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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.
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.
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.
While working on the post about mean and moan, I decided to write something about groan, but I did not realize how far this word would take me.
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.
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.
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.
My sincere thanks to all those who commented on the recent posts. I have never heard about the rule about one day referring only to the future.
Right after the appearance of the post on hag (March 5, 2025), I received a letter with a question about the origin of the word witch.
This is an essay on the word hag, but let me first thank those who have commented on the latest posts, corrected the mistakes, and made suggestions.
Today’s story is about a deadly plant or rather, about its moribund etymology. And yet, when you reach the end, the word’s origin may appear somewhat more transparent, even though the plant will remain as deadly as ever.
As a linguist, I understand that language shifts and changes. The voiced z sound of houses is being replaced by an unvoiced s sound. The abbreviation A.I. has become a verb, as in “He A.I.ed it.” Neologisms abound, tracked by the American Dialect Society, and new words often make us think of things in new ways.
According to an aphorism by Maxim Gorky, he who was born to crawl won’t fly. This is probably true of most other creatures. For instance, English speakers have great doubts about the ability of pigs to fly.
“Colonel Higginson was a man on fire,” read one obituary. “He had convictions and lived up to them in the fullest degree.” The obituary added that he had “led the first negro regiment, contributed to the literature of America, and left an imprint upon history too deep to be obliterated.” Thomas Wentworth Higginson would have been pleased to have been referred to as “colonel.” He was proud of his military service and happily used the title for many decades after the end of the Civil War and up to his death in May 1911 at the age of eighty-seven.
First, my thanks to those who wrote kind words about my most recent essays. Especially welcome was the comment that sounded approximately so: “I understand almost nothing in his posts but always enjoy them.” It has always been my aim not only to provide my readers, listeners, and students with information but also to be a source of pure, unmitigated joy.
I received several questions in connection with my post for January 29, 2025, on the origin of the word eel and decided to answer them right away and in doing will revive the format of “gleanings.”