In Old English and Middle English there were two letters that we don’t use today: Þ and Ð (called thorn and eth —written in lowercase as Þ and ð).  Thorn was the hard th sound, like you hear in the word then ; eth could be used for the soft th sound, as in thin , but could also be used for the hard th .  Eth slowly disappeared from English writing, falling out of use by the year 1300.  Thorn lasted a while longer, maybe another century, but its demise was hastened by the popularity of printing.  Signs and handbills were printed on paper with sets of wooden blocks.  The best blocks came from Germany and Italy, where the languages don’t have the th sound at all, so these sets included no thorn or eth blocks.  To fill the need of the missing thorn, printers would just use the letter Y instead.  This is why you would often see medieval signs like “Ye Olde Bakery”.  This is just because the printers couldn’t print “Þe Olde Bakery”!  Of c...

In the early 1802, a well-educated young man named Basil Hall joined the British Royal Navy and started traveling extensively.  His voyages were sometimes military, sometimes scientific, and he saw much more of the world than most people of his day did, or even of the modern day.  His education was encouraged by his father, who also suggested that he keep diaries of all he saw and did.   This habit had been impressed upon him when he was a boy, before he ever set sail, and he kept it up all his life. It was quite a life to keep notes on, too.  Hall was present for a lot of the action during the Napoleonic Wars, including the Battle of Waterloo.  In 1817, two years after the wars ended, Hall had the opportunity to interview Napoleon Bonaparte himself at the deposed emperor’s home/prison on St. Helena.  He explored Korea, Japan, Java, Peru, South Africa, and other far-flung locales, making copious notes along the way.   His scientific resear...

The expression “to be worth your salt” is older than the English language itself.  It was handed down from ancient Rome.  Roman soldiers were paid a salarium , which suggests that they’re getting paid enough to buy salt.  Salt was expensive back then, and not always easy to get, so this was significant, and did lend some status to anyone making enough money to buy it.  There’s a common misunderstanding that the Roman army paid all its wages in salt, but there’s no evidence that this is actually true.  This might have been done sometimes, when money was tight, but it was not common practice.  Still, salt was important enough that if a soldier were “earning his salt”, he was worth what he was getting paid.  In medieval English, the expression “above the salt” was used sometimes to refer to aristocrats, who had a lot more money and power than necessary to purchase salt. From salarium , the modern word salary comes, whether you’re paid in iodize...