But in fact! It doesn't even stop there!
I've been using "sink" in the contemporary sense of the opposite of a source, but up to maybe the 15th century, "sink" meant something more like the pit where waste liquids go, a cesspool, a sinkhole, a midden for fluids, a sewer, but without plumbing. So in a sense your kitchen "sink"'s drain isn't even the "sink" itself; it drains to a sink, which doesn't even exist any more because your plumbing pipes to a sewer system. And I could go on and on with the concepts that form the bases of "basin", "faucet", "spigot", "plug", "drain", and so on. Those are also more specific terms which have been synecdoched and metaphored and idiomed out from narrower and more archaic meanings.
I don't have a point to make; I just want you to feel the same thing I feel: language is weird, and words don't so much mean things as have stacks and stacks of meanings piled on top of them, like the glyphs of an alethiometer. I just want you to go about your day, occasionally noticing a word or phrase which doesn't literally map to its meaning and dive into the maze of convoluted representations which gave you the language you speak. How many of your idioms are related to horses? How many come from sailing? Are you sure?
Tilde Lowengrimm /
npub1wl…27pm6
2025-01-05 18:24:58
in reply to nevent1q…s92v
Author Public Key
npub1wlr54jdt4vf5zahxerl7rucexvhx4646ncsd6q4v30x546e3kh8q227pm6Published at
2025-01-05 18:24:58Event JSON
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"content": "But in fact! It doesn't even stop there!\n\nI've been using \"sink\" in the contemporary sense of the opposite of a source, but up to maybe the 15th century, \"sink\" meant something more like the pit where waste liquids go, a cesspool, a sinkhole, a midden for fluids, a sewer, but without plumbing. So in a sense your kitchen \"sink\"'s drain isn't even the \"sink\" itself; it drains to a sink, which doesn't even exist any more because your plumbing pipes to a sewer system. And I could go on and on with the concepts that form the bases of \"basin\", \"faucet\", \"spigot\", \"plug\", \"drain\", and so on. Those are also more specific terms which have been synecdoched and metaphored and idiomed out from narrower and more archaic meanings.\n\nI don't have a point to make; I just want you to feel the same thing I feel: language is weird, and words don't so much mean things as have stacks and stacks of meanings piled on top of them, like the glyphs of an alethiometer. I just want you to go about your day, occasionally noticing a word or phrase which doesn't literally map to its meaning and dive into the maze of convoluted representations which gave you the language you speak. How many of your idioms are related to horses? How many come from sailing? Are you sure?",
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