Why were things called things, like why was a book called a book, why was a dog called a dog?

Who thought of it all?

Whoever discovered/invented it I imagine.

Or the general translation from language to language..

I wonder this kind of thing all the time! If you come up with any answers, let me know

the word book decends from two children in ancient times.....

one was called bo

the other ok

one was a writer

one was an illustrator

the writer wrote the very first story ever and decided to call it after himself - bo

he asked his friend "ok" to put pictures in it.

his friend agreed, but only if he could have his name on the title.

they put both their names together and came up with "okbo" and it didnt look right so after much thought they re-arranged the names round so it spelt "book"......

now table - again 2 children eating on the floor - on called "tab" the other "le" - you know the rest

Where have I heard that before...

they got called it that b'cos i said so, someone cap this please as thats the answer, i chose the words!

now where did the word " cap " come from, was it from a man wearing a cap or from the funkypool forum lol

acctualy cap is short for steel toe-cap which is what your going the right way for right up your rather large behind

(smaller then alexanders big ego though)

Every word has a meaning, that could mean you can make a word up and have a meaning for it!

so true, although if you can find what billbashinock is then ill be impressed, just made it up

Don't cap yet, not for a few mins...

The word "table" was first attested around 1175 with the meaning "board, slab, plate", and it arrived via Old French table "board, plank, writing table, picture" (11th century), and late Old English tabele, which in turn originated from the reconstructed, unattested West Germanic form *tabal. Both of these forms in turn came from the Latin tabula "a board, plank, table", originally "small flat slab or piece" usually for inscriptions or for games, of uncertain origin, related to Umbrian tafle "on the board." The sense of "piece of furniture with the flat top and legs" was first recorded around 1300; the usual Latin word for this was mensa; Old English writers used bord.

The word "dog" comes from the Old English docga, which, I read, was "a late, rare word used of a powerful breed of canine." It ousted the Old English word hund (the usual Germanic and Indo-European form; compare German Hund "dog") by the 16th century before French and Danish adopted similar forms. The words "hund" and "canine" ultimately both stem from the Proto-Indo-European base *kwon-. Compare Greek kyon, Irish cú "hound", Welsh ci.

The word "book" comes to us from Old English boc, from Proto-Germanic *bokiz meaning "beech", as runes were inscribed on beechwood tablets. German has the words Buch "book" and Buche "beech".

(more...)

"Cap" comes from Old English cæppe "hood, head-covering", ultimately from Latin caput "head". The sense of a covering to the end of something (for example, at the end of a Funkypool thread to prevent further posts) dates from the mid-fifteenth century.

Finally, the word "billbashinock" was first recorded by someone called __matt__ on the website http://www.funkypool.com on November 17th 2009, although he confessed to making it up, and there are arguably no rational roots to any earlier forms.

Now you can cæppe this

ha! proved lewis wrong, not all words that tyou make up having meaning!! mwahahaha and woohoo

billbashinock - defo - a silly person who breaks into a bunch and gets a lucky pot from it. 2. anyone who is lucky a flukes, feel free to use it lets see how many start this spread the word

billbashinock!!!

where do the old english, latin and french words come from though??

new english, durr!!!

French comes from Latin.

Latin was preceded by what's called Old Latin, and so on and so on, back through time. However, we know so much about Classical Latin (and its succeeding forms) due to the rich literary record left behind, so much so that we can reconstruct its grammar - that's assuming that no-one already wrote a Latin grammar at the time.

English then would have ended up in England from somewhere in what is now Germany. English, Dutch, Frisian, German, Danish, Nowegian, Swedish, Icelandic, Faroese and a few other languages are thought to have descended from a common ancestor, which linguists name Proto-Germanic.

Latin in turn would have come from something called Proto-Italic (I think), and if you go back far enough, the theory is that loads of these languages descend from a common ancestor called Proto-Indo-European, named for the Indo-European language family that stretches from Europe into India.

This wouldve done well as a game actually...we cud of made things up like gandalf, who's post i thought was great hahaha

have we stopped evolving, i always wonder that ?!!?

well thats one thing ive always thought about but theres people whos skin is stretchy theyr eyes pop out further than usuall all that kinda stuff maybe thats evolution ??? i dont know but we can hope lol