When you’re feeling “in the pink”, that means you’re in excellent health and feeling fine. In his 1923 novel Inimitable Jeeves, P.G. Wodehouse used it this way:  “‘I am in excellent health, I thank you. And you?’ ‘In the pink. Just been over to America.’”  The first one to use “pink” in this sense was… Continue reading

In 1931, the Commission internationale de l’éclairage (International Commission on Illumination or “CIE”), created the CIE 1931 XYZ Color Space. It’s a way of plotting colors by their wavelengths in the visible (to humans) spectrum, and is still in use as the basis for describing (and matching) specific colors when you’re working with, say, ink,… 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

English is sort of a sponge among languages. English words are borrowed from just about all other languages. “Sponge,” by the way, comes originally from Greek — except for the “sponge” that’s the heel part of a horseshoe; that comes from the Latin word for a supporting frame, like a bedframe. That’s what they’re talking… Continue reading

“Gruel,” which you often read about in old stories about unfortunate waifs in nineteenth-century orphanages, turns out to be a catchall term for various kinds of broth. It could be anything from boiled oatmeal to thin soup. It was served in orphanages, and also to people suffering from various illnesses. But “gruel” is a light,… Continue reading

If languages can be said to have sizes, English is clearly one of the jumbos. Maybe the biggest, largest, greatest, most enormous, sizable, grandest, most immense, massive, gigantic, grand, and generous jumbo of them all. It’s got hundreds of thousands of words, after all. One way it got so big is by having multiple words… Continue reading

I usually write about words that are hard to find, and sometimes about words that are interesting in some unusual way. But I hardly ever mention words that don’t exist at all. But as you might guess — well, OK, maybe you wouldn’t guess because why would you even be thinking about it — regardless,… Continue reading

Most people know that when something is “unilateral” it applies to one side only. If an agreement is unilateral, it’s not really an agreement because only one side has agreed. There can also be unilateral disarmament, unilateral decisions, and so on.  The word is derived from the Latin word “unilateralis,” which in turn was assembled… Continue reading

It’s either an idiosyncrasy of English, or possibly of human nature: the only way to arrive at being “amok” appears to be by running. It’s been like that ever since the 1600s: “Like a raging Indian..he runs amucke (as they cal it there) stabbing every man he meets.”  The word comes from Malaysia. When the… Continue reading

Hot is hot and cold is cold, and in the middle is “warm.” If you’re talking about certain things (a day or a slice of toast for example), “warm” is a word you’d be likely to use. But other things (for some reason, liquids; water or milk) you might use “lukewarm” even though they could… Continue reading