Pylimitics

If you’re a vegetarian or vegan in 2025, you don’t eat meat. But if you’re a vegetarian or vegan with a time machine who zips back to England about a thousand years ago or more, you’d find yourself eating meat all the time. This isn’t because of a previously undocumented side effect of time machines… Continue reading

“Macro-” is a prefix meaning large or intensified in some way. It comes from the Greek “makro-” (long), which is also the source of the Latin “macer” (lean). Macer itself is the source of the English word “meager,” which, paradoxically, means scanty; not enough. Almost the opposite of “macro.”  There are a great many English… Continue reading

English is changing all the time. That’s why it’s tricky to claim that somebody has used “the wrong word” in a particular case. Nobody decides what English words are supposed to mean — instead, if a word is “commonly” used in a particular way, well, that’s pretty much what it means. More or less. Of… Continue reading

Word of the day: flimflam “Flimflam” is misleading nonsense. In other words it’s humbug, bunkum, claptrap, poppycock, balderdash, bilge, hooey, malarkey, blatherskite, twaddle, rigamarole. (Hey, I did say “other words”.) But “flimflam” is the word of the day, so we’ll skip the tommyrot and get right to it. It’s an older word than you might… Continue reading

In the southern part of England there are areas where the rock underlying most of the hills is white and chalky. The famous white cliffs of Dover are the iconic example, but many hills and meadows around those parts are just as white underneath. This has been known to the residents since prehistoric times, and… Continue reading

“Apo-” is a prefix originally from Greek. In Greek it originally meant “away” or “not part of,” and it’s used in English words from near to far. It’s used in nouns from “apogee” (the highest part of an arc) to “apostrophe” (the punctuation mark that indicates an additional letter is attached to a word but… Continue reading

From Piglet to Wilbur to Babe to Animal Farm, pigs play a certain minor (possibly mid-range) role as characters in English writing. Pigs have been domesticated for many centuries, and they’ve entered the language as well.  The thing is, most pig-related words and idioms aren’t particularly kind to the pigs. The word “hogwash,” meaning nonsense,… Continue reading

If a Hollywood studio makes a war movie set in, say, World War II, there’s sure to be some flak involved as anti-aircraft guns try to shoot down enemy planes. There’s also sure to be some flacks in involved as the studio hires public relations people to publicize the film to increase the audience.  “Flak”… Continue reading