This week: Promotion! It's the Christmas season and that means sales and promotions everywhere you look. We look at the word and learn its history. Then we have a round-up of Learned Christmases past plus this year's list of lists. We close out with all the usual footnotes. Here we go!
Christmas is just four short days away as I write this. To be honest, I have been feeling more than a little cynical this year. That's where the whole advertising theme came from. After avoiding shops and public spaces for a year and a half, I ended up heading back into them just in time for all the seasonal promotions1 to erupt over every available surface. It was while dodging through the melee I started wondering about the word promotion.
Promote is one of those odd words that has acquired two distinct meanings; you can kind of see how they're connected without really having to squint too hard, and yet, how is it that the same word comes to mean "raising someone to a higher level" and also "advertising a special sales price"?
As it turns out, the first meaning, a promotion in rank, is the older form of the word. It comes to English from Latin through French around 1400 (and, incidentally, the noun form is older than the verb form which arose a few decades later) and has retained its meaning all the way. However, Etymology Online notes that the first recorded use of promotion to mean advertising or publicity is from 1925.
But, it is Christmas, and, having a six-year-old in the house has done a lot to alleviate my cynicism. Santa's shopping is all done, my work year is winding down, and I even have some (limited and socially distanced) holiday plans. In other words, I am feeling better. I'm also realizing that I have written a lot during and around Christmas, here in Learned, over the past few years and I have also had a lot of new readers (thank you!) since then. So, in an act of holiday, shameless, self-promotion, I'm going to leave this week's entry short and fill in the gaps with a quick round-up of the Learned Christmas pieces2 from Learned Volumes 1 through 3. I hope you enjoy them.
Stay curious and have a very merry Christmas,
J
A Very Learned Christmas
Learned Vol. 3, Issue 39 - Ballet Space
Last year, I took some time and space to reflect on how my daughter's interests were beginning to diverge from mine and what that meant to me, at Christmas time, as I tried to get her to engage with all the stuff I loved when I was a kid.
Learned Vol. 2, Issue 39 - Hark!
Christmas time means Christmas carols and Christmas carols means singing a lot of words that we don't use all that much anymore. I mean, honestly, who says "hark" nowadays? We also run through Deck the Halls, Silent Night, and a couple of other great old songs, finding all the interesting little words scattered throughout.
Learned Vol. 1, Issue 39 - Santa-esque
Learned Volume 1 was a different beast from what you're reading these days. In its first year, I covered topics related more to what I was learning and about teaching than I did language and words. But, never fear! I still put together a Christmas letter that was all about my experiences playing Santa and distilling some Santa facts into bite-size nuggets for all your holiday cocktail chitter-chatter.
Year-end Lists & Stuff
Alright, this last section of the newsletter is not strictly linguistics or word nerdery this week. Instead, I'm going to indulge in one of my favorite year-end activities - linking to all the cool year-end round-ups I may or may not get around to reading. Here we go:
Every year, Tom Whitwell puts together his list, and every year, it is fascinating. My favorite item from this year:
Until 1873, Japanese hours varied by season. There were six hours between sunrise and sunset, so a daylight hour in summer was 1/3rd longer than an hour in winter.
I had known that Japan used to measure the year in a collection of 72 micro-seasons, but I had not known about this. Something to think about, though.
10 lessons in productivity and brainstorming from The Beatles
Like everyone else you know, I loved the Peter Jackson documentary about the Fab Four and have been re-watching it in bits and pieces ever since I finished watching it the first time through. Tom Whitwell's second article on this list serves as a cheatsheet for how to inspire creativity.
2021 Hubble Space Telescope Advent Calendar
I'm as excited as you are about the upcoming launch of the James Webb Telescope which makes Alan Taylor's yearly round-up of pictures captured by the Hubble all the more important if only to remind us of where we're starting from.
Best of 2021: Investigative Reporting
Longreads has their usual collection of end-of-the-year lists; this year, with so much having happened in the world between the pandemic and, well, everything, it feels like there was a lot that got dropped in the cracks. Reading through this list brings a lot back into focus. (See also: Best of 2021: Features.)
NPR's annual list; there was a time when I would have known all these songs. Not these days. Instead, I use these lists as a chance to figure out what all the kids are up to. It doesn't help, but I like to pretend it does and, occasionally, I find some new music I like.
Bloomberg's annual list of journalistic pieces they wish they had written. In other words, a list of writers being irritated that other writers did great work this year. Perfect holiday reading!
To make matters worse, this is the season - late November through early January - where living between cultures means getting a double dose of sales blitzes and promotional campaigns being foisted on you at every step, both physical and digital.
Question for the readers: how do you feel about this kind of content? Learned is going to be heading into its fifth year in just a few months. Would you like to see more links from the archives (when topical)? Let me know, would you? I'd appreciate it.
Well, since I missed the first three years, yes! Links into your archives sounds great to me. Hark!