Pylimitics

In “Great Expectations”, the main character, Pip, has an older sister who’s not the nicest person. At one point she calls Pip “young Rantipole.” This wasn’t a very kind description, because a “rantipole” is a person who’s “wild, disorderly, reckless, or badly behaved.”  The word “rantipole” has been around since the mid-1600s, and nobody is… Continue reading

In the classic holiday TV show “A Charlie Brown Christmas,” Lucy Van Pelt (sitting behind her “5-cent psychiatrist” kiosk)  suggests that Charlie Brown (the patient) might have “pantaphobia.” Once Lucy explains that pantaphobia is “fear of everything”, he enthusiastically agrees. At least with as much enthusiasm as Charlie Brown ever musters.  However, astonishing as it… Continue reading

Nowadays English is the most international of languages. Airline traffic control worldwide is conducted in English, and so is diplomacy, for the most part. But in the 1700s, the most international of languages was French. They didn’t have much use for air traffic control back then, but diplomacy was definitely conducted in French. Diplomacy being… Continue reading

Academic fields of study are generally named by creating a compound word based on Latin or Greek roots. There are the “-ologies,” like “geology,” where the suffix comes from the Greek root “logos,” which means “to speak.” If you’re in one of those fields, you’re qualified “to speak of it.” Then there are the “-onomies,”… Continue reading

Finding mistakes and sloppiness in areas where you reasonably expect some quality control to operate can make you grouchy. Bad-tempered. Cantankerous even. And that’s exactly what happened to “cantankerous” itself. The word seems to have come from the Middle English word “conteckour,” which meant somebody who starts quarrels. It was considered slang for a very… Continue reading