Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
The realization started with the word akimbo. I had first learned it as meaning a stance with hands on the hips, and I associated the stance with the comic book image of Superman confronting evildoers. Body language experts sometimes call this a power pose, intended to project confidence or dominance.
The Oxford Etymologist ruminates on the origins and meanings of idioms including “to go to hell in a handbasket.”
Now the dust has settled on another eventful year, it’s time to look back on some of the words that characterised 2022.
The Oxford Etymologist replies to etymology questions from readers.
Women’s history month raises issues of erasure and marginalization, authority and power which, sadly, are still relevant for women today. Much can be learnt from the experience of women in the past.
Today’s post is about the murky origin of the word “limb”.
When linguists talk about prosody, the term usually refers to aspects of speech that go beyond individual vowels and consonants such as intonation, stress, and rhythm. Such suprasegmental features may reflect the tone or focus of a sentence.
Now the dust has settled on another eventful year, it’s time to look back on some of the words that characterised 2022.
The Oxford Etymologist has examined the verbs “begin” and “start.” For consistency’s sake, it is now necessary to say something about the noun and the verb “end.”
Now the dust has settled on another eventful year, it’s time to look back on some of the words that characterised 2022.
The Oxford Etymologist has examined the verbs “begin” and “start.” For consistency’s sake, it is now necessary to say something about the noun and the verb “end.”
The Oxford Etymologist explores the origin of the verb “to start”.
Now the dust has settled on another eventful year, it’s time to look back on some of the words that characterised 2022.
The Oxford Etymologist explores the unfinished story of the word “begin”.
English noun phrases have something called a “temporal interpretation.” That’s linguist-speak for how we understand their place in time relative to the tense of the verb.
In this blog post, the Oxford Etymologist responds to questions from readers on word borrowing across Hebrew, Greek, and Germanic, plus a few new etymology ideas.