In 1710, Jonathan Swift declared that “…our Language is extremely imperfect; that its daily Improvements are by no means in proportion to its daily Corruptions; and the Pretenders to polish and refine it, have chiefly multiplied Abuses and Absurdities; and, that in many Instances, it offends against every Part of Grammar.” He made his declaration… Continue reading

A shipping agent, particularly if employed by a company like UPS, arrives dressed in livery. If you check the license plate on their vehicle, in some cases it says “livery.” “Livery,” which has nothing to do with “liver,” is from the French word “leveré.” It was delivered into English sometime in the 1300s, and has… Continue reading

If you live near (or visit) the ocean, you’ve probably paid at least a bit of attention to the tides. But there are also other kinds of tides, like “Yuletide” for the Christmas season — and those tides came first. Sort of.  “Tide” originally came from German (“tidiz”) and didn’t at first have anything to… Continue reading

There was a sort of dictionary in the late 1500s, the Worlde of Wordes, that included this definition: “Balchi, a..roguish, gibbrish word, vsed for money.” Whatever kind of money “balchi” was has been lost to history, as has the word “balchi”, but the entry did, at least, include one of the first appearances of “gibbrish”. Clearly the… Continue reading

A US-based story or Hollywood film about crime or criminals set in the first two-thirds of the 20th century is pretty likely to include somebody talking about “going on the lam.” What they mean is going on the run from the law; evading arrest. They might also say something like “beat it, the cops are… Continue reading

If something is fine, valid, or acceptable, there are plenty of English words available to communicate that judgement. One of them is “cromulent,” as in “…it’s a perfectly cromulent word.” You don’t hear “cromulent” as much as some of its synonyms, but you might run across it here and there. David X. Cohen, a scholar… Continue reading

Most people know that an “acronym” is a word created from the first letters of a group of different words, like “NASA” (National Aeronautics and Space Administration). The “-nym” part of “acronym” is from the Greek word “onoma,” which means name. The “acro-“ part is also from Greek: “akros” means the top of something.  You… Continue reading

Keeping your nose to the grindstone means continuing to work; paying attention. It actually comes from old grist mills, which had big turning stones for grinding grain into flour. The stones, which were several feet across and weighed tons, had to be adjusted precisely so they ground the grain, but didn’t grind against each other.… Continue reading

Keeping your nose to the grindstone means continuing to work; paying attention. It actually comes from old grist mills, which had big turning stones for grinding grain into flour. The stones, which were several feet across and weighed tons, had to be adjusted precisely so they ground the grain, but didn’t grind against each other.… Continue reading