Like the word “good,” “bad” has a very long history. Nobody knows quite where it came from. If it existed in Old English, it didn’t have exactly the same form, but there are several OE words that it might have come from. The first is not exactly a “word” at all; it’s the name “Badda.”… Continue reading

The word “noggin” has a longer history than you might expect for a slang term for your head. When the word is used today, it’s used the way it appeared in Landfall in 1951: “Thanks, chum,’ said Vic, ‘You used your noggin.’” Roald Dahl used it, too, in The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar: “Of… Continue reading

The names “John Doe” and “Jane Doe” are placeholders used in legal documents to represent people whose names are either unknown or can’t be revealed. There’s a word for placeholders like that: “kadigan.” And there are other kadigans besides Jane and John.  Blackacre is a kadigan for a piece of property, like an acre of… Continue reading

At various times and places throughout history, it’s been difficult to get your hands on whatever passed for “official” money. It could have been because there just wasn’t any such thing at the time, or because there just wasn’t a means for manufacturing whatever it was supposed to be — often, but not always, metal… Continue reading

One of Shakespeare’s famous passages is Hamlet’s concluding speech, which includes the phrase “aye, there’s the rub.” You can tell from the context that what Hamlet means by “the rub” is an obstacle or difficulty of some sort. But without the context — and in fact, without that particular famous passage — how would anybody… Continue reading

You might be served garlic butter in a restaurant. You might have a skin lotion containing shea butter. You might even get some candy made with cocoa butter. But you’d have quite a different experience if you entered surrebutter.  In fact, “surrebutter” doesn’t have anything to do with butter at all. And you’re not going… Continue reading

If you’re an artist, you might hold a “palette” in one hand while wielding your brush with the other. Your paintings could be described as representing a “palette” of colors. Then if you stop painting (and clean yourself up) you might go out to eat, hoping that something on the menu pleases your “palate.” Afterwards,… Continue reading

You measure how wide something is by assessing its width. When you check how long it is, you have its length. Then you measure how tall it is, and you get…height. But not “heighth.”  The “-th” ending comes from Old English. It’s also used in other Germanic languages as a way to change a verb… Continue reading

“He knew … that flight was impossible; that he was tied fast under the shadow of the axe; and that in spite of his utmost tergiversation and treachery in furtherance of the reigning terror, a word might bring it down upon him.” That’s from A Tale of Two Cities by Dickens, and it’s a rare… Continue reading

The incredible two-headed heffalump It’s not unusual for an English word to have quite a few unrelated meanings, or even turn out to be more than one word with the same sound. As you might think, this happens more often with words that have been around for centuries. It’s also more common with simpler one-… Continue reading