Almost everyone has had an earworm in their head at some time and tried to get it out, but where do they come from? Germany? The term earworm originated in German over a hundred years ago and entered English as a literal translation of the German word Ohrwurm, or ear-worm, which Germans used to describe a catchy tune caught in one’s head.
Article by HE Translations marketing representative Mike Gayler
Those of a certain age will remember both telexes and fax machines. If you are a mere youngster, let me try to explain:
Telex was a way of sending typed messages from one ‘typewriter’ to another (please tell me you do vaguely know what a typewriter is? No? OK – let’s say from one keyboard to another).
The sending operator typed the message into his keyboard and it was sent through the phone system to the receiving keyboard, where the message would be printed out. How, you ask, did it get to the right place? Every keyboard had its own identification – originally not a number, but a name. Names like ‘Interflora’ , ‘Interpol’ or ‘Insurance’.Continue reading full article…
Article by Dr Fred Starr PhD, FIMMM, FIE, MIMechE, CEng
Professor Röntgen’s discovery of X-rays, and the formation of the British National Health Service changed my life. Although it took another fortuitous discovery, almost forty years later, for me to understand why, and what had happened to me as a very young infant.
Who discovered X-Rays?
But first, let’s get back to the history of X-Rays and the peculiar title of this piece. There cannot be one German citizen who hasn’t had a Röntgendiagnostik and knows what it is about. Over here, it’s same with X-Rays, although not one in ten thousand would connect the name Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (or Roentgen as we tend to spell it in Britain) with the discovery. A discovery which not only revolutionised medical practice, but told us that there are just 92 naturally occurring elements, and transformed my own subject, the high temperature corrosion of metals.
There is something of a shaggy dog story to what I found about the discovery, and why one might suggest that another German scientist, Philipp Eduard Anton von Lenard, should get more credit than usually acknowledged. Rontgen is commonly thought to have discovered X-rays by accident. This is just not true. But he was lucky. He just happened to be using a sheet of paper that had been saturated with barium platinocyanide, that turned out to be one of the best detectors for X-Rays. And it just happened to be lying around, waiting to fluoresce when the X-rays struck.Continue reading full article…
Article by John Morrish
Words travel, and sometimes in surprising ways. An English slang term has been enthusiastically adopted by the Germans. It has been embraced by the business and political classes, appeared in big headlines in the serious press, and been accepted by the Duden dictionary, an important work of reference. Angela Merkel has been known to use it. Nothing so unusual in any of that, except that the word is “shitstorm”.Continue reading full article…
The English word boostern has just won a coveted prize, unexpectedly being chosen as Germany’s 2021 Anglicism of the year after going viral in Germany – despite not being an English word. How did this happen?
The English verb to boost means to assist or encourage something to grow or rise, and also serves as a noun meaning something which, usually deliberately, helps something else increase or rise. So the space race saw the introduction of booster rockets, and child car safety regulations saw the introduction of booster seats to raise small children to the minimum height for safety belts. But boosting also has a more political and ambiguous dimension dating to nineteenth century North America, yet resonating in the scandals in the UK in 2022.Continue reading full article…
How agile are you? Or rather, how agile is your company, and what does that mean today if you are not professional steeplejacks? It is curious how this term became such a ubiquitous buzzword, as some find themselves thinking they need to race to catch up with a speeding trend, rather than risk being left behind and seen as clumsy or unbalanced.
A Management Today Words-Worth piece by John Morrish examined the question and indeed the word itself:Continue reading full article…
