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Title cover of "Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President from Washington to Trump" by Edwin L. Battistella, published by Oxford University Press

Doppelganger names

We often think of personal names as specific to an individual, and sometimes they are. Yet often they are not. After all, the same individual may go by more than one name.

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Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman

The words we use

The town where I live has a good newspaper. From time to time, it gives advice to its readers for avoiding language mistakes and for speaking correct English.

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Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman

A vicious beehive

I have “sauntered,” I have paid some respect to “lust” (see the previous two posts), and now I am ready “to cringe.” The most interesting part of today’s story is not even the origin of the verb cringe but the multitude of words, possibly related to it and explaining nothing.

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Title cover of "Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President from Washington to Trump" by Edwin L. Battistella, published by Oxford University Press

What I learned from reading Harlan Ellison

When I was in high school, I went through a Harlan Ellison phase. Ellison, who died in 2017, was a prolific science fiction and screenwriter and the author of such stories as “‘Repent, Harlequin!’ Said the Ticktockman,” “I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream,” and “A Boy and His Dog,” as well as the celebrated Star Trek episode “The City on the Edge of Forever.”

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Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman

Cringing with dignity, or the crux of the matter

I have “sauntered,” I have paid some respect to “lust” (see the previous two posts), and now I am ready “to cringe.” The most interesting part of today’s story is not even the origin of the verb cringe but the multitude of words, possibly related to it and explaining nothing.

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Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman

The four-letter word lust

Years ago, I wrote about our four-letter words, and the comments were, as could be expected, numerous. Incidentally, the origin of those words is nether too interesting nor (in at least one case) too complicated. Lust is not l*** or l**t, and one can speak about it, without hurting anyone’s sensibilities.

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Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman

Speaking in and about tongues

First of all, let me thank those who commented on the previous posts and said so many kind words about the blog. Invigorated by this support, I am ready to ask the greatest question that should bother a philologist: Why is the tongue called tongue?

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Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman

Sauntering is hard work

To saunter “to walk in a leisurely way, stroll” is a verb, famous for its etymological opacity. It is instructive and a bit frustrating to read the literature on this word, published between roughly 1874 and 1910, though a few amusing notes in my collection antedate the eighteen-seventies.

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Title cover of "Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President from Washington to Trump" by Edwin L. Battistella, published by Oxford University Press

What to do with too many books?

A while ago, my wife and I had some work done on our house, which entailed packing up a half-dozen bookcases until the work was done. We took the opportunity to sift through our books and to decide what we no longer needed. Deciding what to keep and what to let go of was a delicate negotiation. But equally tricky was deciding what to do with books we no longer needed.

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Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman

The salt of the earth and salt in a saltcellar

First of all, my thanks to those who commented on the previous posts. Don’t miss the note about the ancient Romans’ view of babies on the father’s knee and the suggestion that the idiom to pull one’s leg may be of nautical origin.

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Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman

On a limb

One can teach an advanced course on etymology, while climbing up the leg, ant-wise. On foot we reach the territory of Indo-European, but it is not every day that an English word finds itself in such respectable company.

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Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman

From meaning to moaning

Few people realize how troublesome the word mean is. We have mean as in meaning (“what do you mean?”); mean “ignoble, base” (as in such a mean fellow), and mean, as in the meantime and meanwhile.

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Title cover of "Dangerous Crooked Scoundrels: Insulting the President from Washington to Trump" by Edwin L. Battistella, published by Oxford University Press

Slow down your writing

Sentences that are clear in our heads may be less clear when they come out of our mouths. When we talk, we get feedback from our audience or conversational partners. We observe facial expressions and body language. People may ask for clarification when something is not clear or they may correct us when we misspeak. Understanding is never perfect, but it’s doable in many face-to-face instances. On the page or the screen, it’s a different story.

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Title cover of "Origin Uncertain: Unraveling the Mysteries of Etymology" by Anatoly Liberman

A dictionary dance around Hag

As usual, I’ll begin with a comment on the letters I have received. I never wrote that too few queries about words of unknown origin were coming my way: I complained that a stream of letters addressed to Oxford Etymologist had in principle become a trickle.

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