Remember that time I said English wasn’t one of those languages with a different word for every specific thing? And then remember the times I’ve pointed out that there really aren’t any rules governing English? Good, because even though English uses noun phrases instead of minting new words…it also works exactly the opposite. English speakers… Continue reading

Usually when an English word appears only in local dialects for part of its history, that’s the earlier part of its story. But sometimes a widely-used word disappears from general use only to survive locally. That’s the case with “ken,” which had quite a list of meanings back in the day, but since the beginning… Continue reading

Quite frankly, it’s not immediately clear why “frankly” should mean open and honest. It has nothing to do with a truthy guy named Frank, after all.  The word arrived in Middle English somewhere near 1300 from the French “franc,” which at the time did not yet have to do with monetary currency. Instead, in both… Continue reading

You may have seen a brand of wine called “Inglenook.” You may have heard of Inglenook, California — which, by the way, is not where Inglenook Wine is produced. You may have heard of Inglenook, Pennsylvania, which also doesn’t produce any wine. There’s even a logic puzzle called “inglenook sidings;” the puzzle is to shuffle… Continue reading

I bet you didn’t know that if you have trouble determining your own ubication, you might not be in possession of a strong viatic urge.  “Ubication” and “viatic” are at least obscure and probably obsolete words, but they go together pretty well. “Viatic” means anything related to travel. “Viatic” has the same root as “via,”… Continue reading

Old English isn’t so much an older version of English as a completely different language. It was much more completely Germanic than modern English is completely anything. Nobody knows quite how old it is, but it died out over a thousand years ago. Although it’s one of the main sources of modern English, it operates… Continue reading

A “tinker” is (or was) an itinerant craftsman who would travel from village to village fixing metal utensils — pots, pans, kitchen knives, and the like. They were generally held in pretty low repute, and tended to be ready targets for derision.  The profession is obsolete nowadays (nobody mends metal utensils; we just buy new… Continue reading

As everybody knows, a “blizzard” is a great big snow storm. What everybody may not know is that “blizzard” is a made-up word. In 1870 there was a great big snow storm in Estherville, Ohio, of all places. It was a late-season storm that happened on March 14. It was evidently quite an impressive storm,… Continue reading

A “dialog” (also spelled “dialogue”, should you be playing Scrabble and need the extra points) is a conversation, generally between two people. It’s from Greek, and made up of “dia” (through) and “logos” (to speak). It was a single word even in Greek though: “dialogos.” It entered Latin “dialogus” and Old French “dialogue,” where it… Continue reading

In February, 1900, the Evening Gazette in Reno, Nevada, explained the origin of the term “honkytonk:” “Every child of the range can tell what honkatonk means and where it came from. Away, away back in the very early days, so the story goes, a party of cow punchers rode out from camp at sundown in… Continue reading