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Walking and talking
I was really walking on air yesterday, humming great songs like Walking on Sunshine, Walk on the Wild Side, Walking Man, Walk the Line, Walk like an Egyptian, and Walking on the Moon, but then I walked into a brick wall when it turned out I hadn’t been hitting my stride at all, but walking Continue reading
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Thomas Blanchard
One of the small, ubiquitous objects we take for granted these days is the thumbtack. They’re such a good way to temporarily attach papers, posters, notices, and the like to a vertical surface that many offices are designed with walls to accommodate thumbtacks. They’re everywhere, and so vanishingly inexpensive that I’ll bet you can’t even Continue reading
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Bunny rabbit
You wouldn’t think that an innocent phrase like bunny rabbit could contain any centuries-old mysteries, but it does! Well, sort of. “Rabbit,” of course, refers to wooden mugs often used in the 1600s to serve beer…no, wait, never mind that; a “rabbit” is a cute, furry, long-eared fellow very fond of carrots. The word “rabbit” Continue reading
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Charles Alderton
In the US, carbonated soft drinks loaded with sugar (or more likely corn syrup) have been in a marketing competition for decades. Coca-Cola almost always wins, and until recently Pepsi-Cola has been in second place. But earlier this very month, there was a new #2: Dr Pepper. Dr Pepper is always pronounced “Doctor Pepper,” even Continue reading
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Where were you
There are plenty of movies about “werewolves”, and at least one about a “wererabbit.” You might think that the “were” part has to do with something like “you were a human but now you’re a [fill in the blank].” But that’s not it at all. “Were” is a very old word (predating Old English) meaning Continue reading
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Adam Ferguson
If you remember your European history from middle or high school (or both), you’ll know that the “Age of Enlightenment” was not about dieting and weight loss, it was an intellectual movement in the 17th and 18th centuries. It focused on rationalism and gaining knowledge empircally. Although the Enlightenment applies to Europe overall, the movement Continue reading
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Teetotal
Word of the day: teetotal There was a temperance movement in the early 1800s in England, and it spread to the US by the 1820s. Before that, alcohol was widely used as a beverage, a medicine, and even, in the case of beer, nourishment. Water was often unsafe to drink, and other beverages (milk, for Continue reading
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Mary Tenney Gray
In the 1800s in the US, women were evidently getting fed up with well-off white men hogging all the power and authority and refusing to share their privileges, such as education and voting. But a group that doesn’t have any formal power often faces significant hurdles in trying to change the status quo. The women Continue reading
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1982
An interesting approach to looking at word origins is to start with a year instead of a word. The Oxford English Dictionary very helpfully provides a list of the words first cited in a particular year. Let’s try 1982. That was the year that Tylenol laced with potassium cyanide killed seven people in and around Continue reading
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Tabloid
You hear — usually in competing media — about “tabloid journalism” and “the tabloids.” But doesn’t “tabloid” seem like a weird word for a kind of newspaper? That’s because it is — and it originally meant something very different. It all started back in 1880 in London. Henry Wellcome started a business with Silas Burroughs: Continue reading
About Me
I’m Pete Harbeson, a writer located near Boston, Massachusetts. In addition to writing my own content, I’ve learned to translate for my loquacious and opinionated pup Chocolate Bossypaws. I shouldn’t be surprised, but she mostly speaks in doggerel. You can find her contributions tagged with Chocolatiana.
Check out my other blog, Techlimitics, where I’m grappling with the nature of simplicity.
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