Most people, at least in western cultures, have something in common with super heroes. No, it’s not the obvious thing you’re thinking (you immediately focused on your ability to deliver a wry quip while vanquishing a super villain, I assume). It’s all in your name. In the English tradition — or I suppose the tradition… Continue reading

English has loads and loads of pretentious, stuffy, and even bureaucratic words. But it also has some nifty ones. Like “nifty.” “Nifty” is a casual word for casual use, and it tends to be used in close connection with other casual words. According to the corpus of contemporary American English, the words most often found… Continue reading

Nautical affairs have contributed a huge number of words to English over the centuries. If you define “nautical affairs” broadly enough, that would include ships, sailors’ jargon, and even books and stories set in seagoing contexts.  Patrick O’Brian wrote historical novels set on 18th century British naval ships, so his works certainly qualify. The books… Continue reading

Make no bones about it; the expression make no bones about it comes from soup. Sort of.  Saying “make no bones” about something, nowadays, generally means to talk about something clearly and openly. It’s most recently derived from its opposite: “to make bones,” which is an obsolete expression meaning “to have objections to or difficulty… Continue reading

Strategies for avoiding military services have been around as long as military service. In the 1960s in the US, hiding in Canada was popular, as was (among wealthy families) getting “deferrals” for anything from trumped-up physical ailments like bone spurs to academic responsibilities among some decidedly lacking in real scholarly ambitions. Centuries ago, when military… Continue reading

One thing immediately evident to most visual observers of art, buildings, sculptures — almost anything — is balance; symmetry of composition or construction. If something is too “lopsided,” even if they can’t put their finger on exactly why, many people feel slightly uncomfortable.  What they’re probably even more uncomfortable with is wondering about the origin… Continue reading

A weaver might reasonably accept a commission to create a bit of cloth for someone by a certain date. As the date approached, the weaver might sit at the loom with the deadline looming. But when a weaver is using a loom without any deadline in sight, that’s not called looming. Instead, it’s weaving.  … Continue reading

When an over-played, clichéd song is played yet again, particularly when it cycles around to the tired refrain, unless you’re with a particularly refrained group of people, someone is sure to utter the refrain “how many times do we have to listen to this tune?”  “Refrain” is not exactly a contronym (a word that has… Continue reading

Many have noticed that the language we have available to us isn’t sufficient to convey the things we’re experiencing. There is plenty of warning that humans, at least, are headed straight for a climate-induced apocalypse. But “apocalypse” evokes big, violent, sudden disasters. This is not going to be that, exactly. It’s going to be more… Continue reading

Lots of elements’ names are etymologically interesting. In the upper reaches of the periodic table these days there are elements that can be produced in a laboratory, but have never been observed in nature — usually because they only exist for fractions of a second before their inherent radioactivity disperses them. Elements with the atomic… Continue reading