While Slav does derive from the same root as “slave” it does not appear to be a name invented to label Slavs as slaves, but rather a mistranslation issue deriving from a particular group of Slavs that had early contact with the Byzantines in the Balkans and whose tribal name was first transliterated wrongly and then became a more generic descriptor for all Slavs. In this case the people referred to in Latin as the Sclaveni. The Slavic autonym that led to the word Slav apparently roughly meant “people who talk the same” - the words Slovene and Slovak basically have the same derivation, from slovo, meaning “word.”
Well, this was well before adulthood, but I didn’t realize there was no “r” in Amish until my early teens (I grew up in Maine, if that explains anything).
Also, I only recently found out that “hog’s head cheese” is not a dairy product, and that people actually eat it!:eek:
Is the above “more recent” research? I learned what I wrote from the ~1910 Cambridge Medieval History by J.B. Bury.
If only I could get certain adults to understand that there is only one “r” in “sherbet”. And that there is no “q” in “biscuit”.
It’s just unfortunate that there is the name (male given name, also surname), Herbert. This leads to the mistaken analogy re the confection, correctly “sherbet”, wrongly “sherbert”. Not everyone is a 100% on-the-ball-all-the-time, word-and-spelling-smith.
Agreed!
Wait… what?
:smack:
Is it in Atascadero? (I’m too lazy to look it up…)
Note that the term “home for the criminally insane” is an archaic holdover. They are usually referred to these days as “psychiatric hospitals.” I’ve tried searching for names for these institutions that clearly distinguish between places that hold those who are sent there by courts for major criminal acts from those which hold people who are sent there involuntarily without having committed a crime, but there don’t seem to be terms that differentiate between them. It appears that there isn’t much distinction between such people these days.
Yes, Atascadero State Hospital (in Atascadero, of course) is a “hospital” for the criminally insane. From the outside, it looks indistinguishable from any prison. Barracks-like buildings; barbed wire fences; guard towers.
Did you know that the name Atascadero means “swamp” or “bog” “mire (or miry place)” or similar? It derives literally from Spanish words meaning “a place where (…dero) you get stuck (atascar)”. Good name for a hospital for the criminally insane.
The city was originally named because, in fact, it was on swampy land originally (I think). Nowadays, the city boosters like to claim it means “a place of much water”. Har.
Ha! Me too.
Pigs are not gigantic.
When I was three I visited a farm and distinctly and vividly remember them being about twice the size of a grown cow. Remarkably this stuck with me until the next time I saw a pig when I was about 16.
More recent, but not very recent. Much of this debate was swirling around in academic circles in the late 1940’s and early 1950’s. The slovo explanation seems to most commonly excepted one, but slava meaning “glory” has been thrown out there.
And I should have been more clear ( or, y’know - accurate 
) - that “slave” derived from Slav does seem to be the case, it’s just that the derivation is slightly backwards. The Greeks weren’t necessarily referring to Slavs as slaves when they coined the word - they just were adapting the Slavs name for themselves. At that time the Slavs were overrunning the Balkans and mainland Greece and it was Roman citizens that were ending up as slaves ;).
But the medieval Germans who borrowed the Latin word probably were. Of course the precipitating event for the usage of the word is sometimes argued to have been a specific set of campaigns ( the early Liudolfinger king Henry I and his son emperor Otto I of Germany ) and a specific set of Slavs ( the pagans peoples beyond the Elbe, but west of the Christianized Poles ) but that may be apocryphal. But certainly those pagan Slavs would have been a clear source of slaves for a couple of centuries because they were immediately accessible pagans. Though the fact that they successfully resisted German expansion for ~200 years shows that they were hardly easy pickings.
I am in my late 30s and just learned *this *this past year. I even ran into my husband’s office and showed his the package of sherbet we had in the freezer. He was similarly amazed.
I’m 40 and I was in my late 20’s or early 30’s, I think, before learning that sherbet only has one r.
Related, most of my life I’ve always heard Caramel pronounced car-mel, and that’s how I’ve pronounced it myself. I’ve since heard that Carmel is a city in California and caramel is the candy, but I don’t care. I was born pronouncing it carmel, and I’ll die pronouncing it carmel! 
Um… I worked at a State Mental Hospital facility in the Center for Forensic Psychiatry (Criminally Insane) section. They were actually operated by separate government agencies (wag - State Mental Health vs. Criminal Justice System). Our section housed criminal defendants adjudicated incompetent to stand trial or acquitted by reason of insanity. Whereas the State Mental Hospital otherwise held folks who had not committed a crime - not sure how exactly they got there…
Carmel the city is pronounced car- MEL while the candy is pronounced ‘carmil’. I always pronounce the candy care-a-mel.
So, Icarus, people sent to that institution can be either criminals or non-criminals. They are at the same institution, just in separate divisions. In either case, they are in a State Mental Hospital. Which was mostly my point.
And yet, the city in Indiana (just north of Indianapolis, where I grew up) is pronounced “CAR-mel”.
…It’s where all the rich people live, evidently.
I guess, but then they closed down the State Mental Hospital, but kept the Center for Forensic Psychiatry and moved it to a new building. Hence, they were no longer in a State Mental Hospital.
Is that different from caramel?