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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
This essay owes its title to local patriotism. In Minnesota, which has recently become one of the centers of world politics and in which I happen to live and teach, when people move in the direction of the state’s northern border, they often describe their travel as “going up north.” I too am moving in that direction with my heavy burden of words of unknown origin
My studies of medieval literature and folklore made me interested in tricksters, clown, jesters, and all kinds of popular entertainers. At least three essays in the Oxford Etymologist column bear witness to this interest: Clown (August 31, 2016) and Harlequin (September 16 and October 14, 2020).
Quite recently, the Polish linguist Kamil Stachowski has published a paper “On the Spread and Evolution of pudding” (the source is the journal Studia Linguistica Universitatis Iagellonicae Cracoviensis 141, 2024, 117-137).
It is amazing how many synonyms for “fool” exist! It is almost funny that fool, the main English word for “a stupid person,” is not native, says the Oxford Etymologist in this week’s exploration of the origins of fools.
The Oxford Etymologist explores squash, squeeze, and the development of squ- words featuring the infamous s-mobile.
The hero of today’s blog post is the adjective “slow.” No words look less inspiring, but few are more opaque.
The Oxford Etymologist’s subject today is the origin of the verb “stink”.
The Oxford Etymologist looks at the origin of the word “day” and its connections across the Indo-European language world.
Always, let me thank our correspondents for consulting the blog, asking questions, and offering words of encouragement.
At first sight, the origin of the verb “scratch” looks unproblematic… The Oxford Etymologist scratches beneath the surface of “scratch.”
The history of “dude” has been documented with amazing accuracy.
The origin of the word blatherskite ~ bletherskate “foolish talk; foolish talker” is supposedly secure. The Oxford Etymologist investigates…
This is the second and last part of the series on the origin of the word “soul.” The perennial interest in the etymology of this word should not surprise us. It is our inability to find a convincing solution that causes astonishment and disappointment.
Today I’ll try to say something about the verb “see.” Once again, we’ll have to admit that the more basic a word is, the less we know about its remote history.
Nothing is known about the origin of the phrase “Milky Way.” By contrast, the origin of the word “star” is not hopelessly obscure, which is good, because stars and obscurity have little in common.
Words, as linguistics tells us, are conventional signs. Some natural phenomenon is called rain or snow, and, if you don’t know what those words mean, you will never guess. But everything in our consciousness militates against such a rupture between word and thing.