Gloves, gauntlets, and gaunt people
Last week, I finished my story with a brief reference to all kinds of gloves. A few days later, a query came about the word gauntlet.
Unsavory etymologies: dung and its kin
Below, I’ll speak about the amazing history of the word dung “manure.” In broad outline, the story is known, but some details are seldom discussed in dictionaries.
Boots (or rather, shoes) on the ground
Few words are harder to trace to their sources than the names of clothing articles. Those names travel with the things to which they belong, and the sources are easily lost sight of.
I had to look (them up)
When I’m reading or listening to a book, I sometimes find myself momentarily drifting away from what the author is saying and worrying about words and phrases I encounter.
Tarry or hurry?
It is surprising how similar the verbs in the title sound, though they are antonyms: tarry means “to linger, delay,” while hurry refers to haste.
Climate Adaptation – who will we become in a warming world?
Climate change has become an everyday reality. Communities, businesses, and nations are being battered by impacts that would have seemed impossibly apocalyptic a decade ago: unprecedented heat waves, destructive storms, crop failures, floods, and wildfires. Global action to reduce greenhouse gas emissions is too slow, and we are likely to breach 2 degrees Celsius above […]
On big and little foxes
This is a story about how the fox got its name. I discussed the word fox ten years ago (see the post for March 23, 2016), but today I have more to say about the subject.
Supper with an etymologist
It does not require much philological preparation to guess that supper is a word containing the root sup- and the suffix -er. Yet in the days of King Alfred and even much later, the inhabitants of Anglo-Saxon England had no such word.
Gender Justice in these times
Teaching, researching, and writing about gender—about what gender relations could be in a just world if we put the work into imagining that just world into existence—feels a lot like scrabbling uphill over dangerous terrain only to find mountains beyond the mountains we have already scaled.
The kings of etymological rings
It is amazing how many words Indo-European languages have for “supreme ruler; potentate.” In English, the main one is king.
What does environmental change ask of societies?
Environmental change is no longer an abstract concern. It is encountered in daily life, in regional disruptions, and in global debates.
Binomial expressions
Why do we say chicken and egg but never egg and chicken? English has hundreds of these fixed binomial expressions, each following subtle linguistic rules. From Yakov Malkiel’s early studies to the forensic clue that helped catch the Unabomber, binomials reveal how deeply word order shapes meaning.
Brothers and sisters
The readers of this blog may have noticed that I usually try to stay away from the oldest words in English, those with ancient Indo-European roots.
A few etymological pebbles
The readers of this blog must have noticed how often I suggest solutions connected with sound imitation. Time and again I say that a certain noun or verb owes its origin to onomatopoeia.
The level of our expertise: the perplexing verb baffle
What does it mean when a dictionary says: “Origin unknown”? We will soon see that the concept of “unknown” has several levels.
VSI 800: A history in eleven titles
To celebrate the publication of our 800th Very Short Introduction, we’ve put together a timeline featuring our series milestones, from our first Introduction co-authored by famed classicist Mary Beard, all the way to our upcoming introduction to rock ‘n’ roll.