You hear a faint typing noise.

In 2005, congress passed the Presidential $1 Coin Act of 2005 with unanimous consent. In 2007, two years later, the Presidential $1 Coin Program had begun as mandated, and the US Mint minted an abundance of new one dollar coins with the portraits of United States presidents on the front. Unfortunately for them, this abundance turned out to be an overabundance; no one actually wanted to order these dollar coins, and so the Mint was left with an enormous unused stockpile.

Enter the US Mint’s new program: In order to get dollar coins out to the public, they declared they would direct ship them to anyone who ordered them, for only the value of the coins themselves. The US Mint would handle all those pesky shipping and handling costs for you.

And, incidentally, you could pay for your shiny new one dollar coins with that wondrous modern convenience known as a credit card!

People immediately began to take the obvious tack: Order massive shipments of dollar coins with your credit card, return this legal tender to your bank, and then keep all the cashback rewards and airline miles you’ve earned with these purchases for yourself.

One user on CreditCardForum.com excitedly told their fellow forum goers how to get in on the scheme, stating that they and their partner would be, “departing on a luxury first class vacation in the French Riviera using this frequent flyer miles strategy!” Various travelers regaled NPR with tales their many first-class flights around the world: Jane Liaw said that she and her spouse went to Turkey and Greece via the rewards from their coins, and travel blogger Ben Schlappig, who described himself as “not as heavy a hitter as other people, I guess," accrued “a few million miles” and had, at the time of the interview, recently returned from vacations to Australia, Singapore, and Malaysia. Meanwhile, over on flyertalk.com, popular user mrpickles was exchanging $100,000 in coins per month, earning themselves 2 million frequent flier miles by the end of 2009. By the beginning of 2011, despite their many vacations, they had 5.3 million frequent flier miles left over in their various credit cards.

Eventually, the US Mint put an end to this scheme in July 2011, announcing that they would begin charging an fulfillment fee for each box of dollar coins. But, not before thousands of people earned themselves millions of dollars worth of credit card rewards, all for free.

It seems that sometimes, you really can get something for nothing.

Well, all of those are perfectly valid uses of the modern form of the word. However, “matrix” actually originated from the root “mater” meaning “mother”.

In fact, originally, “matrix” was a technical term for the uterus.

(You can still see that type of usage today, in biology, where we call the medium in which a bacterial sample will grow the “matrix”, or in anatomy, where the “matrix” of a nail is It is the part of the nail bed that produces the cells that become the nail proper.)

“Wait, what,” you murmur in justified confusion, “How in the world did it get from there to its current meaning?”

Well, it seems that it may have been all James Joseph Sylvester’s fault!

You see, while he was helping to create modern matrix theory, he also created the name for it! In his 1850 article, Additions to the articles in the September number of this journal, “On a new class of theorems,” and on Pascal’s theorem, he wrote that,

“For this purpose we must commence, not with a square, but with an oblong arrangement of terms consisting, suppose, of m lines and n columns. This will not in itself represent a determinant, but is, as it were, a Matrix out of which we may form various systems of determinants...”

the first ever use of “matrix” in a mathematical context!¹ ²

And that, my friends, is how the modern “matrix” was born!

--
 

Consider: the word "quick" derives from the Old English "cwic" meaning "living, alive, animate".¹

This is where we get "quick" as in speedy or lively--

And also where we get "quickening": to become alive--

And that’s why you can cut your nails or a plant down to the living part, i.e. the "quick"!

--

Did you know?

The word "cute" started out as an abbreviation of “acute,” originally meaning “keenly perceptive or sharp-witted, shrewd”.¹ The meaning only transferred to “pretty, fetching” via American students’ slang circa 1834."²

I’d say that's pretty cute!

femmenietzsche:

sophus-b:

femmenietzsche:

I’m always on the lookout for more conteat.

Ah, keeping abreast of the latest jokes?

Though the odds may be stacked against you, don’t let me implant the idea that you’ll make a boob of yourself. Let’s nip that idea in the bud. You wouldn’t tell any old chestnut. You wouldn’t restrict yourself to juvenile knock-knockers. You wouldn’t merely milk a single joke for all it’s worth.

For you, it’s the perfect pun or bust.

No doubt you’ll find one that leaves them in stitches– one that really makes them titter. You’re surely going to tell some real hooters, leave them jiggling with laughter. Everyone around the globe, from the anons to your dearest bosom buddy will be bubbling with laughter.

Undoubtedly, it will all be udderly funny; your humor is one of your greatest assets.

Though I suppose I’ve gone on for far too long– I should can it. I’ll cleave.

Ta ta for now.

Oh the humammary

From The Letters of J.R.R. Tolkien, 214 To A. C. Nunn (draft):
“It may be noted that Hobbits, as soon as they became ‘faunts’ (that is talkers and walkers: formally taken to be on their third birthday-anniversary)”

Though I can’t exactly ask him, I’m guessing he got this term from the Old English “faunt”, meaning “A young child of either sex, an infant, babe,” (from the same root as “infant”.) Furthermore, I’ve found a few sources that attest to diminutives such as “fauntkin” and “fauntlet” being used in the 1300s.

Thus, while “fauntling” itself is a fan-coined word, they didn’t make it up entirely out of whole cloth; there’s both Doylean and linguistic precedent for the construct.