Pylimitics

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

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

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

If you’re fond of both language and math, you surely already know that in the phrase “5 minus 3” the number 5 is the minuend and the number 3 is the subtrahend. Since that’s not news, it’s a good thing that 5 less 3 is not really the subject of this bit of trivia. No,… Continue reading

Back in 1596, a guy named Peter Lowe wrote: “The vayne goeth aboue the artier, but not right lyne as other parts doe, but in anfractuosities, like unto a Woodbine.” A woodbine, by the way, is a vine (or “vayne”). What he’s saying, using plenty of words, is that a vine doesn’t grow in a… Continue reading