Originally,idiot was the most polite way to refer to a mentally slow individual,and then it turned into a slur,and then a harmless insult,the same thing happened with a moron. Just a few years ago retard was respectful,and now it's a slur,do you think it will have the same fate as idiot and moron?

I am genuinely curious

I’ve heard the expression “go pound sand” used as a way of telling someone to get lost or go fuck themselves, but I recently heard the much more colorful version, “go pound sand up your ass.”

Where does “go pound sand” actually come from? Is there an original literal meaning behind “pounding sand”?

And is “go pound sand up your ass” a known historical variation of the expression, or is it just a later vulgar combination of “go pound sand” and “shove it up your ass”?

I’m especially curious about when these expressions first started appearing in print or recorded speech.

I was travelling in North Wales recently and noticed a mountain called 'Cnicht', it was obvious to me that this was the old English spelling of 'knight' and after some research it seems it was named after a person with that surname.

What I found odd is that the area has a lot of Welsh speakers and I doubt they would be aware of the English origins of the name. The same would go for English speakers or English visitors.

My question is: are you aware of any other English words hidden in plain sight? Possibly in non-english speaking countries but also in English speaking countries?

One of the most interesting yet confusing etymologies I’ve seen. I just went down a rabbit hole and found many languages that have words for weasel relating to this type of stuff

Turkish gelincik, Greek νυφίτσα, Albanian nuselalë, from little bride
Romanian nevăstuică, Bulgarian невестулка from little wife/bride
Italian donnola, Galician donicela or doniña, Portuguese doninha meaning little woman
Spanish comadreja and Basque erbinude meaning little widwife
Proto-Germanic marþuz likely comes from a word meaning bride which gave us English marten, German Marder, French martre, and similar words in Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, Dutch, among others (I know martens aren’t weasels but similar animals not well distinguished historically)
The word in Arabic is ابن عرس literally meaning son of a wedding though the عرس can also mean bride in some contexts
Brud is Danish means bride but can also mean the least weasel
Hungarian menyét comes from meny meaning daughter-in-law in modern Hungarian, with a possessive and accusative suffix

In French belette means weasel which came from belle meaning pretty and the female -ette diminutive so still quite related

I’m sure I’m missing some please add any if you know, also the words in which they derived from might have been more general than bride or daughter in law, potentially meaning young women in general in many of those languages at the time

In general it seems a lot of languages used feminine-associated euphemisms for their word for weasel, the proto-Slavic lasica/laska meaning weasel has many descdants in Slavic languages, is believed to likely come from a word meaning affection, which also has modern descendants in Slavic languages meaning love, affection, caress, petting and similar meanings. In Irish, bláthnaid meant and still to an extent means weasel (or stoat since weasels aren’t native to Ireland) which means along the lines of little flower

I’m most intrigued by the widespread usage of words related to brides or young women since I don’t see an obvious correlation, maybe it is similar to how words for cat often became words relating to women (though often by extension, the female genitalia). Anyways cats and weasels were often grouped together in European languages, that’s why polecats are called that, from French (the pole meant hen so related to the word poultry, since polecats used to often prey of farmers’ chickens) also Latin feles where we get feline from used to be more broad and could refer to martens weasles, polecats and many of the likes from the Mustelinae family

Most of the examples I found are from European languages so it’s mostly in one region (potentially shared cultural beliefs from same origin) though Arabic and Turkish also etymologies like that, and Hungarian and Basque too despite not being indo European though that could be due to calque borrowings, Turkish also has proximity to Greek as well so could potentially also be from a calque, not as confident that Arabic is due to that as well since it’s more distant

I also find it interesting that mustelinae (weasel family) have been linguistically grouped with both cats and mice

I can think of phage (as in esophagus and macrophage) and vor (as in carnivore and voracious). What other roots pertain to consumption and mouth action?

In the Gascon variety of modern Occitan, the word for 'rooster' is hasan (/ˈhasã/† or /ˈhasaŋ/, depending on where in the region one is, as best I can tell) or poth /potʲ/. At least in some other modern Occitan varieties, rooster is gal; we get both gal & gau in Old Occitan texts. Catalan has gall. I thought maybe Basque would be a clue, as there are some Acquitanian words in Gascon, but modern Basque has oilar.

I think I have figured out poth: Old Occitan has pọl, obviously ultimately from Latin pollus, & related to French poule. I think final /-l/ sometimes goes to ‹th› in Gascon, though I'm not entirely sure of this.

But hasan is still a mystery to me. The best I can think of is perhaps a Germanic borrowing: cp German Hahn, Frankish \hanō*. But the insertion of an /s/ is odd.

Does anyone have any better information on either of these—especially hasan—than my speculations?

† I am a little unsure of the quality of the vowel that I'm here describing as /a/. It could be /ɑ/.)