Pub names says: "Pig and Whistle: a corruption of the Anglo-Saxon saying piggin wassail meaning "good health"." Is this really true? There is no source given there. Thank you. 205.239.40.3 (talk) 10:36, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

See WhistlePig, [1] and [2]. 2A00:23D0:E69:7B01:38B0:2063:2E0B:8F4B (talk) 11:31, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Some further discussion here. Piggin/ Pig and wassail would rather mean "drinking container (i.e. cheers), good health", but it's likely a folk etymology, anyway. [3] 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 11:38, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I'm not sure that article link is very helpful, sorry, as it says nothing about the origin of the name. Looks just like random promo/advertising. But the other sources are very interesting, thanks. I don't see much about Anglo-Saxon there. 205.239.40.3 (talk) 11:54, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

So I added these to the entry at Pub names and amended the entry. But the second source has been removed as not being WP:RS. 205.239.40.3 (talk) 10:15, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

There are some more explanations, about the pub name origin, in this source [4] but I don't know if that is a WP:RS or not. 205.239.40.3 (talk) 12:42, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

According to the Scottish National Dictionary, "pigs and whistles" (the traditional stock in trade of a tinker) is another way of saying "odds and ends". "Pig" in this context means "jug" or "pot". This seems like a much more plausible origin for the pub name than a fictitious Anglo-Saxon toast. Zacwill (talk) 19:47, 15 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

I realise that this may be unanswerable (or at least have no answer beyond "language development is arbitrary"), but I'm wondering if there is any explanation for this pattern (or rather lack of pattern) that I've noticed:

• We have several words relating to fear or similar emotions: fear, dread, fright, awe.
• We have several compound words formed by combining these with suffixes -some, -ful, -ed.
• But there is inconsistency in how these are used:
  • Fearsome and awesome are common words, but dreadsome and frightsome are rare/dialectal (most dictionaries I've looked in don't include them, although my browser spellchecker at least does recognise them, unlike "frighted").
  • Dreadful, frightful, and awful all mean "causing fear/fright/awe" (or more loosely "bad"), but fearful usually means "experiencing fear". (I was taught that the latter only means experiencing fear, and is incorrect to use to mean causing fear, although having checked the dictionary I see that both are valid, and indeed the original usage was consistent with fear/fright/awful).
  • "Feared" and "dreaded" refer to something that causes fear or dread, but "frighted" and "awed" refer to something that is experiencing fright or awe.

Does anyone know of a reason for these differences? Iapetus (talk) 11:21, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Which suffixes can be combined with which words is generally entirely idiomatic and not governed by some rule. Something can be diresome, but it can't be *awfulsome. It can be bleaksome and drearisome, but not *palesome or *drabsome. There is no logic to it.

Feared, dreaded, frighted and awed are the past participles of the verbs to fear, to dread, to fright and to awe. These have different meanings. Compare:

• the little child feared the giant dog     =  the giant dog frighted the little child
• the little child dreaded the giant dog  =  the giant dog awed the little child

So these are completely as is to be expected.  ​‑‑Lambiam 14:16, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

As is the case with much of modern English's illogicalities, this is mostly a consequence of its complex historical development. The Romance languages, for example, all descended from a single progenitor (Latin) over a similar span but in different regions, resulting in some local consistency, but regional differences due to linguistic drift and influences from different non-Romance neighbors.

By contrast, English was formed within Great Britain following the Sub-Roman period by the merging together of the several different Germanic languages (Anglic, Saxon, Jutish, Frisian, Frankish, 'Danish' and probably etc.) of the continental migrants and later invaders, which though sometimes close to mutually intelligibility had already accumulated many differences since diverging from their Proto-Germanic origins. This merging was not orchestrated by literate scholars (who somewhat controlled Latin, which continued to live alongside its developing vernacular offspring), but by the general populace who came up with their own ad hoc choices from and modifications to this goulash of tongues, including a 'Column A/B/C' approach to pronouns. Throw in minor Celtic influences (Brythonic, Welsh, Cornish), Latin from the Church and from later proscriptive philologists, and imposed Norman-French from the most recent invaders, and the grammatical result is a working but illogical mess of pottage. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.194.109.80 (talk) 16:09, 11 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Elves are terrific. They beget terror." Lords and Ladies by Terry Pratchett -- Verbarson  ^talk_edits 11:37, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

"Amusing, awful, and artificial." Apocryphally attributed to King Charles II praising Sir Christopher Wren's new St Paul's Cathedral. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 94.194.109.80 (talk) 15:04, 12 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Which makes me think of how the French use terrible nowadays.Ce n'est pas terrible (lit. "This isn't terrible") has come to mean "This isn't very exciting" or "This isn't really great". On the other hand, the English this isn't terribly exciting already goes into the same direction. -- 79.91.113.116 (talk) 16:45, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]

Another factor is that individual terms sometimes experiences changes to their connotation, sometimes small enough that they can retain their denotation, but sometimes large enough that the denotation be forgotten. Older translations of the Bible sometimes speak of God as being "awful", with a meaning comparable to "awe-inspiring", and the sycophantic first paragraph of the preface to the King James Bible addresses King James as "most dread Sovereign". Nyttend (talk) 09:20, 14 April 2025 (UTC)[reply]