Welcome to the Street Prophets Coffee Hour. This is an open thread where we can share our thoughts and comments about the day. Look up! What do you see? Clouds? Blue Sky? Smog?
The white fluffy things in the sky that we currently call “clouds” haven’t always been called “clouds” in English. In Old English “welkin” meant cloud until the twelfth century. “Sky,” on the other hand, comes into English from the Old Norse word “sky” which meant “cloud.” The word “cloud” comes from the Old English “clud” which meant “hill” or “rock” until about the fourteenth century. In Old English, the word for “sky” was “heofan,” the word from which we get our modern word “heaven.”
If you were going to paint a picture of the sky and the interesting clouds, you might start by setting up an easel. The word “easel” comes from the Dutch word “ezel” which means “ass, donkey.” This Dutch word eventually came to mean “an upright frame for displaying or painting something.” An artist’s easel is thus actually an artist’s ass.
So what changes are happening in your life?
This is an open thread. Feel free to change the subject.