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).
boolean
The data type boolean is named for George Boole, an English mathematician who laid the groundwork for what we now call Boolean algebra in his 1847 book The Mathematical Analysis of Logic. The book and its 1854 followup An Investigation of the Laws of Thought went on to establish the discipline of algebraic logic. Boole’s work stands on the shoulders of giants, specifically focusing on strengthening the basic premises of Aristotelian logic. It also drew inspiration from ancient Indian Nyāya (meaning “recursion”) logic and the ancient Chinese I Ching (through Leibniz).
The fields Boole established were not described as Boolean (or the earlier Boolian) until decades after his death. Algebraic logic was first called “Boolean algebra” in 1913. Describing AND, OR, and NOT as “Boolean operations” is from 1924. In 1937, Claude Shannon used the two-element Boolean algebra (calling the elements 0 and 1, as was customary by then) to provide the theoretical underpinnings of logic gates. Shannon named it “switching algebra”, as its practical applications were telephone switches. However, it’s usually just called “the Boolean algebra” now, being much more prominent than its siblings.
In computer programming, Boolean variables were available in ALGOL 60 (1960) and FORTRAN IV (1962), but only ALGOL called them BOOLEAN. The clipping BOOL is first found in ALGOL 68 (1968). The wide usage of booleans can be traced to their inclusion in Pascal (1970) as a builtin enum with possible values FALSE and TRUE.
The surname Boole is a variant of bull. I can vividly imagine an Englishman with the nickname “bull” getting it as his surname when they were first being codified. In some sense it feels like the usage of bool in Python and its ilk is coming full circle.
villain
The archetype villain gained its current meaning in the early 1800s. Its origins were more humble, another of the many words borrowed from Norman French in the 1200s. Back then, both French and English vilain meant “peasant” or “farmer”, from Medieval Latin vīllānus, meaning “farmer”, derived from classical Latin vīlla, meaning “country house”. Other words descended from vīlla through other routes include vicinity and village.
By 1400, villain had picked up a more pejorative sense of “hick” or “yokel” while still meaning “peon” or “serf”. By 1600, the derogatory sense had fully taken over and the meaning was more like “scoundrel”. The archetypal antagonist meaning only started showing up well after 1800. Incredibly, the same semantic drift also happened in French, where vilain now also means “villain”.
One marker of American cultural hegemony is how many languages have in turn taken villain in as a loanword, such as Japanese ヴィラン (viran), Korean 빌런 (billeon), and Tamil வில்லன் (villaṉ), each also meaning “villain”.
isekai
The subgenre isekai was borrowed from Japanese 異世界 (isekai), meaning “different world”, starting around 2018. The Japanese name for the genre is similarly recent, first coined in the 2010s. The genre itself is not new; it was called “trapped in another world” before its current name.
Modern isekai are strongly influenced by web serial Mushoku Tensei, which began publication in 2012. Like with Lord of the Rings, it didn’t originate of most of its genre hallmarks, but it did pull them all together into a coherent, widely-known whole. Mushoku Tensei drew a lot of influence in particular from the light novel series The Familiar of Zero (2004). Another major contributor to isekai’s current popularity is Sword Art Online, whose anime adaptation also began airing in 2012.
The isekai genre was also popular in the 1990s before falling out of favor, with notable examples including The Vision of Escaflowne (1994), Magic Knight Rayearth (1993), and Inuyasha (1996). One significant difference from modern isekai is the 1990s progenitor series were often female-led and aimed at young women.
Both parts of 異世界 were originally borrowed from Chinese perhaps a thousand years ago: 異 (yì), meaning “different”; and 世界 (sèkài), meaning “world”. 世界 first entered Chinese around 1800 years ago through Buddhist translators coming up with a gloss for Sanskrit लोकधातु (lokadhātu), meaning “world”.
Your fear of looking stupid is holding you back
Sometimes I think about how if you put high contrast large text in a prominent place, even in a very busy environment like NYC, you will successfully execute thousands of prompt injections into humans. Many people can’t choose not to read short blurbs of text they notice. One that found its ideal host in me recently was a sticker on a lamppost reading “YOUR FEAR OF LOOKING STUPID IS HOLDING YOU BACK”. I love the sentiment and feel it deep in my bones. My fear of looking stupid is holding me back. I want to shout it from the rooftops in the hopes of infecting even one more person.