Oxford University Press's
Academic Insights for the Thinking World
My studies of medieval literature and folklore made me interested in tricksters, clown, jesters, and all kinds of popular entertainers. At least three essays in the Oxford Etymologist column bear witness to this interest: Clown (August 31, 2016) and Harlequin (September 16 and October 14, 2020).
You may have wondered why so many publishers are announcing pilot projects on open access (OA) publishing. The theme of Open Access Week (October 21-27), Community over Commercialization, hints at the reason
My studies of medieval literature and folklore made me interested in tricksters, clown, jesters, and all kinds of popular entertainers. At least three essays in the Oxford Etymologist column bear witness to this interest: Clown (August 31, 2016) and Harlequin (September 16 and October 14, 2020).
My studies of medieval literature and folklore made me interested in tricksters, clown, jesters, and all kinds of popular entertainers. At least three essays in the Oxford Etymologist column bear witness to this interest: Clown (August 31, 2016) and Harlequin (September 16 and October 14, 2020).
My studies of medieval literature and folklore made me interested in tricksters, clown, jesters, and all kinds of popular entertainers. At least three essays in the Oxford Etymologist column bear witness to this interest: Clown (August 31, 2016) and Harlequin (September 16 and October 14, 2020).
The untold story of how Winston Churchill and the Conservative Party envisioned Britain’s post-war future, as told through the iconography of William Blake’s poem, and Sir Herbert Parry hymn, and how both the Conservative Party and the Labor Party of 1945 were inspired to create radically different visions of Britain’s post-war future based on Blake’s message.
I got a book of New York Times crossword puzzles, edited by Will Shortz, as a gift. I had never been a crossword addict or even an aficionado, but a gift is meant to be enjoyed, so I began working through the puzzles in the evenings as I watched the news.
Over the years, I have discussed the origin of quite a few animal names. Despite my inroads, most of them—from heifer to dog—remain problematic. Yet no word is more enigmatic than cat. Two names for cat dominate the world: either some variant of kat or miu ~ mau (Ancient Egyptian) ~ mao (Chinese).
For most readers of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament, the question of the ancient material forms of the biblical books rarely comes up. When it does, readers tend to imagine the large scrolls made famous by the discoveries around the Dead Sea. Even the Dead Sea scrolls, however, are centuries newer than most of the Hebrew Bible, which may well have been written on different materials and in different formats.
In art, a figleaf is used to barely cover something one isn’t supposed to show in public. I use the term ‘figleaf’ for utterances (and sometimes pictures, or other things) which barely cover for speech of a sort one isn’t supposed to openly engage in. When someone says “I’m not a racist but…” and then […]
First of all, let me apologize for the egregious typo I made in the previous post in Ernest Weekley’s name. This is what comes of being too devoted to every line of Oscar Wilde and his comedy The Importance of Being Earnest.
Dogwhistles are one of the most discussed methods for politicians to play on voters’ racial attitudes in a stealthy manner, although they come in handy for manipulation on other topics as well. The key to a dogwhistle is this hiding of what’s really going on. Broadly speaking, a dogwhistle is a bit of communication with an interpretation that seems perfectly innocent—but which also does something else.
In 1899 a young Jewish woman published a harrowing account of her journey through Germany in 1894, based on Yiddish letters she had written during the journey. Maryashe (Mary) Antin’s travelogue “From Plotzk to Boston” stands out as one of the few detailed contemporary descriptions of a migrant journey from the Russian Empire to America. In the spring of 1894, when she was thirteen years old, Maryashe, together with her mother and sisters, left her hometown of Polotzk in northern Russia to join her father, who had moved to Boston in 1891.
This is the second and last post on Ernest Weekley, an excellent scholar and engaging writer. The “installment” a week ago dealt with the history of Standard English through the eyes of the inimitable Mrs. Gamp.
Many people who are interested in word origins know Ernest Weekley’s English etymological dictionary. I am sorry that we cannot post his photo: for some mysterious reason, all his portraits on the Internet are copyrighted. He wrote many excellent books on English words.
An instructive essay on etymology need not always be devoted to a word going back to the hoariest antiquity. It can also deal with an “exotic” borrowing like coffee, for example.