When someone “waffles,” they’re not cooking a breakfast pastry. Well, I suppose they could be, but generally that’s called “making waffles” instead. In the US, “waffling” is vacillating or dithering about a decision. Should you buy the blue shirt? It’s a nice color, but the pattern on the red shirt is nicer. So maybe you… Continue reading

From 1951 to 1960 there was a BBC radio comedy called The Goon Show. It was a half-hour show starring Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, and a name you’ve heard before, Peter Sellers. Each episode featured comedy skits (like Saturday Night Live), generally with weird plots and goofy sound effects. The Goon Show was vastly popular,… Continue reading

In many books — the old kind, actually printed in real ink on real paper — there’s a page near the end that tells you some things about the book itself. Sometimes it lists the typefaces used, occasionally the paper, and maybe even some of the people involved in creating the book, such as the… Continue reading

The people exploring and populating the North American frontier between about 1780 and about 1840 weren’t just boldly going into the physical wilderness. They were blazing new linguistic trails as well; quite a number of new English words originated around that time and place. Many of them were multisyllabic and somewhat fanciful. A couple of… Continue reading

There are cars powered by gasoline, and they have engines. Then there are cars powered by electricity, and they have motors. A hybrid car, of course, has both a gas engine and an electric motor. The difference can’t just have to do with the fuel, because if you have a small boat, you can attach… Continue reading

If you were out and about around the 1770s and you encountered someone with a high-pitched, shrill voice, you might remark to a companion that there, forsooth, was a fellow afflicted with oxyphony.  “Oxyphony” is a compound word made up of “oxy”, which means sharp or acidic, and “phone,” which means tone or sound. The… Continue reading

Like the word “good,” “bad” has a very long history. Nobody knows quite where it came from. If it existed in Old English, it didn’t have exactly the same form, but there are several OE words that it might have come from. The first is not exactly a “word” at all; it’s the name “Badda.”… Continue reading

The word “noggin” has a longer history than you might expect for a slang term for your head. When the word is used today, it’s used the way it appeared in Landfall in 1951: “Thanks, chum,’ said Vic, ‘You used your noggin.’” Roald Dahl used it, too, in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar: “Of… Continue reading

The names “John Doe” and “Jane Doe” are placeholders used in legal documents to represent people whose names are either unknown or can’t be revealed. There’s a word for placeholders like that: “kadigan.” And there are other kadigans besides Jane and John.  Blackacre is a kadigan for a piece of property, like an acre of… Continue reading

At various times and places throughout history, it’s been difficult to get your hands on whatever passed for “official” money. It could have been because there just wasn’t any such thing at the time, or because there just wasn’t a means for manufacturing whatever it was supposed to be — often, but not always, metal… Continue reading