Monthly Gleanings: December 2006
Anatoly Liberman’s Monthly Gleanings.
Kissing and Dying Under the Mistletoe, With The Holly Thrown in for Good Measure
Anatoly Liberman weekly column.
Attaboy!
Or, The Male-Intimate Affectionate Overtones Questions
Anatoly Liberman looks at the origins of the phrase “Attaboy!”
Actually, Like Cures Like (?)
Anatoly Liberman looks at filler words, like and you know.
Monthly Gleanings: November, 2006
Anatoly Liberman answers some questions readers have submitted.
Etymological folklore
or: a few subdued thoughts on hullabaloo
Superstitions, unlike knowledge, spread quickly. Students’ spelling breaks every instructor’s heart, and we ask ourselves the question: How did so many people from all over the country, come to the unanimous conclusion that occurrence should be spelled occurance? It is, I believe, a huge conspiracy.
James A. H. Murray At First Hand
Anatoly Liberman’s weekly column.
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.
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.
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 Tongue Between the Teeth,
Or, The Oddest English Spellings (Part 4)
By Anatoly Liberman It is easy to get used to certain conventions. No characters exist for the initial consonants of the English words shin, chin, and thin, and at an early age we learn that two letters are needed to render them in spelling. In Part 3 of the series “The Oddest English Spellings,” I compared shelf, […]
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.