Pylimitics

In the early 1700s, you could do something — just about anything, apparently — “to the nines.” It would have sounded something like this citation from 1719: “How to the nines they did content me.” “To the nines” meant really good, to the highest point, nearing perfection. Unfortunately people’s ability to do most things that… Continue reading

These days, “paraphernalia” is just another word for “stuff”. Look around you; almost no matter where you are you’ll see some paraphernalia. It wasn’t always this way, you know. Not that humans haven’t tended to surround themselves with the flotsam and jetsam of the acquisitive behaviors they inherited from an ancient line of great apes… Continue reading

Curses, foiled again! Aluminum is a metal we encounter many times per day, which might raise an interesting question: why is it called “aluminium” in England and “aluminum” in the US? It’s not just a matter of an idiosyncratic pronunciation of “aluminum.” In England and the US the spelling shifts to match the pronunciation. It… Continue reading

Most people are generally aware of volts, a measure of electricity named after Alessandro Volta. Another electrical measure is the ohm. That was named after Georg Ohm. And amps, or amperes, are named after André-Marie Ampere. Perhaps you see a pattern here. Measures and standards established in the past two or three centuries are often… Continue reading

There’s something about the color blue that’s a little different from other colors. I’m not sure what it is, but for some reason you can find more weird references to “blue” than any other color. Here are just a few of them. “Blue murder” is an expression from the 1800s that means a cry of… Continue reading