olivia m. swarthout
@tochterzwiebel
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baby, it’s blue // proprietress of @weirdmedieval // (not a historian)
an american werewolf in london
Joined March 2015
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drew a comic about my origin story
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obsessed with making etymology charts, here's one showing how suffering, euphoria, and ferret all come from the same root word
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i love reading medieval census documents because what's carl doing in there
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my new favorite fun fact is that the words "lord" and "lady" descend from old english words that mean "bread-guardian" and "bread-kneader", respectively!!
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distant (etymological) relatives: christ and grimace 💜
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obsessed with this website where a guy advertises blueprints for a small civil war era howitzer and then talks you through how to use it to hunt deer for sport
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some shared word origins: genius, degenerate, Kevin
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been a while since i made an etymology chart, here's one for all u little creatures
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this is what some of you look like on the inside
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this is my least favorite account on this whole website
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some related etymology for you: devil, volleyball, ballerina!
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tulip, turban, and bandana all share the same root!
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no but imagine you're hanging out at the Medieval Tavern and thorn, smelt, and godwine roll up.....i'd go nuts
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i am enamoured with this pre-columbian vessel from peru shaped like a mouse nibbling a corn cob
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etymology fun fact: "cow" and "beef" come from the same root word!
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reading this list of baby names from 1877 and it's absolutely wild
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another etymology graph for you: the shared ancestry of horse, car, and chariot!
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i was telling my boyfriend about GIMP recently and he laughed and said "what, like the sex thing from pulp fiction?" and i was like no obviously not it's an acronym!!
anyways i looked it up and it turns out it's named after the sex thing from pulp fiction
the more i learn to use linux in class the more this image makes me laugh
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in case you were wondering whether the word "saxophone" is etymologically related to the word "sex"... it is!
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all I’m saying is that personally as a nice little beetle it would be so sad to wake up to my happy little beetle life only to find myself transformed into some sort of grotesque humanoid beast
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locations and relative sizes of peat bogs in england and wales (left) vs places where the surname "moss" is disproportionately common (right)
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these pictures of the beach boys in 1963 make it look like they’re about to drop the hottest single of summer 2012
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@aranptappers
also the number of people saying they built this OPERA HOUSE covered in scenes from GREEK MYTHOLOGY because of christian god is making me wanna do myself in
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no but cretin does share the same PIE root as christ and grimace whose shared etymology i have also posted about!
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btw if you want to browse this bonkers list of medieval english people and their names you can do so here:
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my man left out 1000 years of art history because it didn't fit the narrative that art progresses in a straight line between "unrealistic" and "realistic".........lmao
(vienna coronation gospels, 8th century)
One of the best ways to understand art is by looking at different paintings of the same thing over time:
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just found out they have an annual contest to write the worst possible opening line for a novel
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my man logs on every day and just says things that are not true
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> billionaire's private library of rare books
> "you don't see things like this too often these days!"
yeah, that's because the billionaires who are still alive aren't letting you into their private libraries, not because they don't exist lol
J.P Morgan's private library is a shrine to knowledge that you rarely see these days.
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lost third loaf-word: hlafæta, literally "loaf-eater", meaning domestic servant
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apparently beluga whales have learned to mimic human speech.....i didn't know they had our number like that
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no offense but my least favourite brand of person on here is the people who apparently think that Things wouldn't be The Way They Are if only STEM students were required to take humanities classes in college
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i want to be as peaceful as this fox that somehow found its way onto my roof and is taking a nap in the sun
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in case u missed it: the word "saxophone" shares an etymological root with the word "sex" !
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imo they kinda fell off with this one, if i'm kneading the loaf and my hot buff anglo-saxon husband is guarding it, i feel like our household staff should be making a more productive contribution
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he also has a section on how to use a 12 pound civil war mortar to hunt feral cats but I shan’t go into that
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@druidian
@WeirdMedieval
i think it's etymologically unrelated but reflective of bread as a general signifier of life/sustenance similar to breadline, breadbasket, using bread/dough as a euphemism for money, etc!
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huge news, the guardian has put out this lovely piece about me and my upcoming book! so exciting !!
WEIRD MEDIEVAL GUYS GLOBAL TAKEOVER BEGINS!!! i've been featured in the
@guardian
alongside my upcoming book, which is out in a week!!!
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they seem to have put some new buildings in at some point?
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obsessed with this 1826 newspaper article about someone trying to smuggle dead bodies and the moral of the story is "they should try harder next time"
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do you ever have a specific line from a song/poem/book just like rattling around in your head all day? like not even because it's really meaningful yknow...just because it sticks to your brain?
