Today, ‘comedy’ is a genre of entertainment that makes us laugh. However, this was not always the case. The word derives from a Greek compound that most likely meant ‘revel song,’ and it's culturally rooted in an ancient festival called the ... penis parade? Yes, the penis parade. Yet humor was not always the main component of comedy as it is today. Exploring topics as disparate as Dante's Divine Comedy to Punch and Judy puppet shows, this episode covers a condensed history of the genre of comedy.

The word ‘tragedy’ is rooted in ancient Greek theater. It's a dramatic form that stills exists today, but what’s the word’s etymology? Is it connected to suffering? Despair? Heartache? No, no, and no. It most likely comes from a Greek word meaning ‘goat-song.’ In today's episode, we look at a few theories that explain this strange etymology.

The word ‘tyrant’ is steeped in the political history of Ancient Greece. However, it didn't always refer to cruel rulers. Originally, a ‘tyrant’ was a morally neutral word for someone who usurped the throne and took over leadership on their own terms. Most of the early Greek tyrants were actually lauded by their subjects.

Joining me in the historical exploration of tyrants and tyranny is Ryan Stitt from the History of Ancient Greece.

English uses many different suffixes to indicate ethnicities. Each suffix entered the language independently, and each suffix has a story to tell. This episode attempts to elucidate the geopolitical distribution of the four main categories of ethnic suffixation in English: -an (including -ian and -ean), -ish, -ese, and -i.

Today's episode looks at the evolution of the modern sense of the word filibuster. Borrowed from a Dutch word meaning ‘pirate,’ ‘filibuster’ originally referred to Americans who organized unauthorized military invasions of Spanish colonies in Central America and the West Indies.

In this episode, we explore the origins of the word ‘candidate.’ It derives from candidus, the Latin word for ‘white,’ which describes the typical attire worn by Roman politicians running for office. We also examine some unlikely cognates derived from this same root word. 

The presidential inauguration is a tradition inherited from Ancient Rome. The word ‘inauguration’ is rooted in augury, the Ancient Roman practice of interpreting omens based on the flight patterns of birds. Over the course of today's episode, we discuss how how this unlikely religious tradition gave us the sense of ‘inauguration’ used today.

The letter C has split personalities. Sometimes it has a hard K sound, and sometimes it has a soft S sound. Sometimes it's a part of letter combinations whose pronunciations vary from word to word. The causes of these split personalities are rooted in a complicated history that begins in Ancient Phoenicia.

Words for ‘tea’ in languages around the world fall into one of two etymological categories: te-derived and cha-derived. Both are ultimately derived from different dialects of Chinese. Based on the geolinguistic distribution of these two etymological categories, we can learn a lot about the history of the tea trade itself.

According to literary critic Raymond Williams, culture is ‘one of two or three most complicated words in the English language.’ Today's narrative traces the word's unexpected origins as a farming term to its social and anthropological senses today. Along the way, we'll explore many different perspectives on what a ‘culture’ really is is.