Back in 1596, a guy named Peter Lowe wrote: “The vayne goeth aboue the artier, but not right lyne as other parts doe, but in anfractuosities, like unto a Woodbine.” A woodbine, by the way, is a vine (or “vayne”). What he’s saying, using plenty of words, is that a vine doesn’t grow in a… Continue reading

Many European towns and cities have been around a very long time, and most weren’t planned or designed at all. People just built structures where they wanted to, and where they could. If you’re building a house, the space inside is almost always more important to you than the space outside — unless you’re Frank… Continue reading

The June 18 edition of the New York Daily News in 1896, did a bit of hoity-toity publishing hocus-pocus that could affect you two ways: either you think everything is still hunky-dory or you might get the heebie-jeebies. The line itself was the seemingly innocent: “Instead of humdrum you..have got harum scarum,” but upon closer examination,… Continue reading

“Haiffand ilk werk day ane half hour afor nyne houris afor none to his disjone, and ane othir half hour afor four houris eftyr none to his nunschankis.” That’s a sentence written in Scotland in 1529. Besides being a sort of dreamlike window into the world five hundred years ago, the sentence includes a very… Continue reading

It’s a somewhat puzzling state of affairs. There are quite a few characters and symbols we routinely use in addition to the regular alphabet; things like “@“, “#”, and even the common “*”. These commonly used symbols don’t have consistent names. But there are also many other characters and symbols that are only in use… Continue reading

It’s not in very common use nowadays, but at one time it was pretty common to see or hear phrases like “he’ll be at the race track on Thursday, as is his wont.” That doesn’t mean he “wants” to visit the race track. Even though obviously he does want to, “wont” and “want” are completely… Continue reading

“He was positive, facile, amiable,” wrote Josiah Gilbert Holland in The Story of Sevenoaks in 1876. The question is, what did he mean? “Facile” is a word that’s had quite a number of subtly different meanings over the years. For instance, in 1576 it meant lenient or mild: “he shewed hym selfe gentle and facyle.” Generally a good… Continue reading

As you might know, the earth is not really spherical. Not that it’s flat, of course — but its shape is slightly distorted by the fact that it spins, so it’s an “oblate spheroid” — that is, it’s slightly flattened at the poles. Now, if you read anything about European history in the late Middle… Continue reading

If you’re pressed for time before, say, a presentation or a task, sometimes you just wing it — you improvise, proceed in haste without preparation. That is, you autoschediaze. “Autoschediaze” — which is pronounced with FIVE syllables: aw-toe-ske-di-ez — is the verb form of “autoschediastic.” That word showed up in English from either Greek or… Continue reading

One of the tropes of cowboy movies is the poker game in the saloon. Depending on the movie, the game might show off the skills of the hero, unmask the villain’s fruitless attempts at cheating, or simply provide a way to gather the important characters into one location so that when another important character walks… Continue reading