In 1903, J.M.Barrie (author of Peter Pan) wrote “The Little White Bird”, which contains this line “Whom did I see but the whilom nursery governess sitting on a chair in one of these gardens.” “Whilom,” which has pretty much vanished from use in the past century, is — or was — the past version of… Continue reading

Whenever you see an English word beginning with “bi-“, you can be fairly sure that it has something to do with the number two. “Bi-“ comes to English from Latin, although its roots are even older; in Ancient Greek it was “δι-“, and in Sanskrit it was “dvi-“. Even in Latin, “bi-” served the same… Continue reading

Every profession seems to have its own jargon; specialized words for the specialized things that go on in that particular sphere. Sometimes some professional jargon breaks out to become more commonly used. Just about everybody in the US has at least a general idea what a “class action” is, but that was originally limited to… Continue reading

To “capitulate” means to surrender. But to “recapitulate” doesn’t mean surrender again; it means to sum up. So what the heck is up with that?  It all goes back to the original Latin behind “capitulate;” it comes from “caput”, which means head. The diminutive form is “capitulum”, which, being a diminutive, means “little head.” It… Continue reading

It’s pretty common lately in political speech to see the phrase “playing the [x] card”. It’s generally meant as a criticism, meaning that if a politician “plays the gender card” or “plays the race card”, it somehow delegitimizes whatever point they’re trying to make.  The first of these cards to be played appears to have… Continue reading

Heard of jargon? Here’s some cargon In addition to interesting words for parts of automobiles (and wagons), there’s a larger collection of words than you might expect for types of automobiles and wagons. Wagons are included because most of the words for cars originally came from wagons.  Most people know that a “coupe” is a… Continue reading

The famous novelist Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton — he’s famous these days for being a bad novelist — wrote, in 1842,  this line in his most famous novel, Paul Clifford: “If Paul’s comrade laughed at first, he now laughed ten times more merrily than ever. He threw his full length of limb upon a neighbouring sofa,… Continue reading

A sort of old-fashioned cheer — it sounds very British, probably because it is —goes like this: “Hip, hip, hooray!” It’s older than you might think. It was first recorded in an 1803 poem with the title (big surprise here) Hip, hip, hurrah. The poem illustrates one thing, at least – while today we generally… Continue reading

A “soliton” is a special kind of wave. While it appears here and there in publications devoted to quantum physics — because it has to do with quantum or quasiparticle propagation — the word also has to do with other kinds of waves, even the traditional kind you see at the beach. “Soliton” is derived… Continue reading