Eriandrius says that Window means "wind eye."
Originally a window was a hole in the ceiling, not to let light in, but to let the smoke out. Way back then, when the day was over, a family would cover their fire and retire for the night. They would put a metal cover over the fire to put it out. But the cover had a hole in it to let some air in so the coals would smolder through the night, so they could stoke their fire in the morning. The metal cover was called a curfew, meaning in Old English to cur "cover", and few "fire". To "cover the fire". We still call a restriction to get off the streets and retire for the night as a "curfew". And "wind-eyes" now have a lot more to do with letting light in and seeing outside, than letting the smoke out.
Incidentally when wood fires in the home were the norm for cooking and heating, cities in Europe and the Americas, as well as others in the northern hemisphere, where most humans live on our planet, cities tended to grow and expand to the west much faster than to the east. This was because the prevailing winds in the northern hemisphere are from the west. These 'westerlies' blew the smoke and fumes from home fires over the eastside residents. Thus the upwind west side was a more desirable place to live, which for sure is where the upper class were sure to move.
In more modern times where gas and electricity are more used for cooking and heating, the reverse is true. Cities tend to expand to the east. This is because if you live on the east side, you drive west to work in the morning, to your city job, with the rising sun in the east at your back. When you leave work at the end of the day, the sun is nearing sunset in the west, and thus also at your back as you drive east to your home. Thus you drive both to and from work with a low sun at your back, rather than in your eyes. But so many east side snooty classers seem little concerned about the lower class drivers coming at them from the other side of the road, who staring into the sun, can hardly see a thing. Seatbelts recommended.
In the 1830s an experimenter named Charles Goodyear was playing with latex, the sap of a tropical tree. Latex was a useless substance then. Dried of its water content, latex seemed much like a solid. But if a block of it was left on a table for a few days, it would end up on the floor. Raw latex is actually a liquid, although an extremely thick one. A sheet of it is only slightly elastic, and tends to stick to itself, becoming a globby mess when handled. In a random experiment Goodyear added some sulphur and white lead to latex, just to see what would happen. He accidentally spilled some on a space heater. When he later tried to peel it off his room heater, he found that the stuff did not stick to itself, was very elastic, was tough, and had some real snap to it. He had invented the vulcanization process, named for Vulcan, the Roman god of heat. The product was still a useless substance, only known as vulcanized latex. At the time there were no automobiles, and a tire was a metal rim over a wooden wagon wheel. Underwear did quite well with the draw strings of the time, with no need for elastic bands. But somebody found a use for this vulcanized latex, and a new name for it we use today.
A large part of writing and drawing then was done with pencils. Somebody found that you could erase pencil marks with a chunk of this vulcanized latex stuff. You simply used it to rub the penciling away where you wanted. You rubbed pencil marks away with this "rub-er". Which is how we came to call it "rubber". (Charles Goodyear died in 1860, when a tire was still long to be an a strip of iron on a wagon wheel rim.)
We sometimes refer to Detroit as the motor city. Yet we call the power source in our car, an engine. Shouldn't Detroit really be called the engine city? (At least before the Japanese and Koreans took over.) The terms motor and engine overlap somewhat, but I find the difference of interest. The word 'motor' is from the Latin motus, which means 'to move'. A device that creates motion, by producing power, like your car motor. The electric motor is one of the most important inventions in human history. Like your gasoline car motor it produces power. Yet both motors are indeed engines.
'Engine' is an abbreviation for 'ingenious'. Any ingenious device is an engine. A hand held can opener is an engine, an ingenious device. But it doesn't produce power, so it is not a motor. A ball point pen is also an engine, an 'ingenious' device, perhaps the next most important ingenious device after the electric motor. Your 'find' function for the computer Internet, you call a 'search engine', an ingenious searching device, but it's not a motor either. Another of the world's most important and ingenious inventions was Eli Whitney's ingenious device to separate cotton fibers from the seeds, the cotton engine, "gin" for short. Anyone who deals with, works on, operates, or maintains ingenious devices we call an 'engineer'. "Mechanic" comes from Greek and Latin words that mean 'machine', which means a complex engine. A hand held can opener we probably wouldn't call a machine. It's not complex enough. But a sewing machine we do. In the US we call airplane mechanics, 'mechanics'. In England they call them engineers. Anyone that deals with complex devices, designs, works on, operates or maintains them, we call 'engineers'. A 'motor' however, is an engine, an ingenious device that produces power.
After Moses led the Jews out of Egypt, his successor Joshua led them on to the Promised Land. (In Hebrew Joshua literally means "help", or "helper".) Like Moses, Joshua is often seen posed holding his arms upward, seeking support from the heavens. More than two thousand years later, in the early 1820s, Joseph Smith led the Mormons westward to settle on the east shores of the Great Salt Lake, now Salt Lake City, where the Mormons still rule. (Mormon as explained by Joseph Smith, means more man. They believed they were better than everybody else.)
