August 02, 2011
tattle (verb)
\TAT-ul\ Hear it!
What does it mean?
: to tell secrets : blab
How do you use it?
I managed to grab an extra cookie and gulp it down before my mom could see, but my little sister tattled on me.
Are you a word wiz?

"Tattle" and three other words in today's sentence all have roots in the same language. What language do you think it is?

We'll tell you a secret: the answer to this quiz is C. "Tattle" entered English in the mid-1500s from a Middle Dutch word with the same meaning. Not long after that, "grab" was adapted from the obsolete Dutch word (or Low German word) "grabben," which meant the same thing as the English word "grab." Much earlier, during the 1300s, English adopted the word "gulp" from a Middle Dutch word akin to the Dutch word "gulpen," meaning "to bubble forth" or "to drink deep." It wasn't until around 1700 that English-speakers were gulping something called "cookies," though. "Cookie" comes from Dutch "koekje," the diminutive form of "koek," meaning "cake."
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