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Otherwords

Where Alcoholic Drinks Got Their Names

Season 3 Episode 3 | 7m 17s

There are no shortage of wacky names for alcoholic beverages, from Fuzzy Navels, to Sex on the Beaches, to the NSFW AMF. Humans have been enjoying alcoholic beverages since the dawn of civilization so there's plenty of linguistic evidence in many languages to point to the origins of many of these alcoholic words. Let’s take a deep dive into the etymology of alcohol.

Aired: 03/22/23
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Watch • 9:19
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How did we get from written words scrunched together without any spaces or symbols to punctuation?
Episode: S5 E9 | 9:19
Watch • 7:03
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What are folk etymologies?
Episode: S5 E8 | 7:03
Watch • 7:18
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Are there 'magic' words?
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It's one of the most contentious debates in linguistics!
Episode: E4 | 12:22
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