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    5 months ago

    Fun fact: the word “bear” actually originates from a Proto-Germanic word meaning “the brown one”, not bear.

    Proto-Indo-European, the language which most European and many Indian languages originated from, did have a word for bear, but it only survived in a few languages because they believed that if you said the real name of the bear, it would summon a bear. To prevent this, they made up euphemistic names like “the brown one” and “the honey eater”

    So remember, every time you say “bear”, you’re actually saying a several thousand year old euphemism and I think that’s really cool