- When and why did the N-word and negro go apart?
For example, black businessman James Forten asked in 1831: "Why do our friends as well as our enemies call us negroes? We feel it a term of reproach, and could wish our friends would call us by some other name " By the end of the Civil War, with the abolitionist cause victorious, many simply wanted to leave the older terms behind
- Why does No mean Number? - English Language Usage Stack Exchange
Why does English use "No " as an abbreviation for "Number"? It's a preserved scribal abbreviation like the ampersand (formed by eliding the letters of et to mean and) The OED has it in use from the 8th century, based on the ablative numerō used for an implied preposition in: X in or according to number
- etymology - Why were slum kids called “urchins”? - English Language . . .
None of the early sources I consulted spells out why a child variously described as "sorry," "unlucky," "short," and (above all) "little" should be particularly associated with a hedgehog Nevertheless, all of those early definitions possess a distinctly critical, commiserating, or patronizing tone
- meaning - XOXO means hugs and kisses but why? - English Language . . .
The reason why hugs and kisses is rendered XOXO and not OXOX is unknown Maybe it because of the influence of Tic-tac-toe However, according to ScoopWhoop , it's under debate
- nouns - Why is the word pants plural? - English Language Usage . . .
Why doesn't Iran join the CSTO as soon as possible to stop Israeli (+ possible US) attacks? Does using a CC-BY-SA image mean you have to license the whole work under CC-BY-SA? How can scientists determine the Big Bang occurred 13 8 billion years ago if the universe is expanding and we only see past light?
- etymology - Why shrink (of a psychiatrist)? - English Language . . .
I'm afraid I have to disagree here From my understanding, and a recent article in the Atlantic, derived from the new text Marketplace of the Marvelous: The Strange Origins of Modern Medicine, referring to a psychiatrist as a shrink refers not specifically to head-shrinking tribesmen, but to the field of phrenology, a significantly closer cultural institution to psychiatry
- Why does the ending -ough have six pronunciations?
It's unclear to me why the pronunciation developed this way in these words, but it seems quite regular The one exception I've been able to find, drought, can be explained if we look at the history: it comes from Old English drūgað, which, unlike all of the other ought words, had the long "ū" vowel
- Why was Spook a slur used to refer to African Americans?
What I don't understand is why Spook seems to also mean 'ghost' in German Did the Americans call them spooks because the Germans did? If so, why did the Germans call them that? Or, if the Germans called them that because Americans called them spooks, then why did the Americans call them that?
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