Pylimitics

A weaver might reasonably accept a commission to create a bit of cloth for someone by a certain date. As the date approached, the weaver might sit at the loom with the deadline looming. But when a weaver is using a loom without any deadline in sight, that’s not called looming. Instead, it’s weaving.  … Continue reading

When an over-played, clichéd song is played yet again, particularly when it cycles around to the tired refrain, unless you’re with a particularly refrained group of people, someone is sure to utter the refrain “how many times do we have to listen to this tune?”  “Refrain” is not exactly a contronym (a word that has… Continue reading

Many have noticed that the language we have available to us isn’t sufficient to convey the things we’re experiencing. There is plenty of warning that humans, at least, are headed straight for a climate-induced apocalypse. But “apocalypse” evokes big, violent, sudden disasters. This is not going to be that, exactly. It’s going to be more… Continue reading

Lots of elements’ names are etymologically interesting. In the upper reaches of the periodic table these days there are elements that can be produced in a laboratory, but have never been observed in nature — usually because they only exist for fractions of a second before their inherent radioactivity disperses them. Elements with the atomic… Continue reading

Eggs are in the news lately. How about “egging”? Something that happens on Halloween is “egging” — pelting a car or house with eggs in order to create a mess and play a prank. It can also happen in a theater, or at least it used to; when a performer was particularly bad, the audience… Continue reading

From Piglet to Wilbur to Babe to Animal Farm, pigs play a certain minor (or 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 don’t seem particularly kind to the pigs. The word “hogwash,”… Continue reading

Here’s an oddity that I’m sure has been bugging you for ages: why is a regular tooth doctor called a dentist, while a specialist tooth doctor is called a dontist, as in “periodontist” or “orthodontist?” This is your lucky day, because you’re about to find out! The “dent” in dentist and the “dont” in “-odontist”… Continue reading

In William Caxton’s 1490 translation of the Aeneid (specifically in the prologue), there is this line: “Loo, what sholde a man in thyse dayes now wryte, egges, or eyren? Certaynly it is hard to playse every man, by-cause of dyversite and chaunge of langage.” The line illustrates a controversy of the time: which word was going to… Continue reading