Brigid Daull Brockway is technically a writer

Brigid Daull Brockway is technically a writer

A blog about words, wordplay, and etymology, with slightly more than occasional political rants.

Monday, June 6, 2011

Fun with Word Association

Koala is from the Aboriginal for no water. Koalas don't drink water, they get all the liquid they need from the eucalyptus on which they nom.  
According to the Nutrition Diva, we don't need nearly as much water as folks would lead us to believe. We've all heard that you need 8 glasses a day, and pretty much everyone on earth is dehydrated all the time, and if you don't drink a gallon of water over the course of your hour-long Zumba class, you will die. Not so. You can actually get most of the water you need just from a diet rich in fruits and veggies. There's nothing wrong with drinking lots of water, and it's certainly better to be wetter, in general, but you really don't need that gallon jug of Dasani at your side all day either.  
Dasani is a product of the Coca Cola company. The name doesn't mean anything - Coke just made it up. Focus groups thought it sounded pure. Dasani, like most bottled water, is just tap water; however, it's so heavily filtered that they then add minerals and stuff back to it. 
Tap is from a Germanic word for a cylindrical peg that produces water or somesuch. I'm not 100% clear because I keep getting bored halfway through the sentence. It is, however, etymologically unrelated to the verb tap, meaning strike lightly. And we know how much I love homonyms that are etymologically unrelated to each other. At least I think it's etymologically unrelated. The etymology for that version is boring too.
A homonym is a word that is spelled and pronounced identically to another word with another meaning. Technically, two words that are homonyms are also, by extension, homophones (words that mean different things but are pronounced the same) and homographs (words that mean different things but are spelled the same).



Other things that are etymologically unrelated to things:







Gooses, meese, and mongeese
Crap on my desk

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Regarding water, it depends on what you're doing. If you drink copious amount of coffee and tea (which are diuretics) you do need to drink more water. Same with alcohol, sugary drinks, or if you exercise strenuously. I probably end up drinking a half a gallon of water after my work-out.

It might be good to drink lots of water during a cleanse (though a gallon is a bit much) as it helps to flush out toxins that tend to stay in your liver.

Anonymous said...

I've always been intrigued by the mongoose. And while "Like A Boss" was good, it's not as good as "I'm On A Boat" and "I Just Had Sex."

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