Egyptians are thought as the people who made and used tables instead of putting food on the stone board in the early time. They began to serve their meals but not sit there and the basic form of table came out as they placed food and drinks on a large platform with stand. In spite of this, they also used a variety of small tables for playing. Another group of people who created early tables were Chinese but they used the table for arts, like writing calligraphy or painting.
Table is generally translated as “zhuozi”(in characters 桌子) in Mandarin Chinese. The first syllable in this word carries the first tone in Mandarin tonal system and functions as the meaningful root. Interestingly, modern Mandarin has gone through a process of disyllabification, thus zi, not carrying any significant meaning, only works as a suffix to satisfy the requirement of a word being disyllabic. Many other Chinese words have the same construction, for example, chair in Mandarin is “yizi”, in which it is also the first syllable carries the content meaning and the second syllable only serves as a dependent morpheme.
The evolution of language affected this word as well. Words such as tablet and its derivate tabloid became integral parts of Modern English describing things very differently from the original objects. In present-day, tablet usually means an electronic device, and less often it is used to describe -based boards to write or draw on. A tabloid is a or a magazine of questionable quality of its contents. Both of their names are based on the word table but the modern use has very sharp contrasts. Despite the modern nature of electronic gadgets, the word tablet appeared in the 13th century, meaning “slab or flat surface for an inscription” (OED). It was originated from Old French tablete that described a small table or some counter. The modern meaning is based on the physical similarity of a gadget with ancient tablets that looked like flat thin surface for writing. Tabloid was created from tablet and suffix –oid, from Greek. Before the 20th century, it was used to describe (figuratively) some compressed dose of something. Later, by the 1910s, it was used to describe compressed news.The phrase “tabloid journalism” was coined in 1901 by Alfred C. Harmsworth from the “London Daily Mail.” (OED). Modern tabloids have a reputation of yellow press that produces rather questionable news, based on rumors, scandals, and other similar materials.
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