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The Oddest English Spellings

Anatoly explores the history of spelling with the letter w.

Not All That is Paltry is Trivial

Anatoly wonders why we double up on names in certain words.

Women Who Walk Heavily or Too Much

By Anatoly Liberman In olden days women were supposed to be sweet, docile, and, if possible, incorporeal. On the other hand, men, subject to the universal law of contrasts, threw their weight about, and, once they “arrived,” demonstrated corpulence. They invented countless offensive words referring to women’s way of walking.

Still in the Bottleneck, or, Chasing for the First Fiasco

Anatoly examines the origin of the word fiasco.

How the Protocharlatan Escaped Justice

This story might be titled “Some Words Have a Reputation to Live Up To,” (Part Two). While tracing the convoluted history of ‘charade’, I promised to devote some space to ‘charlatan’. The element ‘char-‘ unites them, and in scholarly works they have frequently been mentioned in one breath.

Monthly Gleanings

Anatoly answers questions posed in March.

Some Words Have A Reputation To Live Up To

It is not fortuitous that many words like ‘puzzle’, ‘conundrum’, and ‘quiz’ are themselves puzzles from an etymological point of view. They arose as slang, sometimes as student slang, and as we don’t know the circumstances in which they were coined, our chances of discovering their origin is low.

Wild Honey With and Without Locusts

Two opposite forces act on the brain of someone who sets out to trace the origin of a word. To cite the most famous cases, coward is supposedly a “corruption” of cowherd and sirloin came into being when an English king dubbed an edible loin at table (Sir Loin). Such fantasies have tremendous appeal.