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Academic Insights for the Thinking World
“To me, the history of etymologists’ wanderings reads like a thriller: so many naive and clever suggestions, such a blend of ignorance and ingenuity!” The Oxford Etymologist traverses the history of “broke.”
The Oxford Etymologist details the origin and development of the adjective “clever”.
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.
Some words are so rare that few people know and even fewer study them. Such is “brocard”, the “outcast” subject of today’s blog post from the Oxford Etymologist.
The Oxford Etymologist casts a glance at a book exploring the history of language and its development that is “definitely worth reading.”
Some words don’t interest anyone. They languish in their obscurity, and even lexicographers miss or ignore them. Yet they too deserve to get their day in court. One such word is “cowan.”
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.
A good deal of our scholarship is guesswork, and today’s story deals with the origin and history of the word “guess.”
The Oxford Etymologist’s subject today is the origin of the verb “stink”.
The Oxford Etymologist considers the etymology of the word “peeve.”
The Oxford Etymologist responds to readers comments on his most recent blog post topics.
The Oxford Etymologist responds to readers comments on his most recent blog post topics.
The Oxford Etymologist responds to readers comments on his most recent blog post topics.
The Oxford Etymologist explores the history and development of the verb “flaunt”, “to display ostentatiously,”
The Oxford Etymologist considers feminist perspectives of language development, split infinitives, and the pronoun “they” as discussed in Valerie Fridland’s “Like, Literally, Dude: Arguing for the Good in Bad English.”