Etymoleon - Word History, the etymology podcast.
Word History is a podcast for people who enjoy words and history.
Each episode takes a small set of words linked to a theme. You'll hear what they mean, where they come from and which familiar words share the same linguistic roots, along with stories from the past related to their use.
Listen for words that sharpen expression, and brief histories that show how ideas and practices, as well as language, took shape. Across an archive of more than a hundred episodes, you'll find explanations of word, name and phrase origins.
The majority of etymologies featured return to Old English, Ancient Greek, Latin and Old French, providing a look into languages of the past that underpin English.
New episodes on Sundays.
Play the daily word game Derivety: https://derivety.com
Get in touch: https://etymoleon.com
Etymoleon - Word History, the etymology podcast.
67. Television
Use Left/Right to seek, Home/End to jump to start or end. Hold shift to jump forward or backward.
In this episode, we tune in to the origins of television terms. TV broadcasts date back to the late 1920s, but the first remote control, a wired device called the "lazy bones", arrived in the 1950s. The phrase "jump the shark" originated from an episode of Happy Days in the 1970s, though it only gained popularity two decades later. The word binge started as Midlands (England) slang meaning to soak in water, evolving to mean over-drinking, and eventually extended to doing anything to excess, hence the term binge-watching.