It’s all the same to us now, but more than a thousand years ago, Old English imported the Old Norse word “same.” It’s a word you probably use every day, but I’ll bet you wouldn’t have predicted that its actual definition is pretty long. It starts out “the ordinary adjectival and pronominal designation of identity…”… Continue reading

If you stop and think about a common, everyday expression, sometimes what you think is that it makes no sense. For example, by and large means “generally” or “for the most part.” The phrase has been around at least since the early 1700s (“Tho’ he trys every way, both by and large, to keep up with… Continue reading

It’s pretty conventional, in mainline western-civilization thinking at least, to have a high regard for the combination of knowledge and judgment we’d call “wisdom.” In fact, if you were to rate English words by their positive connotation for most people, “wisdom” would probably come out somewhere near the top of the list. At least so… Continue reading

Quite a long time ago — about a thousand years, in fact — if you lived in the British Isles and did something foolish, you’d be called “dusilec,” or “dyslíc.” That’s a word that’s been obsolete for quite a long time too, so long that even one of its derivatives doesn’t make sense to us… Continue reading

When someone “waffles,” they’re not cooking a breakfast pastry. Well, I suppose they could be, but generally that’s called “making waffles” instead. In the US, “waffling” is vacillating or dithering about a decision. Should you buy the blue shirt? It’s a nice color, but the pattern on the red shirt is nicer. So maybe you… Continue reading

From 1951 to 1960 there was a BBC radio comedy called The Goon Show. It was a half-hour show starring Spike Milligan, Harry Secombe, and a name you’ve heard before, Peter Sellers. Each episode featured comedy skits (like Saturday Night Live), generally with weird plots and goofy sound effects. The Goon Show was vastly popular,… Continue reading

In many books — the old kind, actually printed in real ink on real paper — there’s a page near the end that tells you some things about the book itself. Sometimes it lists the typefaces used, occasionally the paper, and maybe even some of the people involved in creating the book, such as the… Continue reading

The people exploring and populating the North American frontier between about 1780 and about 1840 weren’t just boldly going into the physical wilderness. They were blazing new linguistic trails as well; quite a number of new English words originated around that time and place. Many of them were multisyllabic and somewhat fanciful. A couple of… Continue reading

There are cars powered by gasoline, and they have engines. Then there are cars powered by electricity, and they have motors. A hybrid car, of course, has both a gas engine and an electric motor. The difference can’t just have to do with the fuel, because if you have a small boat, you can attach… Continue reading

If you were out and about around the 1770s and you encountered someone with a high-pitched, shrill voice, you might remark to a companion that there, forsooth, was a fellow afflicted with oxyphony.  “Oxyphony” is a compound word made up of “oxy”, which means sharp or acidic, and “phone,” which means tone or sound. The… Continue reading