A couple of thousand years ago — well, more than that really — the young people of Greece were notorious for wearing their hair quite long. There was even a Latin word for this: “acersecomes,” which simply meant “a long-haired youth.”  “Acersecomes” is Latin, but it comes from the Greek roots “kome” (hair, particularly the Continue reading

Here are three interesting words you don’t see every day: “selmelier,” “panjandrum,” and “octothorpe.” The first is a protologism, but not the other two. Those used to be neologisms, but aren’t any more. A “protologism” is a word that somebody coins — maybe for a particular purpose, maybe in the hope that it will become Continue reading

English borrows from every language it encounters. Most English words, of course, can be traced back to European languages, either from the south (think the ones related to Greek and Latin) or the north (Germanic). But English also has words that come from, of all languages, the Aztecs. This is a bit surprising because Aztec Continue reading

English does some inconsistent tricks when it comes to numbers. After ten is “eleven” and “twelve”, but then a sequence of “-teens”. So why isn’t “eleven” called something like “oneteen” and twelve “twoteen”? You can find the first clue by checking out the various non-metric measurement systems used (also inconsistently) in English-speaking countries. One foot, Continue reading

A “bozo,” as lots of people in the US know, is a person who’s not regarded as the most competent or capable of the bunch. Some of this comes from the character “Bozo the Clown.” Bozo was created in the 1940s as a character in a children’s book and a record album kids could listen Continue reading

English adopts new words regularly, and it also adopts new meanings for existing words. Sometimes these new meanings are metaphorical applications of the original definitions, and sometimes…well, not. Have a look: If you’re “on tenterhooks” (it’s not “tenderhooks”), you’re anxiously waiting for something. But a “tenterhook” was an actual hook — they were spaced along Continue reading

Pick up a copy of the 2002 “New York Times Everyday Reader’s Dictionary of Misunderstood, Misused, and Mispronounced Words” and you’ll find that the author described it thusly: “This is not a succedaneum for satisfying the nympholepsy of nullifidians.”  A “succedaneum” can be a substitute for “substitute.” It’s derived from the Latin “succedaneus,” which is Continue reading

In quite a few movies about 20th century US mobsters, the term “vigorish” pops up. It’s the interest you have to pay weekly if you owe money to a loan shark or mobster. It’s never all that clear what the interest rate might be, but it’s always absurdly high. If you borrow $1000 — which Continue reading

The word “hiatus”, which is borrowed directly from Latin, originally meant a gap or opening. That is, a physical gap, like a hole or even a chasm or canyon. That’s how Richard Burthogge used it in 1675: “He saw two Openings or Hiatus in the Earth.” Even Ben Franklin used it, in the December 15th edition of Continue reading

When you “migrate,” you’re moving from one place to another. If you do that, you might be called a “migrant.” On the other hand, geese migrate annually, but I’ve never heard of “migrant geese.” If you migrate in order to go where a particular kind of job is to be found, you might be called Continue reading