Pylimitics

It’s not easy to compile a reference work like a dictionary, encyclopedia, or even a more topical work that provides information about, say, music, or wine. It seems like whenever there’s a task that’s inherently difficult, somebody will try to take a shortcut. And with something like a reference book, the easiest shortcut of all Continue reading

The people who spoke Old English didn’t have clocks. At least not in the way we think of clocks today, as reliable, consistent devices that tell us precisely what the hour and minute is. Nevertheless, they did understand punctuality. They had a word for it: “seely.” You can even tell that being seely was a Continue reading

Every once in a while the word “spelunking” shows up. It means “exploring caves,” which is something done by a “spelunker.” It seems pretty strange; there’s really nothing about crawling around inside caves that would suggest a word like “spelunking.”  The modern English word “spelunker” is relatively new; it appeared in the 1940s, and seems Continue reading

You hear a lot these days about the “gig economy.” It’s the idea that fewer people can find traditional jobs where you have a particular employer who pays you a fairly predictable amount, so they find more temporary ways to earn money. These often involve acting as independent contractors instead of employees. In a “gig Continue reading

You can get a pretty good idea of the functions of a language by examining its words. This is more than that old saw about “Eskimo having 27 words for ‘snow’”. That was probably apocryphal anyway, but I’m not just talking about nouns. The nouns in a language do, of course, give some insight into Continue reading

A couple of thousand years ago — well, more than that really — the young people of Greece were notorious for wearing their hair quite long. There was even a Latin word for this: “acersecomes,” which simply meant “a long-haired youth.”  “Acersecomes” is Latin, but it comes from the Greek roots “kome” (hair, particularly the Continue reading