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follow me if you like fun bits from historical sources :)
obsessed with this 1826 newspaper article about someone trying to smuggle dead bodies and the moral of the story is "they should try harder next time"
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this thread on medieval art starts with a bunch of pictures from 13th century manuscripts and asks why they drew things like this. then he goes on to (falsely) say that 15th century printed manuscripts were when things “took off” (the manuscript he shows is not printed)
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thinking about the boris johnson cheese toast recipe again
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there’s an element of truth to a lot of what he says—these drawings do illustrate content in the text. but then he throws in the widespread myth that illuminations were somehow the product of boredom/creative running wild. which one is it?
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occasionally i wonder "hey, is that pet store in my neighborhood still making insane facebook posts?" and the answer is always yes
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here’s the other one of these I did btw! will make more soon as requested :)
in case you were wondering whether the word "saxophone" is etymologically related to the word "sex"... it is!
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these are two completely different works from different cultures and time periods and he’s completely moved away from his original question. okay, maybe we’ll get back there eventually?
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that being said, it feels slightly disingenuous to post about this culture (the moche people of peru) without mentioning that they also loved making vessels shaped like women getting railed by skeletons
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As if you dont meet the most deranged people possible in first year philosophy and political science classes lmao
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"cretin" and "cream" are from the same root btw.....what a beautiful family
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my neighbourhood cat hustles so hard they had to put up warning signs smh
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there's also one where he has three corn cobs!!
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he gives a brief, not-incorrect summary of why illuminated manuscripts were generally made, then lists a bunch of unrelated medieval texts from a span of around 600 years. then says “that’s the context” behind the art in his first tweet. really? that’s all of the context?
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Just learned that in Denmark, Where's Waldo is called "Find Holger"
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but there is so much interesting discussion about what they meant and to not even try to explain that there might be some interpretation or insight into medieval culture? it’s so bizarre.
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those white nationalist statue pfp accounts are such fake europe fans because they only care about the mainstream stuff like socrates and churches, while neglecting the actual interesting things to come out of europe.....like the overwhelming majority of the world’s bog bodies
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he finally returns back to some of the original images. but for some reason, he negates the entire thread by reiterating several times the myth that these drawings don’t mean anything and were just drawn because artists “were letting their imaginations wander”.
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again, it’s frustrating because there is some truth: part of the purpose of these drawings was to be decorative. we also cannot say for sure why they were so popular.
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@Liberty_Egality
i value the silence of these ignorant people more than I value whatever “fun” they provide by lying
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@BarringtonBobb
he keeps his weird politics v subtle but he makes these weird art and culture threads where just spouts off blatant falsehoods about almost everything. not even nazi stuff most of the time just falsehoods
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parody button designs from david martin's 1967 "instant button book" !!!
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so there was never an explanation? they were just silly little goofs?
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sorry, i forgot about the part where he tries to sell you "camel spider eggs"
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just a silly little meaningless doodle, right? those monks sure let their imaginations run wild! oh, except that monks didn’t make this manuscript, secular scribes did. and it’s a visual gag referencing the text on the same page, which uses the phrase “giving ear” (listening)
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like obviously the fields themselves are extraordinarily valuable but if you really think the average entry university class is actually equipping students to engage meaningfully and there's not a wider issue with empathy and critical thinking in people of all walks of life......
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@e_zhiletz
funnily enough, the word "bear" in the sense of the the animal actually has nothing to do with any of the words here! it actually has a completely separate evolution that arose because of an ancient fear that saying the true name of the bear would cause bears to appear
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everyone is talking about stem student vs humanities student discourse but what about those freaks who studied like law and medicine. what was up with those guys
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just passed a fake british pub in paris called “the frog and underground” which is such an incisive one-phrase takedown of british culture
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astonishing discovery of the day is that the phrase "balls to the wall" is a world war ii era reference to airplane throttles and not like, a 2006 reference to a seth rogan movie!
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@bicycle_daze
i was watching videos of people using wwii howitzers for avalanche control (they shoot the mountain) and became curious about other unconventional uses for historical artillery
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important to note that the word ball as in "a dance" comes from the same origin, but ball as in something you throw seems to actually be unrelated?
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here’s a link to the full paper, which gives around a dozen examples of how the images connect directly to the text.
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idk why but a specific kind of person will sit through 45 minutes of their peers arguing whether human rights are actually a bad thing and think "everyone should have to do this and then the world will be a better place"
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they should really call it outsomnia, because if i was,, “in somnia”...then that wouldn’t be a problem!
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whenever i criticise him people are like nooo he's not a bad statue account he's not fash....i didn't say he was fash i said he was stupid
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