If you’re an actor in a play, you probably do a lot of rehearsing. There might even be a funeral scene in the play you’re rehearsing, and one of the sets might include a hearse. If you’re rehearsing with a hearse, you’re working with two words that seem like they’d be completely different, but are Continue reading

The word “thrift” is a good example of how English meaning shifts over time. “Thrift” comes from the word “thrive” with the addition of the suffix “-t.” Adding the “t” was a way in Germanic languages (such as Old English) to form a noun from a verb. It’s the same addition that produced “gift” from Continue reading

Copyright claims in the early 21st Century are absurd enough that they really don’t hold up to any reasonable analysis. You — yes, you personally — can easily have removed virtually any video or posting that’s been uploaded to a centralized service like YouTube or Instagram. All you have to do is file a claim Continue reading

In 1624, William Bedell published a book with the riveting title “Copies Certaine Letters.” In it he posed a question, which has echoed down the centuries since, “Who were these quidams that laid hands on Scory?” A couple of hundred years later, in 1832, the London Times pointed out that “If the doctrine of our English quidams be right, Continue reading

When you’re exploring a vegetable garden, you might note that most of the produce is edible. You’d be in good Latin company if you did; “edible” comes directly from the Latin “edibilis,” and in both Latin and English it means something you can eat. But you might, of course, have accidentally stumbled into an 18th-century Continue reading

If you place things diagonally, for example on the opposite corners of a four-way intersection, it’s sometimes said that those things are “kitty corner” to each other. Most people seem to know what that means, but hardly anybody knows why “kitty corner” came to have that meaning.  It all started with dice. People have used Continue reading

More than one child? That’s “children”. Add another ox and you have “oxen”. But a “chicken” is just a single one. What’s going on, besides another run-of-the-mill bit of inconsistency in the world’s most inconsistent language? First the use of “-en” to pluralize a word. That goes back to Old English, where “-en” was commonly Continue reading

Summer the time of year when you can see butterflies. But what’s with the “butter” in “butterfly”? Butterflies aren’t drawn to butter; they alight on flowers. It’s regular non-butter flies that would prefer butter.  It could be that “butterfly” is “flutter by” slightly mixed up, like a young child might. After all, butterflies definitely do Continue reading

When you’re considering a choice involving different alternatives, you can be said to be “weighing your options.” “Weighing” in this context means pondering or thinking over carefully. If you take that idea, that “weighing” is “considering,” and you go back a few centuries to when English took a look at Latin and saw a vulnerable Continue reading

“That neighborhood is going to the dogs” means that it’s deteriorating. It doesn’t have anything to do with real dogs; it’s the equivalent of saying “that neighborhood is going to rack and ruin,” which, again, doesn’t have anything to do with an actual rack.  In the case of “rack and ruin,” though, “rack” is really Continue reading