear it", "a cross to bear", etc.), while in the second, we have the historical fear of accidentally pronouncing The Name causing that name to have been forgotten. One possibility for fear of the bear may come from ancient beliefs that the bear is a fellow creature (in many ways closer to human behavior than that of apes - or at least, the closest to human behavior that can be found in the northern hemisphere) and was revered in many pre-Christian religions.

@keithdavies52 5 ай бұрын

Adam wasn't the monster. The doctor was. If you were to fast forward, the analogy applies, but to the creator of the thing that wielded havoc. Take from that what you will in our modern predicament in politics.

@grammargirl 5 ай бұрын

I know! I have occasionally lain awake at night thinking about how I can't believe I said something so stupid when I actually know the difference.

@keithdavies52 5 ай бұрын

@@grammargirl I lay awake at night, too, thinking of how I don't speak as well as I understand the language, and I'm pretty happy about my regrets of saying something I didn't intend when it's only vocabulary or grammar. "Close proximity" is the accepted colloquialism, just a peeve that is proximal to my heart, among other things my wife tells me to let go of. I don't think you said anything stupid, at all. Take my comment you replied to. That was so poorly written that I had to rewatch to see what I was talking about. I knew it was about Frankenstein. Rewatching, I remembered I was thinking of the system that created the space for someone that I consider an awful person, at the time. Then your conversation on Frankenstein clicked with those thoughts, and I typed as if everyone was clued into the goings on in my head. I appreciate people that appreciate vocabulary and grammar, and you are certainly appreciated.

@grammargirl 5 ай бұрын

@@keithdavies52 Thanks for the kind follow-up.