Up until about the 1920s, if you were a well-dressed man (or, sometimes, woman), you’d often wear “spats” over your shoes. Spats were cloth covers for the tops of shoes, extending up to the ankle. In some accounts, King George V of England was partly responsible for changing the style away from spats; in 1926 Continue reading

Advice to writers: don’t be TOO obscure A good candidate for The Most Obscure Word In English is “asynartisia” — it doesn’t appear in most dictionaries (even gigantic ones), and it seems to have been used only three times ever. That’s not counting the times it appears in online discussions about what the heck it Continue reading

In 1653, Sir Thomas Urquhart translated “The First Book of the Work of Mr. Francis Rabelais.” Urquhart was a Scottish aristocrat who was also a writer, but he is most known for his translations of Rabelais. That, and the way he died, of course. When he heard that Charles II had become the king, Urquhart Continue reading

In 1667 John Milton published “Paradise Lost,” a poem that in its over 10,000 lines included a number of words that Milton had coined just for the purpose. “Paradise Lost” was a runaway bestseller (or what passed for one in the late 1600s at least), and although Shakespeare gets more credit for expanding the language, Continue reading

Most glass beverage bottles nowadays are molded with screw threads so you can twist the metal cap off with your fingers. But some — particularly beer bottles — still come with metal caps crimped onto the top. Those caps have a name: they’re “crown corks.” They were invented in 1892 in Baltimore, and not only Continue reading

Words can have more than one meaning, of course, and sometimes the different meanings are astonishingly different. Take, for example, “patibulary,” a very obscure word derived from the Latin “patibulum.” In Roman times a patibulum was a Y-shaped device that was used to restrain criminals; it was a yoke fastened around their necks in some Continue reading

When you hear about the “Socratic Method,” it almost always refers to a way of teaching.  There may well be Socratic Methods for other things — making souvlaki, arranging your toga into erudite-looking folds, skipping rocks across a pond — but those haven’t generally gotten as much notice. Socrates taught by creating a dialog in Continue reading

When you hear about the “Socratic Method,” it almost always refers to a way of teaching.  There may well be Socratic Methods for other things — making souvlaki, arranging your toga into erudite-looking folds, skipping rocks across a pond — but those haven’t generally gotten as much notice. Socrates taught by creating a dialog in Continue reading

Depending on where you live — not to mention a whole host of other factors — it can take quite some time to schedule an appointment to see a doctor, or to receive treatment for some medical condition. The whole process can be pretty frustrating, and often your only choice is to just be patient. Continue reading

Sometimes words get shorter because people who use them start to leave out sounds or syllables. Take, for example, “pacifist.” Around the turn of the 20th century the word was “pacificist,” as used in the March 4, 1907 edition of the London Times: “Sir H. Campbell-Bannerman’s article…on the limitation of armaments…cannot be said to have Continue reading