Pylimitics

Let’s talk about “proper English.” English is not a centrally-managed language; it’s a dynamic set of conventions, and for the most part as long as you can make yourself understood, it works. But there’s also a set of social assumptions associated with how you use English; an assumption (that’s drummed into many of us in… Continue reading

If you know someone named Abigail or Andrew, you might want to think twice about whether to share this with them. Those names, you see, have in the past been used to mean different things.  Starting in the 1600s – or possibly earlier – an “abigail” was a maidservant. Nobody is quite sure how this… Continue reading

A word you find once in a while — it seems to be falling in popularity — is recherché. If you want to point out that something is rare, refined, and sought out with great care, while simultaneously implying that you yourself are refined and elegant (and quite possibly a bit pretentious), you’d describe the… Continue reading

These days it’s a fairly low-level hacker exploit to open and read emails intended for somebody else. That sort of thing used to be a bit more difficult, at least in terms of physical skills.  The way you’d protect a document a couple millennia ago was to apply a seal, probably made of molten wax… Continue reading