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

It’s not easy to compile a reference work like a dictionary, encyclopedia, or even a more topical work that provides information about, say, music, or wine. It seems like whenever there’s a task that’s inherently difficult, somebody will try to take a shortcut. And with something like a reference book, the easiest shortcut of all Continue reading

The people who spoke Old English didn’t have clocks. At least not in the way we think of clocks today, as reliable, consistent devices that tell us precisely what the hour and minute is. Nevertheless, they did understand punctuality. They had a word for it: “seely.” You can even tell that being seely was a Continue reading

Every once in a while the word “spelunking” shows up. It means “exploring caves,” which is something done by a “spelunker.” It seems pretty strange; there’s really nothing about crawling around inside caves that would suggest a word like “spelunking.”  The modern English word “spelunker” is relatively new; it appeared in the 1940s, and seems Continue reading

You hear a lot these days about the “gig economy.” It’s the idea that fewer people can find traditional jobs where you have a particular employer who pays you a fairly predictable amount, so they find more temporary ways to earn money. These often involve acting as independent contractors instead of employees. In a “gig 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