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Fun Facts About English #51 – Friend

05/01/2020 by admin

Fun Facts About English 51 Kinney Brothers Publishing

So, when did friend become a verb? Actually, it’s always been a verb! The Old English word frēond is a derivative and the present participle of the verb frēogan which means “to love or set free (in the slave sense).”

As it sometimes happens with language, the culture had a falling out with the verb until recently. While many bemoan its social media context, it’s at least intriguing that friend as a verb possesses a lingual impulse to resurface like a colorful bauble in social waters.

The verb wasn’t the only friend to be lost over time. Old English had freondsped “an abundance of friends;” freondleast “a want of friends;” and freondspedig “rich in friends.” Today, though the word friendless is common enough, saying someone is friend-ful may bring a conversation to a pause.

“Friend they any, that flatter many?” — John Heywood, Proverbs and Epigrams, 1562

If friending isn’t up for re-adoption in your book, there’s always befriend and acquaint; both perfectly good words though a bit stuffy. I have to admit, the patty-cake feel of making friends or having a bestie doesn’t click with what I consider to be a complex and nuanced act of human bonding. But, I’m older.

Nevertheless, I’m going to expand my idea of friending and see if I can re-acquaint myself with an old book or take a walk down a friendly road. Unlike fickle Facebook friends who will befoe one for the smallest difference, a familiar pathway has never un-friended me and a tree still offers its shade without a password.

“There the street is narrow, and may friend our purpose well.” — Thomas Southerne, The Spartan Dame, 1721

If you enjoyed this post, you might be interested in reading about the history of the word hello, dude, paddywhack, rooster, or jaywalking! You’ll ROTFL!

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Visit the Kinney Brothers Publishing blog for timely and helpful information for your ESL classes.

Fun Facts About English #32 – Jot and Tittle

11/22/2019 by admin

Fun Facts About English 32 Kinney Brothers Publishing

A tittle, or superscript dot, is a small diacritic in the form of a distinguishing glyph or jot on a lowercase i and j. Other such diacritics below will be familiar to readers of Spanish:

Dictionary.com offers the following definition for tittle:

Derived from the Latin word titulus, meaning “inscription, heading,” the tittle initially appeared in Latin manuscripts beginning in the 11th century as a way of individualizing the neighboring letters i and j in the thicket of handwriting. With the introduction of the Roman-style typeface in the late 1400’s, the original large mark was reduced to the small dot we use today.

In the expression, “every jot and tittle,” meaning attention paid to the smallest of concerns, the word jot has an interesting etymology of its own. It comes to English as a translation from the Latin word jota, which in turn came from the Greek word iōta, with that word being of Semitic origins. In its original sense, jot refers to a minuscule amount. Today we also use jot as a verb to mean hastily writing something down.

Readers may have encountered the phrase, “to a tittle,” likewise relating to a sense of completeness or thoroughness in action. Though it is speculated that the more contemporary “to a T” was derived from references to objects such as a T-shirt, golf tee, or T-square, it is more likely that it finds its origins in the much older phrase “to a tittle.”

One notable occurrence of tittle is in the King James Bible at Matthew 5:18:

“For verily I say unto you, Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled.”

Tittle first appearing in a play is recorded in 1607 in The Woman Hater by Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher:

“I’ll quote him to a tittle.”

Tittle is also found in Lord Byron’s 1819 story, Don Juan. At that time, a tittle was interchangeably known as a jot, and used like our contemporary apostrophe to indicate omitted letters in a word.

“Besides, being less in love, she yawn’d a little,
And felt her veins chill’d by the neighbouring sea;
And so, she cook’d their breakfast to a tittle;
I can’t say that she gave them any tea,
But there were eggs, fruit, coffee, bread, fish, honey,
With Scio wine, — and all for love, not money.”

You might also be interested in the headaches of writing news headlines, why Pikes Peak is spelled without an apostrophe by law, what makes a word autological, or the naughty case of expletive infixations (NSFW)!

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I Have Who Has activities are perfect for reading, listening, and speaking! Check out our blog post, A Game with Legs, that shows you how to make these activities walk across the room! Click here to see all the I Have/Who Has activity sets available in Donald’s English Classroom.

Activities to Develop Learning and Motor Skills for Preschool Children

09/17/2019 by admin

Activities to Develop Learning and Motor Skills Ryan Howard Kinney Brothers Publishing

Many thanks to Ryan Howard of SmartParentAdvice for this month’s guest post! Photo credits: Pixels.com

One of the great joys of parenthood is watching your kids grow up, learn new things, and develop new skills. As a parent, it’s natural to want to help your child out along the way. In this article, I’m covering a whole range of different activities that promote learning and help preschoolers develop their motor skills.

Fun Activities That Promote Learning

Reading tops this list of educational activities. When your kids are really young, this activity mostly consists of parents reading and children passively soaking it all in. But, as your kids hit preschool age, they will be able to take a more active role. This might mean identifying letters on some pages, or even entire words with a little practice.

Games that involve numbers or counting can be a great way to get an early start on those math skills. Now, I’m not necessarily talking about games that you would think of as numbers games here. Let’s say your playing Hungry Hungry Hippos. After the hippos have gobbled up all of the marbles, you might leave it to your preschooler to count up the totals for each player to determine the winner. There are tons of games that involve numbers or score keeping. By letting your child take the lead in scoring the game, you’re introducing learning into something really fun.

A Few Ways To Develop Motor Skills

When it comes to motor skills, there are a couple of different kinds. Fine motor skills involve sophisticated, small movements of hands and fingers. Gross motor skills involve movements of large muscle groups. Walking, running, and jumping all come to mind.

Fine Motor Skills

One of the best ways to develop fine motor skills is with artwork, Whether your little one is coloring with crayons or standing and painting at an easel, they are working on their fine motor skills.

Legos and building blocks are another great way to develop a preschooler’s fine motor skills. After all, manipulating these small objects is no easy task.

Want a little help in the kitchen? Invite your preschooler to do some baking with you. Combining ingredients together, and working with dough will both help in the fine motor skills department.

Gross Motor Skills

Want to work on your child’s gross motor skills? Head over to the nearest playground. Most playgrounds have all sorts of activities that help with gross motor skills. Climbing is a particularly great one since it involves doing things that you child doesn’t necessarily get to do on a daily basis.

Swimming is another great gross motor skill activity. Kicking and splashing in the water is fun and great exercise too.

Want to keep things simple? Just run around together. You might even challenge your preschooler to a race or two. Here’s a pro tip if you go that route though: let them win. Trust me, everyone will have more fun if they win the race.

Final Thoughts

The great thing about preschoolers is that there are all sorts of fun activities that promote development too. By the time your kids reach high school, learning might involve cracking the books which may or may not be their favorite thing in the world. For preschoolers though, learning and playing can be one in the same.

Ryan Howard runs SmartParentAdvice, a site that provides parenting advice for moms and dads. Ryan writes about all of the different ups and downs of parenting, provides solutions to common challenges, and reviews products that parents need to purchase for babies and toddlers.

If you are interested in becoming a guest blogger on the Kinney Brothers Publishing blog site, please contact us at admin@kinneybrothers. We are always looking for educational content our readers will find useful.