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this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2023
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Showerthoughts
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A "Showerthought" is a simple term used to describe the thoughts that pop into your head while you're doing everyday things like taking a shower, driving, or just daydreaming. The best ones are thoughts that many people can relate to and they find something funny or interesting in regular stuff.
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This is complete speculation, but I wonder if the less common inverted title (eg Lake Michigan, River Thames, etc) comes from English's French influence. In French they usually invert the title in this way. For example, what we call the Eiffel Tower, they call the Tour Eiffel.
I just looked it up, so the French use tour for traveling from place to place and a tall thin tower? I obviously don't know French, I wonder if it's from touring (as in travel) small thin buildings.
I did some digging and the two words have different etymologies. So it's a coincidence. English has many words that share the same spelling but have different meanings/etymologies as well. "Fan" for example. For "tour", the "tower" usage comes from the Latin "turrem" which also means "tower", and the "tour" usage comes from the Latin "tournāre" which means "to turn".
That's super interesting, so it sounds like it's just a shortened version of two different words. Words go on such long journeys.