myriad
The indefinite number myriad is first recorded in English in 1555, but its usage begins much longer ago. English borrows it, via both French then Latin, from Ancient Greek μυριάς (muriás), meaning “ten thousand”. μυριάς is in turn derived from μυρίος (muríos), meaning “countless”. So we find ourselves in the current situation where the English word can mean either number based on context.
Besides Greek, I find myself using the 10,000 meaning most often around CJK media, as instead of words for 10^3 and its powers, those langauges use words for 10^4 and its powers. I find myriad to be a natural gloss for 10^4. Notably, my parents have lived in the US for over fifty years yet still think in myriads, so I often have to translate large numbers back and forth.
This was most salient to me when I was into a Japanese Dreamcast proto-bullet hell shooter in the early 2000s that naturally used 10^4 for its digit separators. I knew I could easily tell what my score was once it was above one trillion (10^12), because I could anchor on the separator at one cho (10^12).
The other commonly used digit grouping is the Indian system, which in addition to thousand has words for 10^5, lakh, 10^7, crore, and every subsequent set of 10^2. To sum up, when internationalizing large integers you’d ideally use the following formatting:
US English: trillion = 1,234,567,890,123 Japanese: 兆 (cho) = 1,2345,6789,0123 Hindi: लाख करोड़ (lakh crore) = 12,34,56,78,90,123 French: billion = 1 234 567 890 123 German: Billion = 1.234.567.890.123
Isn’t it convenient that we all use Arabic numerals?
…what do you mean these aren’t the numerals people use in written Arabic?
piña colada
The cocktail piña colada is first seen in English as a loanword from Spanish in 1920. The modern piña colada is actually more recent than that, created in Puerto Rico in 1954. Before that, it referred to a traditional mixed drink with pineapple and rum, only occasionally including coconut.
Literally translated, piña colada means “strained pineapple”. Piña descends from Classical Latin pīnea, meaning “pine”. As in English, the word was co-opted to describe pineapples after their introduction to the Old World in the 1500s. Colada descends from Classical Latin cōlāre, meaning “sifted”.
While popular enough to be declared Puerto Rico’s official drink in 1978, the cocktail remained relatively unknown. Its lucky break was when British-American singer-songwriter Rupert Holmes wrote the song Escape in 1979. Shortly before its release, Holmes had second thoughts about its refrain, “If you like Humphrey Bogart and getting caught in the rain”, and replaced the actor’s name with an tropical cocktail that still fit the rhythm. The modified song was a smash hit and propelled the cocktail to ubiquity. Piña coladas were added to the IBA’s official cocktail recipes in 1987.
dumpster
The trash receptacle dumpster is named after its inventor, Tennessee businessman George Roby Dempster. His Dempster-Dumpster system, trademarked in 1936, distributed standardized trash containers that could be mechanically emptied into garbage trucks. As with many wildly successful brand name inventions, dumpster eventually became the generic word for a large trash container. Dumpster fire is from 2003, likely influenced by trash fire. I’m struck by the similarity of how Wordle, named after its 2021 inventor Josh Wardle, led to the suffix -le indicating a daily sharable web game.
I find looking through lists of genericized trademarks fascinating. Most recently you find words that “everyone knows” are trademarks, like google (1998) and epipen (1983). But not much further back are words where any alternatives sound awkward, like tupperware (1946), velcro (1955), and frisbee (1937). And before that, you find surprise after surprise that some ordinary-sounding words used to be specific products, such as cellophane (1912), tarmac (1902), and jacuzzi (1915).
See also spam (1937), q-tip (1930), and escalate (1944).
cinema
The art form cinema meaning motion pictures first appears in 1908 as a generalized short form of cinematograph, a specific technology referenced where we’d now say “movie”. (Other contemporary technologies were vitascope and animatograph. Compare calling a bandage a band-aid or a copier a xerox.) The cinématographe was named by its inventors, French photographers Auguste and Louis Lumière, in 1895. It’s based on the Ancient Greek words κίνημα (kínēma), meaning “motion”; and γράφω (gráphō), meaning “write”, or in this case “record”. Other English words descended from κίνημα include kinetic and kinematics.
Movie theaters being called cinemas is from 1911. Cinematic meaning “movie-like” is from 1913. The more specific art form cinematography is first described in 1920. Montage is a loanword from French montage, meaning “editing”, from 1930. Cinematic universe is from 2011, although the concept of a coherent world shared by unrelated films has been around since the classic horror universe (Dracula, Frankenstein, The Wolf Man) of the 1940s.
plumber
The profession plumber long predates English, appearing in Classical Latin as plumbārius. The Latin profession name is derived from plumbum, meaning “lead”. (You can still see this in lead’s elemental abbreviation Pb.) We’re not certain where plumbum itself comes from. Historically, it was attributed to Ancient Greek μόλυβδος (mólubdos), meaning “lead”. There’s a contemporary theory that it’s instead a sibling of Proto-Celtic ɸloudom (Old Irish lúaide, Modern Irish luaidhe), meaning “lead”. If that’s the case, the specific mechanics of the sound changes involved suggest there’s an unspecified common language both words were borrowed from.
For most of history, a plumber was a metalworker who worked with lead. Lead is both heavy and malleable at low temperatures. In the Roman Empire, refining galena ore was the primary source of silver. This produced lead as a byproduct, so it was also plentiful. All of those properties led to lead becoming the primary material for making pipes, roofing, and cookware. After the fall of Rome, lead was primarily known for its density. A plumb line is a lead weight on the end of a string used to measure if something was exactly vertical (aligned with gravity). Plumb is another word English acquired through Norman French where both the pronunciation and spelling dropped the ‘b’, but Latin scholars reinserted it into the spelling in the 1400s to be more authentic.
Lead pipes continued to be the most commonly used material through the rise of indoor plumbing in the late 1800s. Plumbing referring to interior piping infrastructure is from around 1875, not being common enough to warrant a word before then. Beginning around 1900, plumbers exclusively focused on interior piping. Around 1936, copper became the preferred material for pipes. Lead pipe was finally banned once the health risks became undeniable (1970 in the UK; 1986 in the US; 1995 in France).