You’ll often see the word “caucus” in news stories that have to do with the US Congress — the “Republican caucus,” the “Democratic caucus” — and sometimes a senator or representative who’s independent will be described as “caucusing” with one party or the other.  The word is part of the trade jargon of US politics,… Continue reading

“Books” were, once upon a time, created as scrolls rather than sets of bound pages (technically called “codexes”). Scrolls have a lot going for them; they can be of any length, and they don’t present any of the issues created by having to shift from one page to the next when you’re reading, or for… Continue reading

The original meaning of “parasite” in English was someone who weasels their way into the retinue of a wealthy and/or powerful person and stays there by constant, shameless flattery. That is, somebody who’s unrelentingly gnathonic. At this point you might not entirely appreciate that clarification, since “gnathonic” is so obscure that it’s practically unknown. At… Continue reading

A marmot is a small to medium-sized rodent, and in addition to there being an actual animal called a marmot, it’s also sometimes used as a name for a whole family of animals first described in the 1700s by Carl Linnaeus. The formal name of the family is “sciuridae,” which is simply the Latin word… Continue reading

You might think that physical aspects of the Earth’s geography would have names as old as anything in English. But there are some geographic features with names that aren’t as old as you might think.  “Volcano,” for example, is a word that dates back only to the 1600s. Its first eruption into English was in… Continue reading

In the 1840s in England, the economy went a bit nuts. What was going on had to do with a technology bubble. The technology at the time was the steam train, and everybody wanted to jump into the frenzy by creating a startup company, hiring on some engineers, and selling stock. (Stop me if any… Continue reading

It’s common in the computer industry to hear about a feature, function, or attribute being “deprecated.” That means the deprecated thing is being phased out or eliminated. This seems to come from 1990, in a Request for Comments document (an “RFC”) that suggested “In order to better prepare implementors for future changes … a new… Continue reading

Here is a scene that’s ironic in a way that’s not obvious. “The general surveyed the wide, grassy plain where his army had just won the final battle in a long series. He sipped a glass of champagne in relief and celebration.”  The question is, what’s ironic about that? Is it the general’s relief? Is… Continue reading

A “gauntlet” is a kind of glove. Originally it was a reinforced glove that was the part of medieval armor that protected the hand. Even today a “gauntlet” would usually be a glove of the larger, sturdier sort. But gauntlets weren’t just used for protection. A gauntlet might have been thrown down to signal a… Continue reading