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It so happened that at the end of this past summer I was out of town and responded to the questions and comments that had accumulated in August and September in two posts. We have the adjectives biennial and biannual but no such Latinized luxury for the word month.
Dangerous derivations and chance coincidences
I was out of town at the end of this past August and have a sizable backlog of unanswered questions and comments. It may take me two or even three weeks to catch up with them. I am not complaining: on the contrary, I am delighted to have correspondents from Sweden to Taiwan.
By Anatoly Liberman
Since I’ll be out of town at the end of July, I was not sure I would be able to write these “gleanings.” But the questions have been many, and I could answer some of them ahead of time.
By Anatoly Liberman
The terrible word slough
Some time ago, in my discussion of English spelling, I touched on the group ough, this enfant terrible of our orthography; slough figured prominently in it.
By Anatoly Liberman
Baron, mark, and concise.
I am always glad to hear from our readers. This time I noted with pleasure that both comments on baron (see them posted where they belong) were not new to me.
Anatoly Liberman responds to this month’s letters. He discusses the hotly contested issue of spelling reform, historical semantics, why words change meaning, the modern usage of the words ‘unique’ and ‘decimate’, ‘agreement the American way’, and explains how university administrators write.
Anatoly Liberman’s etymological thoughts and correspondences for April; regarding ‘old languages and complexity’, the origins of the word ‘brothel’, why ‘selfie’ is not such a new term after all, ‘to whom it may concern’, unintentional wolf puns, and the amusing revenges of time.
By Anatoly Liberman
Beguines.
The origin of Beguine is bound to remain unknown, if “unknown” means that no answer exists that makes further discussion useless. No doubt, the color gray could give rise to the name. If it were not so, this etymology would not have been offered and defended by many scholars.
By Anatoly Liberman
I am impressed. Not long ago I asked two riddles. Who coined the phrase indefatigable assiduity and who said that inspiration does not come to the indolent? The phrase with assiduity turns up on the Internet at once (it occurs in the first chapter of The Pickwick Papers), but John Cowan pointed out that Dickens may have used (parodied?) a popular cliché of that time.
By Anatoly Liberman
Reference works: I received three questions.
(1) Our correspondent would like to buy a good etymological dictionary of English. Which one can be recommended?
By Anatoly Liberman
At the end of December people are overwhelmed by calendar feelings: one more year has merged with history, and its successor promises new joys and woes (but thinking of future woes is bad taste). I usually keep multifarious scraps and cuttings to dispose of on the last Wednesday of the year: insoluble questions come and never go away.
By Anatoly Liberman
Brave and its aftermath.
During the month of November, the main event in the uneventful life of the Oxford Etymologist (in this roundabout way I refer to myself) has been the controversy around the origin of bravus, the etymon of bravo ~ brave.
By Anatoly Liberman
Touch and go. I asked our correspondents whether anyone could confirm or disprove the nautical origin of the idiom touch and go. This is the answer I received from Mr. Jonathan H. Saunders: “As a Merchant Mariner I have used and heard this term for over thirty years.
By Anatoly Liberman
I begin almost every set of gleanings with abject apologies. To err is human. So it is not the mistakes I have made in the past and will make in the future that irritate me but the avoidable and therefore unforgivable slips.
By Anatoly Liberman
My apologies for the mistakes, and thanks to those who found them. With regard to the word painter “rope,” I was misled by some dictionary, and while writing about gobble-de-gook, I was thinking of galumph. Whatever harm has been done, it has now been undone and even erased.