retired_boy_0429

Or sometimes even three: there are words where we have versions from Old English, French and Latin (folk, people and population being the one that springs to mind). English likes to borrow words:

retired_boy_0429

That's an interesting one (meaning it has no terest?). Innocent is Latin, with the "nocent" bit coming from "nocere", to harm. That didn't make it into English directly, but a related word is the root of "noxious".

retired_princesspouty

nocen is the present participle of nocere: "To hurt, injure".

So nocen hasn't made it into the English language (as far as I know) but the in-nocen part has... I assume.

retired_mnw_cna

Bloody comprehensive education, not being allowed to learn Latin.

retired_princesspouty

I had a comprehensive education.

There's nothing stopping you learning it now.

retired_calhoun_s

She is positively lovely. Top poker player as well iirc.

retired_mnw_cna

Perfectly true. I ought to investigate.

I do get worried that my brain is getting more and more addled as I get older though. I wouldn't be anything like as confident going back to studying now as I would have been ten years ago.

By coincidence, my mother has a classics degree, and my father has A-level Latin (and can actually remember it, which I find frightening; I can't remember yesterday, let alone my A-levels) so whenever I've needed help on things like that I've just asked them.

Can Dave Vassey tell me what the options for things like this are at Sheffield?

retired_corzawoodja

ingenious and ingenuous

God my head around those two yesterday. :thup:

Ventil

If you were lucky (unlucky?) enough to have a paid for education, you learnt Latin from 8 onwards.

IMO it's a great language and it's a shame that it isn't spoken to this day.

retired_princesspouty

I was out at lunch and contemplating the use of Lamb for sheep's meat. I was wondering how the word for a young sheep became used for generic meat from sheep.

My best guess is that Mutton was used for sheep's meat. But, in medieval England, wool was the primary export - so a sheep would be worth more alive than dead. Therefore, sheep were only slaughtered when they were nearing the end of their wool-producing life. Even barons would only have got meat from older sheep, calling it mutton at that time.

As time passed and the value of wool dropped - sheep could be slaughtered for meat at a younger age... and the word mutton was now synonymous with meat from old sheep - so Lamb was used (meat from young sheep).

Thrilling lunchtimes for me.