Hacker News Reader

Comment by hajile | Hacker News Reader

The etymology of faucet and tap is interesting (from Oxford online dictionary):

> late Middle English (denoting a bung for the vent hole of a cask, or a tap for drawing liquor from a container): from Old French fausset, from Provençal falset, from falsar ‘to bore’. The current sense dates from the mid 19th cent.

> Old English tæppa ‘peg for the vent-hole of a cask’, tæppian ‘provide (a cask) with a stopper’, of Germanic origin; related to Dutch tap and German, Zapfen (nouns).

Both had the same classical meaning from different origins, but the British chose the German/Dutch word while the Americans chose the French/Latin word.

View on HN

> Both had the same classical meaning from different origins, but the British chose the German/Dutch word while the Americans chose the French/Latin word.

One of the most interesting books that I've read in a long time:

Highly Irregular: Why Tough, Through, and Dough Don't Rhyme--And Other Oddities of the English Language [0]

This gave me incredible insight into the formation of modern English. I read it voraciously. Very good book to understand why it's such a mess.

I bought it after hearing an interview with the author on a podcast.[1] I think anyone (English-speaking) who enjoys and appreciates language (and podcasts) will get a kick out of it. The author is passionate and excited by the topic, so very entertaining.

[0] https://www.goodreads.com/en/book/show/55332395-highly-irreg... [1] https://99percentinvisible.org/episode/corpse-corps-horse-an...

I don't thing British "chose" a German/Dutch word, it was the native choice. We speak a Germanic language, though it has been quite influenced by French and Latin loan words. Faucet sounds like a much "posher" word to me, native British English speaker.

I think this is a common theme. British English has earthier words, American English seems to have fancier terms in a lot of cases - but sometimes it is reverse. Pot luck really, though I think AmE is the fancier one for general terms. The one that always sticks in my mind is the AmE "transmission", which is in BE, "gearbox". I wouldn't know what "transmission" means if someone hadn't told me, but I could have worked out what gearbox was from the fact it was talking about gears.

Hm. As an American, there's several gearboxes on my car but only one of them is the transmission.

Further, "transmission" refers to the thing sending power over the driveshaft. The RPM and torque are actually rather analogous to the frequency and amplitude of a radio wave rotating around a polar graph.

I didn't say it was an accurate name, but it is what we call it. Just like we call the "gas pedal" the accelerator. (which is obviously an example of the reverse - fancier word vs earthy word.)

There actually was a movement in British literature to favor Anglo-Saxon words that took hold after the American revolution.

Anglish, I know. It is, unfortunately, really fragmented and full of idiolects.

I find this interesting because I (and most Americans?) see BE as much more “posh” than AmE … I guess I’ll be looking out for actual word differences/etymologies more now

At least OP didn't have to navigate disambiguating "gloryhole."

So what's the British English equivalent to 'gloryhole'?

Ps asking for a British friend

According to the OED, the use of faucet as a tap for drawing liquid out of something dates is attested as far back as 1400s - I'd consider that current sense (as does the OED).

Reply on news.ycombinator.com