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Otherwords

How the Colors Got Their Names

Season 3 Episode 9 | 6m 29s

In some ways, colors are the ultimate example of language's power. The earliest humans didn't have words for colors. They had words for objects and actions, and it took tens of thousands of years for those words to evolve into the names of the colors we use today. In this episode, we’ll answer that age-old question, which came first: orange the fruit or orange the color?

Aired: 09/20/23
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Watch • 9:19
Otherwords
Punctuation's Weird Backstory
How did we get from written words scrunched together without any spaces or symbols to punctuation?
Episode: S5 E9 | 9:19
Watch • 7:03
Otherwords
Popular Word Origins That Are Totally Wrong
What are folk etymologies?
Episode: S5 E8 | 7:03
Watch • 7:18
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Is Social Media Censorship Unaliving Language?
Is TikTok ruining language?
Episode: S5 E7 | 7:18
Watch • 7:21
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The Mysterious Origins of Abracadabra and Other Magic Words
Are there 'magic' words?
Episode: E6 | 7:21
Watch • 5:51
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Where Did Cringey Corporate Jargon Come From?
We're gonna have to ask you to go ahead and watch this video. "
Episode: E5 | 5:51
Watch • 12:22
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Inside the Fiercest Debate in Linguistics
It's one of the most contentious debates in linguistics!
Episode: E4 | 12:22
Watch • 7:05
Otherwords
Why A.I. Struggles with Negative Words
The ways we use negation in language can be pretty complex, even AI can’t seem to make sense of it.
Episode: E3 | 7:05
Watch • 8:36
Otherwords
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Join us as we try to figure out how our body parts got their names.
Episode: E1 | 8:36
Watch • 6:21
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Is Bluey Giving Your Kid Australian Accent
Children are sponges for language acquisition. Which leads us to ask the question: how much does TV
Episode: S4 E11 | 6:21
Watch • 6:51
Otherwords
Is English a Creole?
We already know that English borrows from everybody, but can it be considered a Creole language?
Episode: S4 E10 | 6:51