As Joe Smith and company made their journey into the West, they encountered a tree that reminded them of Joshua, one of their historic leaders. It reminded them of Joshua holding up his arms, much as Moses did, praying to the heavens. The out and upward extended branches of the tree had a resemblance to the outstretched arms of Joshua. Of the tall branched yucca family, the Mormons called it the Joshua tree, which we still do today.
The maiden flight of the Frisbee was in 1957, about the same time as the Hula Hoop. Not long after, the US Government made a large grant to study the aerodynamics of the Frisbee. At the time new fighter aircraft were all capable of supersonic flight. (My supersonic Vietnam fighter first flew in 1954.) Supersonic transport airliners were on the drawing boards, and anything about supersonic was all the rage of the day. The British developed the supersonic Concord airliner, which served for more than 30 money losing years. The Soviet Union built one too, which after a crash at the Paris Air Show, was cancelled. The US via the Boing company, also designed one, but wisely never built it. The economics were terrible from the start, and ultimately why the British finally retired the Concord.
William Proxmire was a maverick US senator in the 1960s, who aggressively attacked government waste, which was a lot. He published a regular blurb which he called something like his "government boondoggle of the month" expenditure. At one point he lambasted the government grant to study the Frisbee. (I venture he would have supported a grant to further study supersonic flight.) But the fact is that we understood supersonic flight fairly well then, much better than the low speed aerodynamics of the Frisbee. In fact the aerodynamic understanding then, and for some time afterward, was that a bee could not possibly fly. Yet it obviously did. Though we've made good progress since, we still understand supersonic flight better than how insects fly. Yet understanding low speed aerodynamics is important. Military accident investigation experience, shows that higher takeoff and landing speeds associate with higher accident rates. And bigger airplanes like airliners, require higher takeoff and landing speeds. Thus better understanding of how a Frisbee flies, can be applied to help reduce takeoff and landing speeds for big aircraft. So while we should applaud Senator Proxmire's efforts to cull government waste, I found that he was misguided about spending money to learn how a Frisbee flies.
A story is that a religious sect dedicated to the Frisbee originated a few years after the Frisbee first appeared, Frisbeterianisam. They flew it, they threw it. They organized various contests with it. But the core Frisbeterians is that when you die, your soul goes up on the roof and you can't get it down.
(Left over from last month)
A monk as I find, is a confused male human that lives in a monastery. A monastery is a building in which monks live alone, from "mono", meaning one, or alone. Though there may be many monks in a monastery, they do not speak to each other, and only say some of their prayers together. Thus they lead a "monastic" life, meaning alone. Thus they are called "monastics". We abbreviate this as "monks". (The female version "nun", an abbreviation for "nanny". Somebody has to look after the kids).
The term "noon" comes from Latin nona hora, which means the ninth hour. That is, the ninth hour of daylight, three P.M. (post meridian) by our current reckoning. This was important for monks because it was one of the more important times when they had to say their prayers. A surprising amount of how we divide the day has to do with monks and their prayers. In the 12th century, the Church shifted this ninth hour prayer time to the sixth hour of daylight, when the Sun was highest in the sky. But they still retained the same nona hora name. We still call this time "noon". Aren't we silly.
"Neighbor" means nearby. Neighborhood means "the nearby woods," dwellers in the woods nearby. Robin Hood was always nearby and robbed from the rich and gave to the poor. He did so in the near by woods. He robbed in the woods. Or was he Robert in the woods?
Asphalt is a road building material that is poorly named. It is more properly called tarmac, which we more often call a parking lot rather than roadway. The word "tarmac" is an abbreviation of the words, "tar", the thick crud at the bottom of a barrel of crude oil, and "mac", short for "macadam". Macadam is crushed rock, from John McAdam (died 1838), a British engineer and road builder, who produced smother roads with his crushed rather than whole rock. The crushed rock of macadam and oil sludge is what we mostly drive on. It's cheaper than concrete, tar and macadam, "tarmac". We often use the words tarmac and asphalt interchangeably, but it is not quite so. The word asphalt is from German. The "a" is a negative, also "an", "ant", or anti". An-hydrous means without water. The heart of the constellation Scorpio, is the red star "Ant”ares, the antithesis, or opposite of the Ares, the Greek god of war. (Mars for the Romans.) 'Anaerobic' means living without oxygen, as some bacteria do underground. Abaxial, means out of the way of the axis.
Sphallen is a German word that means "to fall", as to 'take a spill'. If you walk on an uneven surface, you might take a spill. But if you walk on a smooth surface, you don't risk falling as much. Thus you should walk on a smooth "a"sphallen surface so you don't risk falling so much, on "asphalt".
Concrete also used for roads, means something that doesn't break up. To come together in a solid mass. Another time.