Sirius would appear in Egypt, after about a 70-day absence, just before the season where the Nile typically floods. So it is thought the star’s hieroglyphic symbol being a dog symbolized a “watchdog”.
It is the brightest star in the Canis Major constellation. This constellation simply looks a little bit like a dog, and Sirius is the brightest star in the constellation. So the star got named the “dog star”, and its heliacal rising marked the start of the hottest part of the year, which then became the “dog days.”
On the radio was a series of serials aimed at women, aired during the day time. To fund the shows, the radio networks began seeking out certain companies to sponsor the episodes. Among the first major sponsors of these serials were soap manufacturers, then the media started calling these shows “soap operas”.
A “spud” is a “sharp and narrow spade” used to dig up large rooted plants. Around the mid-nineteenth century (first documented reference in 1845 in New Zealand), this implement of destruction began lending its name to one of the thing it was often used to dig up, namely potatoes. This caught on throughout the English-speaking world and this slang term for a potato is still common to this day.
The first known instance of “/zi:/” being recorded as the correct pronunciation of the letter “z” was in Lye’s New Spelling Book, published in 1677. There still was a variety of common pronunciations in North America after this, but by the nineteenth century, this changed in the United States with “/zi:/” firmly establishing itself thanks to the Alphabet Song copyrighted in 1835, rhyming “z” with “me”, which today has even started to get the “/zi:/” pronunciation to spread outside of North America.
