The Sole of the Nation.
Or, The Oddest English Spellings (Part 5)
Oddest English Spellings, Part 5.
Slang and Slang
Anatoly weights in on Slang.
Monthly Gleaning: October 2007
Monthly Gleanings.
The Runners-Up: WOTY
More WOTYs.
Bovvered: Word of the Year
Word of the Year.
Many Happy Returns of the Day
Or, Study Etymology and Live Long
Anatoly Liberman ponders longevity.
Undetermined Scholars Confront Indeterminate Numbers
The Oxford Eytmologist takes on more words.
Stacking the Deck for Dictionaries
Erin McKean reports on weird words.
A project in a nutshell
The Oxford Eytmologist is at it again…
September gleanings: macabre, gully & gulch
Some time ago I received a question about the word macabre. This adjective first appeared in Old French, in the phrase dancemacabre. The story begins with the fresco of the Dance Macabre, painted in 1424 in the Church of Innocents at Paris. The English poet and monk John Lydgate knew the fresco.
The long arm of etymology, or, longing for word origins
Only children and foreigners express their surprise when they discover that the verb long does not mean “lengthen” or that belong has nothing to do with longing. When we grow up, we stop noticing how confusing such similarities of form coupled with differences in meaning are.
Who is Erin McKean?
Totally weird words from Oxford’s word mistress.
Monthly gleanings
On August 23, I appeared on the “Midmorning” show on Minnesota Public Radio. Many of you called in with questions, to some of which I could give immediate answers. But, the origin of several words I did not remember offhand and I promised to look them up in my database. Here are my responses.
Tit for tat, or, a chip off the old block?
Many words resemble mushrooms growing on a tree stump: they don’t have common roots but are still related. I will use few examples, because if you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all. Nothing is known about the origin of cub, which surfaced in English texts only in 1530 (that is, surprisingly late).
The much vilified ain’t
Our egalitarian predilections have partly wiped out the difference between “vulgar” and “cool,” and the idea of being judgmental or appearing better educated than one’s neighbor scares the living daylights out of intellectuals. Dictionaries, we are told, should be descriptive, not prescriptive.
The lost age of innocence
While working on my etymological database, I looked through countless old journals and magazines. I especially enjoyed reading the reviews of etymological dictionaries published in their pages. Some were shockingly abrasive, even virulent; others delightfully chatty and unabashedly superficial.