“Good morning” is a term of welcome. “Good Night,” when said at night, is a term of leaving. You’d never say “good night” to someone who shows up at 11 pm for a party. Nor would you say good morning to someone leaving your house. Have a good morning, sure, or have a good day. Good Day is another term used while leaving. Then there’s Good Evening, which is the Good Morning of the night.
TL;DR Anon’s flame dashboard said good night, and he’s overcaffeinated and underslept and noted some wierd shit going on with wishing people Good [timeofday]
I’m still trying to figure out why “how come” means “why.”
So too does “wherefore”. In old English, “where” meant “what” and “fore” meant “for”. So “wherefore?” meant “what for?”, i.e “for what reason”. “Therefore” is the opposite of “wherefore”, meaning “that for”, i.e. “for that reason”
That one has confused many a teenager reading Romeo and Juliet for the first time because it’s not commonly used much anymore apart from some versions of the Bible, and the idiom “Whys and Wherefores”. When she says “Wherefore art thou Romeo?”, Juliet isn’t asking where Romeo is. She’s asking “Why are you Romeo?” As in she’s lamenting that the man she met is specificallt Romeo, a Montague, a family enemy. She wishes he weren’t. Which is why she followed that sentence with “Deny thy father and refuse thy name.”
P.S. “how come” means “why” because it’s a shortened phrase. It could stand for something like “how did it come about that he died?” Or “how comes it that you know my name?” That is a bit of a mouth full, so people just casually dropped most of it to “how come he died?” and “how come you know my name?”
Proposal with no data: "how [did/does it] come [to be this way]“
Ok genius, bonus round. Why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways?
Jk that was a really good breakdown lol.
I know it didn’t really want an explanation but you’re gonna good and gosh darn get one.
Both words predate cars.
“Parkway” used to always be literal. A way/path through a park. A wide landscaped scenic route through parks for carriages. Those scenic routes eventually became roads with the arrival of cars, often existing beyond parks and even sometimes stretching between cities, but kept the same old timey name.
And driveways weren’t just the often car-length bit of pavement where your car sits. They were long private drives, roads that connected a manor home to public roadways across an estate. They were primarily for driving carriages upon between the public roads and the private manor, so the name made more sense. With the advent of cars, homes that weren’t on massive estates now needed a paved or gravel path for their cars to travel to a garage nearby or attached to the home. They used the same name despite being far shorter, only needing to cross a more typical yard, requiring little driving.
And while we are on the subject a “park” as in a green space used for conservation and/or recreation and the action, to “park”, as in a car, have the same origin. They both come from the French word “parc”, which means “an enclosed piece of ground”. The origin of the connection for that word and modern public green spaces goes back to medieval royals building fenced-in areas of wild greenery for royals and nobels to hunt in. As for what that has to do with parking a car, it goes back to a military preparations where wagons, weapons and horses would be stored and organized in designated enclosures, “parcs”, thus “parking” them for later usage. When cars came about and needed organized storing, the word already existed for such a thing.
I drive a moped that’s not allowed on the parkway, and I don’t have a driveway. So the jokes on you, I drive on the street and park on the street. Boo ya.
I guarantee there’s a word nerd that’s got that one loaded up, but alas, it is beyond my gift. And I’m certainly not going to look it up, as that would be cheating 😛
i’m hardly a word nerd. but i do recall bits of a class discussion from like junior high english class.
driveways are paths that connected public ways (roads) to private buildings. named for what you did on them… with the advent of the automobile and garages to put them in, they’ve become places people often park their cars… they’ve just gotten a lot shorter since most houses no longer have acres of farm fields, barns and outbuildings, and what not surrounding them.
parkways are wide, and often landscaped, thoroughfares originally through, you guessed it… parks. they don’t necessarily always go through parks these days but the concept is generally still the same, unless a local government is misusing the term for naming a road. they are also not usually the main route, but rather the recreational or scenic route, between their end points.
both words predate the automobile.