"We travel not to escape life, but for life not to escape us."
-Unknown
Showing posts with label linguistics. Show all posts
Showing posts with label linguistics. Show all posts

Tuesday 20 December 2011

Cum. Meh. Etc.

It comes as a personal curiosity and I have decided to read up on the following words which we might have heard or read, but do not necessarily know the definitions or origins. This is a simple etymological overview though. 

Etymology is the study of the history of words,their origins, and how their form and meaning have changed over time. It is a major branch in linguistics.(m-w.com) Read more here.

Cum

Cum, as in, cum laude. Cum means "along with being". It is regularly used to form usually hyphenated phrases. The term was first known to be used in circa 1869, with Latin as its language of origin, akin to Latin of com-. 

Meh

I have encountered this word only yesterday. Online coach and entrepreneur Marie Forleo explained in her  How to Deal with Overwhelm video that meh means anything "that basically kind of sucks", like anything you're not passionate about, feel guilty about or pressured to do. 

Urban Dictionary defines meh as an interjection when there are no right terms to describe your state, often used to express boredom. It is also used when you aren't ok but are not too bad either. The use of this word arises when the person who says meh does not want to talk about how he is feeling because of not being in the mood. 

Scenario 1

person A: "hey dude! you ok?" 
person B: (feelin a bit pi**ed off but not at his/her worst and aint in the mood for going into detail!) "Meh!"
person A: "Oh its like that is it?"
*person-B doesnt even have to explain him/herself, person-A has established hehe!

Scenario 2
Person 1 - 'hey, how was your day'
Person 2 - 'Meh!'


Etc is a Latin expression that means "and other things" or "and so forth" which reminds me of the King and I's Etc, etc. It is expanded as et cetera, et meaning "and" and cetera means "the rest". 



If there are some more words you want me to hunt and research for, kindly drop them at the comment box below and I will get back at you!