The ancient Greek word for “city” is “polis.” The Greek word “polites” (pronounced with three syllables) is derived from “polis” and means “citizen,” and THAT word led to “politikos,” which means “having to do with citizens.” Latin adopted “politikos,” where it became “politicus,” and that led eventually to English (which adopts everything) and “politics.”  The… Continue reading

Before the invention of GPS, before LORAN (a navigation system used before GPS), and even before airplanes had radios at all, if you wanted to fly long distances you might use sightings of the sun in the daytime or the stars at night. But if it was cloudy, you’d need a different system. You’d use… Continue reading

Near the end of the 1500s, a word entered English that was destined for nearly universal and permanent…obscurity. The word would never, in its centuries of (lack of) usage, become anything more than a literary curiosity, used (when it was used at all) mostly to make a joke. The word is “perissology” (told you it… Continue reading

Alfred Tennyson is usually referred to as “Alfred, Lord Tennyson”. He was Poet Laureate of England from 1850 to 1892, the longest stretch anyone occupied the position before or since. He wrote The Charge of the Light Brigade, which is pretty well known, but not very much of his other work is still read. He… Continue reading

You can get a pretty good idea of the functions of a language by examining its words. This is more than that old saw about “Eskimo having 27 words for ‘snow’.” That was probably apocryphal anyway, but I’m not just talking about nouns. The nouns in a language do, of course, give some insight into… Continue reading

When it’s time to teach children the alphabet, in English it goes like this: you learn the names of the letters, then some words that start with those letters. “Ae,” “bee,” cee,” and so on are what English letters are called, of course. Made-up words that generally don’t mean anything else. Learning the alphabet in… Continue reading

For centuries, one of the most powerful weapons available to anyone was some kind of sword. Swords appeared in various forms in all sorts of cultures, and the skill of using a sword for fighting was developed to quite a high level. You’d think, in all those years and among all those experts, that the… Continue reading

Consider the humble “humble.” “Humble” is a word that’s been part of English since about the 1200s, which is a pretty long time. And in those centuries, “humble” has meant some very different things compared to how we use it now. In a sense, it’s the opposite of “proud.”  That meaning is one of a… Continue reading

Up until about the 1970s, a movie that was a goofy, possibly slapstick comedy would be advertised as “zany” and “madcap.” Both of those words are less common in recent decades, but still around.  By coincidence, both words appeared in English around the 1500s, even though that century isn’t generally remembered as a golden era… Continue reading

I love it when a plan comes together People have been planning and scheming for a very long time, and for just as long there have been events, circumstances, and other people who have been thwarting those plans. “Thwart” is an extremely old word — one way to tell is that you find versions of… Continue reading