Some English words exist only as what sound like negative forms, like “incognito.” You never hear about anyone going around “cognito,” after all. But there are also some that were originally positive words, then gained a negative form, then the positive form faded out of use leaving us with only…for example…“ineffable.”  Something that’s “ineffable” can’t… Continue reading

In Hampshire, England, there’s a park called the New Forest that’s not very new at all. It goes back to William the Conqueror (who was in charge 1066-1087), and was a “royal forest.” In the Domesday Book in 1086, it was called “Nova Foresta.” It was used for royal hunts — of deer, for example… Continue reading

Up until about the 1920s, if you were a well-dressed person, you’d often wear “spats” over your shoes. Spats were cloth covers for the tops of shoes, extending up to the ankle. In some accounts, King George V of England was partly responsible for changing the style away from spats; in 1926 he began appearing… Continue reading

Most glass beverage bottles nowadays are molded with screw threads so you can twist the metal cap off with your fingers. But some — particularly beer bottles — still come with metal caps crimped onto the top. Those caps have a name: they’re “crown corks.” They were invented in 1892 in Baltimore, and not only… Continue reading

Flimflam is misleading nonsense. In other words it’s humbug, bunkum, claptrap, poppycock, balderdash, bilge, hooey, malarkey, blatherskite, twaddle, rigamarole. (Hey, I did say “other words.”) But “flimflam” is the word of the day, so we’ll skip the tommyrot and get right to it. It’s an older word than you might guess, dating back to the… Continue reading

When something is “phony” (or, in Commonwealth countries, “phoney”), it’s fake, or if a person, insincere. J.D. Salinger captured it precisely in Catcher in the Rye: “they had this headmaster, Mr. Haas, that was the phoniest bastard I ever met in my life.” There’s a myth that “phony”, probably because it sounds like “phone” as… Continue reading

“I think,” said Corney, “we’d better get him up to bed at once?” “Do what yow like,” replied aunt Ann. “It makes no odds to me: I’ll ha’ nothing to do with him! — I’ll have no truck with a tocksicated man.” If you “have no truck with” someone (or something), that means you want… Continue reading

In 1653, Sir Thomas Urquhart translated The First Book of the Work of Mr. Francis Rabelais. Urquhart was a Scottish aristocrat who was also a writer, but he is most known for his translations of Rabelais. That, and the way he died, of course. When he heard that Charles II had become the king, Urquhart… Continue reading

It’s not uncommon for two sounds in a word to trade places when someone speaks them, saying “aks” for “ask” or “revelant” for “relevant.” It’s common enough that there’s a word for it: metathesis.  Metathesis doesn’t just occur on an individual basis, though; there are words in which sounds have swapped places in the language… Continue reading

It’s probably a good day to talk about eleemosynary activities we all might engage in, possibly by visiting an almonry or even dealing directly with an almoner. What I’m talking about, of course, is charitable acts and donations. “Eleemosynary” comes from the Latin word “eleemosynarius,” which means compassion. It can be traced even further back… Continue reading