A “hypocorism” is a pet name or familiar name. “Jimmy” for “James” or “Betty” for “Elizabeth.” “Hypocorism” probably needs a pet name of its own. It’s one of the rarest words in English (and that’s saying something). It was included in the 1899 edition of the OED, and classified as “rare” even then. The OED,… Continue reading

Some writers have contributed enormously to English. Shakespeare, of course, is the one everybody thinks of. John Milton added even more words than Shakespeare. And don’t forget about Charles Dickens! Dickens usually wrote about working-class people in 1800s England. His characters were often poorly educated and communicated in slang, and some of what Dickens contributed… Continue reading

It used to be the case that you’d “convince” someone that, for example, apples tasted better than oranges, but you’d “persuade” them to, for example, bring you an apple. That is, “convince” and “persuade” used to have different meanings; you would “convince” someone “of” something, or “that” something was true, and you’d “persuade” someone “to”… Continue reading

Pardon me if this is tedious, but one of the interesting, or possibly maddening, things about the study of rhetoric is its inherent contradictions. Not so much that the rules of rhetoric disagree with one another, but for a field that’s all about improving your communication, it tends to be couched in obscure, hard-to-remember terminology… Continue reading

Avast, me hearties! Every trade, craft, and endeavor that’s complex enough to warrant specialized skills and tools also generates its own jargon, as practitioners invent ways to communicate with one another about things that wouldn’t necessarily mean anything to anyone else. You could make an excellent case that for centuries, the most complex human activity… Continue reading

Everybody has seen maps that use contour lines to show, for example, areas of barometric pressure, temperature, or elevation. That type of illustration is called an “isogram,” from the Greek words “isos” (equal) and “gram” (something written). By the way, the “gram” that’s a weight is from the Latin word “gramma” (a small weight).  There’s… Continue reading

Nowadays if someone is called a “gentleman,, it mostly means they they’re polite. You’d think, since the word “gentle” is part of “gentleman,” that such a fellow would be particularly unlikely to rap you over the head with his walking-stick, or challenge you to a duel of swordplay. But the meaning of “gentle” has changed… Continue reading

If you read “Born With the Dead” by Robert Silverberg, you’ll run across this remarkable passage: “They spoke in fragments and ellipses, in periphrastics and aposiopesis, in a style abundant in chiasmus, metonymy, meiosis, oxymoron, and zeugma; their dazzling rhetorical techniques left him baffled and uncomfortable, which beyond much doubt was their intention.” Each one… Continue reading

Occasionally everyone has a night when they can’t seem to get to sleep. They toss and turn and can’t settle in. They’re “restive.” Or, wait, is that “restless”?  “Restive” has an interesting history, at least for a word (the Tower of London’s history is probably more interesting, but as a cultural landmark, it wouldn’t be… Continue reading

You know, obviously, what “danger” means. But I’ll bet you don’t know what it used to mean!  As you might expect, “danger” is a pretty old word. It entered English in the 1200s, or possibly earlier, and came from Latin. The Latin word it comes from is “dominus,” which means master or lord. The original… Continue reading