{"id":30937,"date":"2014-03-20T00:10:06","date_gmt":"2014-03-20T07:10:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/?p=30937"},"modified":"2014-03-18T17:15:26","modified_gmt":"2014-03-19T00:15:26","slug":"hank-short-henry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.todayifoundout.com\/index.php\/2014\/03\/hank-short-henry\/","title":{"rendered":"Why “Hank” is Short for “Henry,” Why “Colonel” is Pronounced “Kernel,” and Why We Say “Stat” When We Want Something Done Quickly"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Now-You-Know\"<\/a>Why “Hank” is Short for “Henry”<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is thought to be thanks to the one time popular suffix \u201c-kin,\u201d which is also how \u201cJack\u201d originally derived from the name \u201cJohn.\u201d Specifically, the suffix \u201c-kin,\u201d simply indicated \u201clittle,\u201d so Robin Hood\u2019s \u201cLittle John\u201d would have been aptly named \u201cJockin,\u201d which later gave rise to \u201cJenkin,\u201d then \u201cJakin,\u201d and then \u201cJack,\u201d with the former forms literally meaning “Little John.”<\/p>\n

Similarly, we have \u201cLittle Henry\u201d becoming \u201cHenkin,\u201d which later gave rise to \u201cHankin,\u201d which was then shortened to just \u201cHank.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why “Colonel” is Pronounced “Kernel”<\/strong><\/p>\n

Believe it or not, \u201ccolonel\u201d was pronounced more or less the way it originally looked when it was introduced to English. The spelling changed over time to \u201ccolonel\u201d, while the pronunciation stayed the same as it was before.<\/p>\n

\u201cColonel\u201d ultimately derives from the Latin \u201ccolumna,\u201d meaning \u201cpillar.\u201d This gave rise to the Old Italian \u201ccompagna colonnella,\u201d meaning \u201clittle-column company.\u201d\u00a0 This, in turn, gave us the rank of \u201ccolonnello\u201d -the leader of a column.<\/p>\n

Other nations adopted this ranking giving us the Middle French \u201cCoronel.\u201d This was pronounced pretty much like it looks at first, then later slurred down to \u201cKernel\u201d by the English, but using the same spelling.<\/p>\n

However, starting with the French around the 1540s, the spelling was changed back closer to the Italian spelling, which gave us \u201cColonel\u201d in French.<\/p>\n

Within a few decades, the English also followed suit and by the mid-seventeenth century, \u201ccolonel\u201d was the most common way to spell the word in English. At that time, the common pronunciation was mixed between the older \u201ckernel\u201d and the new \u201ccolonel,\u201d with the former winning out in the end, despite the way it\u2019s spelled.<\/p>\n

Why We Say “Stat” When We Want Something Done Quickly<\/strong><\/p>\n

This may seem odd at first glance. After all, common usage of \u201cstat\u201d outside of these instances is referring to statistics. In this case, though, \u201cstat\u201d is not short for \u201cstatistics,\u201d but rather is from the Latin \u201cstatim,\u201d meaning \u201cimmediately\u201d or \u201cat once.\u201d<\/p>\n

The first references of the practice of shortening \u201cstatim\u201d to \u201cstat\u201d came to us from physicians in the nineteenth century, with the first known documented instance of this appearing in Lessons on Prescriptions<\/em> by W.H. Griffith (1875).<\/p>\n

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