Tag: Etymology

Shoegaze – Why is it Called that?

My Bloody Valentine is most famous for elevating “shoegaze,” a dreamy style of guitar music named for the activity of manipulating the technology — literally, gazing at the pedals next to your shoes — required to conjure such a swirling sound. The band is also famous for disappearing: After releasing its second album, “Loveless,” in 1991, it was mostly inactive for nearly 20 years, as rumors of a follow-up swelled and dispersed. After reuniting to perform live, the band surprised everyone in 2013 with “m b v,” a new record that appeared online in the middle of the night with no advance notice, instantly crashing the band’s website as fans swarmed to download it.

NYTIMES

Commute

The word commuter derives from early days of rail travel in US cities such as New York, Philadelphia, Boston and Chicago, where, in the 1840s, the railways engendered suburbs from which travellers paying a reduced or ‘commuted’ fare into the city. Later, the back formations “commute” and “commuter” were coined therefrom. Commuted tickets would usually allow the traveller to repeat the same journey as often as they liked during the period of validity: normally, the longer the period the cheaper the cost per day.[2]


Wikipedia