Pylimitics

I love it when a plan comes together People have been planning and scheming for a very long time, and for just as long there have been events, circumstances, and other people who have been thwarting those plans. “Thwart” is an extremely old word — one way to tell is that you find versions of… Continue reading

You hear — usually in competing media — about “tabloid journalism” and “the tabloids.” But doesn’t “tabloid” seem like a weird word for a kind of newspaper? It is — and it originally meant something very different. It all started back in 1880 in London. Henry Wellcome started a business with Silas Burroughs: Burroughs Wellcome… Continue reading

An omen is a sign or portent about some future happening. It might be a good omen or it might be a bad omen — the word “omen” is neutral. But if “omen” is neutral, why does “ominous,” which is simply something foretold by an omen, always have a negative connotation? Whatever the reason, this… Continue reading

You go to the post office to mail a letter. Your mail is delivered by a postal worker, who works for the Post Office, and might drive a mail truck. There are publications called things like The New York Post, others called The Daily Mail, and some that cover all the bases like The Post… Continue reading

“Redoubtable” is a bit of an odd word. It looks like it ought to mean somebody or something you doubted before and now you realize you should doubt again. For example, you might expect to use it this way: “in spite of my worry about whether that bridge was safe, I made it across. But… Continue reading

A “schooner” is both a kind of ship and a kind of beer glass. Nobody really seems to know which came first. For that matter, nobody really seems sure where the word came from in the first place.  Mysterious origins aside, serving beer in “schooners” has a fairly complicated history in England. It seems there… Continue reading