Why does the word rueful have the same root as the french word for street? The origin is apparently middle-english for the former, or so-I-have-read.
I am not sure about the rest of you HU-mans but streets and experiencing a variant on the emotion sadness do not necessarily go together for me.
Anywho, I'd just like the public to know that I have been rickrolled not once, but twice today. That's right, twice in one day. AND the blog in question specifically promised that 99% of its links were not rickrolls. I like the idea of having rickroll disclaimers, even if they do turn out to be false.
As well, I just want to let anyone who may happen across this post know about Kate Beaton. She does probably some of the funniest comics on the inter-wubbz. She should also be given credit because half the time I go and look up the figures she satirizes. As a result I know a lot about random historical figures. Case and point, Charles Babbage. I think the more I know about the figure, the funnier the comic was. Or perhaps it's an inverse relationship?
Also, she is Canadian! Score one for us!
6 comments:
Two points:
1) I leave my browser out of BAD AREAS and have never, ever been rickrolled. Well, the former is false, but the latter is true.
2) Kate Beaton rocks and has been found favourite-worthy.
3) Soon I shall do additional research on this rueful thing.
Frankly, if I were riding a school bus through the cold, dark wee hours of the morning, clutching my peanut-free granola bar and rapidly cooling mug of coffee and trying to find a comfortable position for my travel pillow, whilst avoiding being trampled and/or deafened by the pride of suburban girlhood, I might equate streets with some variant of the emotion sadness.
P.S. I had to ask the inter-wubbz expert was "rickrolling" was. And my browser is NEVER in bad areas.
Some preliminary research on "rueful" suggests that its etymology is quite different than the French and is actually related to "ruthless". Since "ruth" was compassion or sorrow in a wistful sense, "ruthful" was to be full of such feelings and "ruthless", of course, to feel none of them whilst completing your evil deeds. The related words are Saxon, Dutch and German "reuen" and the Gaelic "truagh", apparently pronounced without the "t". See "The Gaelic Etymology of the Languages of Western Europe" (Mackay, 1877) at page 374: http://books.google.com/books?id=Hq8VAAAAYAAJ.
The French, on the other hand, seems to come from the Latin "ruga" or "ruta" from which, of course, we get "route". So there you go.
If your parents truly loved you, you wouldn't have to ride the bus. I too, as a child, sniff, had to ride the bus, but I'm a better person for it. These days, I travel on the Clapham omnibus as often as is reasonable.
Another burning question: Does Rick Astley get 'rickrolled'?
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