Not actually a shower thought, saw an old document that labeled it air-port. I don’t think I would have ever made the connection.
(I’ve found people can be rude about word breakdowns, but I’m posting it anyway. Be better.)
Our best understanding of neurology is like a blank map. As we grow and learn, we discover places on the map. We discover where the feelings on our fingers grow, and how to imitated the noises we hear. We discover the balance and coordination to walk and run and flip. Each place on the map is connected like pathways through a forest. The more we run along the path, the wider and more permanent it becomes.
The true power of the human mind is the ability of language. We have a superpower, to create an infinite number of sounds and shapes that arbitrarily describe an unlimited set of concepts. There are things we never dreamed of that our grandchildren will name, and it is this capacity to observe, remember, and describe things that has given rise to every great human accomplishment.
You learned the word “airport” as a place on your map. You never needed to connect it to the etymological history of the word, so you never needed to walk those paths. They were always there, which is why it seems obvious to you now, and also why a lot of people have the initial inclination to say “duh, of course.” That’s an expected response.
But we should all appreciate and marvel at the enormity of civilized history that has us here, scribing words on glass and light and copper, sending them instantaneously around the world, to discuss how the place where our flying machines engage in cooperative commerce and transport, how that concept is so mundane that you never even bothered to glance at the constituent words as separate concepts.
This is an amazing world, and we are all marvelous creatures. We are the absolute quintessence of stardust, and our progeny will look back on us as quaint.
Man, these are good drugs.
Lucky 10,000
I live in Phoenix, our airport is called sky harbor…
Pretty sure they did that on purpose
No shit?
I had the same kind of brain fart shower thought about the refrigerator brand Frigidaire.
Frigid+air
The air is cold.
I was in my 30s.
wait until you find out about USB port
You mean how you plug it in, oops wrong way…flip it…no, right the first time, flip it again, ah, there it goes!
Even USB-C
USB-c? Buddy, that might be a you problem
USB-C these nuts all up in ya business
USB-Aggravating.
TIL
Here I am calling them air fields.
Of course it’s the folks taking it back to the ancient Greek and calling them aerodromes that are on the real next level.
Side note: port isn’t the only terminology aviation has stolen from seafaring. For example: airspeed is measured in knots. Captain, pilot, and first officer were all used aboard ships first as well.
Don’t forget mile high club!
…of coarse, pirates were at sea for months with a boat full of drugs, and no women.
What? You never considered the possibility that old timey pirates were a boat full of gay dudes high off their ass?
Speaking of their asses…
Oh! In Dutch they’re called that!
Well, they’re actually called “vliegveld” (/ˈfliːχ.fɛlt/; vlEEh-vElt); vlieg=fly(ing), veld=field. It’s a flying-field!
Dog food is food for a dog. Wtf is this?
Be better.
peanut butter is butter made from peanuts
The queen of England is dead
Old English is the version of English from linger ago, hence it’s old!
I am perfectly WHELMED by this discovery.
I once saw sweet n sour sauce in a French supermarket, “sauce aigre-doux”
I looked up aigre to see what it meant and right enough, it just means sour.
At that point it clicked that French for wine is “vin” so sour wine is vin aigre
Or vinegar
Then the word alphabet comes from alpha and beta, the first two letters of the Greek writing system.
If we had gotten the word directly from the Phoenicians, we might probably call it alephbeth instead.Just a couple of nights ago it hit me that the word geometry comes from Geo: Earth and metron: measure.
Etymologies can suddenly snap into focus things that have been right there in front of our eyes all our lives, but never thought to notice.
Algebra is an Arabic word. Al-gebra. Presummably it translates to “The Pain”
I’ve never felt more like the smartest dumbass for realizing one on my own.
The reason people are rude about word breakdowns is they assumed you to be a native English speaker, and these should seem obvious.
The internet is full of Americans, unfortunately.
I think it’s the native speakers that don’t break it down. You just take the word as a word because you learned it so young.
And why isn’t a train station called a rail port?
Missed opportunity to keep it all tidily labeled similarly, if you ask me.Train station and bus station. Why isn’t it called boat station and plane station?
Because a station is a place you pull up to an leave going the same direction, and a port is a place you enter and then go back out the same way.
Airplanes come down to a port, then go back up.
Boats come into a port, then back out to sea.
Buses come into a station, then go along their way. Same as trains.
Buses come from a road and then go back to the same road, so this line of reasoning makes no sense.
The buses never leave the road. The station is on the road.
When buses pull into spaces, then back out, it’s called a bus port.
I don’t know what bus stations you’ve been to, but every bus station I’ve been to was something like an airport. Everything else has been a bus stop.
