Methinks ye belike have encountered some of these words of yore; the ilke of which whilom were found in common service, Verily today we find them nigh vanished and nowise spoken any more. Natheless these obsolete terms mayhap find a meet abode in fiction, if you hark to it.  I’d be fain indeed to see Continue reading

It’s autumn, the leaves in New England are spectacular, and it’s probably time to brush up on your color vocabulary. After all, anybody can say “look, a purple cow” — but why do that when you can call it “aubergine”? Or if the cow is blue, how about “azuline”? There are loads of available English Continue reading

A pretty familiar rhyme is “mirror, mirror, on the wall / who’s the fairest of them all.” This comes from the Evil Queen in Snow White (the animated Disney movie version). The original story is a German fairy tale, and didn’t include seven dwarfs (not even Bashful or Doc). But it did include the magic Continue reading

In “Great Expectations”, the main character, Pip, has an older sister who’s not the nicest person. At one point she calls Pip “young Rantipole.” This wasn’t a very kind description, because a “rantipole” is a person who’s “wild, disorderly, reckless, or badly behaved.”  The word “rantipole” has been around since the mid-1600s, and nobody is Continue reading

In the classic holiday TV show “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” Lucy Van Pelt (sitting behind her “5-cent psychiatrist” kiosk)  suggests that Charlie Brown (the patient) might have “pantaphobia.” Once Lucy explains that pantaphobia is “fear of everything”, he enthusiastically agrees. At least with as much enthusiasm as Charlie Brown ever musters.  However, astonishing as it Continue reading

Nowadays English is the most international of languages. Airline traffic control worldwide is conducted in English, and so is diplomacy, for the most part. But in the 1700s, the most international of languages was French. They didn’t have much use for air traffic control back then, but diplomacy was definitely conducted in French. Diplomacy being Continue reading

Academic fields of study are generally named by creating a compound word based on Latin or Greek roots. There are the “-ologies,” like “geology,” where the suffix comes from the Greek root “logos,” which means “to speak.” If you’re in one of those fields, you’re qualified “to speak of it.” Then there are the “-onomies,” Continue reading

Finding mistakes and sloppiness in areas where you reasonably expect some quality control to operate can make you grouchy. Bad-tempered. Cantankerous even. And that’s exactly what happened to “cantankerous” itself. The word seems to have come from the Middle English word “conteckour,” which meant somebody who starts quarrels. It was considered slang for a very Continue reading

In ancient Rome, the common practice was, supposedly, to recline on a couch while you ate dinner. The Vulgate Bible, which was compiled in Latin in the 4th Century CE, includes the verse “novissime recumbentibus illis undecim apparuit.” The word “recumbentibus” means to recline, particularly when you’re reclining at a table. English translations of that Continue reading

Have you ever noticed that the terms for military ranks are pretty inconsistent in terms of how sensible they seem to be? At the extremes, “private” and “general” could be assumed to refer to scope of responsibility. If you’re a “private”, you’re responsible only for yourself (and maybe not even that), while a “general” is Continue reading