Pylimitics

English borrows words from every language it touches. There are tens of thousands of words borrowed from European languages, but that’s just because of all the contact with them. Now that people can move around the world just a little more easily than months-long voyages or treks, English is continuing its borrowing ways, adopting additional… Continue reading

Have you ever gone outside on a clear, calm night, and enjoyed looking up at the stars as they…skinkled? Or, as in an 1888 newspaper story, maybe you’ve watched “A handful of flame which..merely skinkles on the window-panes.” It’s true; in addition to twinkling, sparkling, gleaming, shimmering, flickering, glittering, winking, gleaming, scintillating, and corsuscating, objects that produce… Continue reading

There are any number of diseases one can catch, but have you ever noticed that two of them — mumps and measles — are plural? There’s not really any singular version; a mild case of mumps isn’t a “mump,” and there doesn’t seem to be any recorded case of anyone catching a “measle.”  There are… Continue reading

Most of the time abbreviations are pretty intuitive, or are supposed to be. The abbreviation for a US state, for example, is designed to be recognizable, so for Massachusetts we get “MA,” and for Texas it’s “TX.” The abbreviation for US dollars is the straightforward “USD.” “In” stands for “inch” and “tsp” means “teaspoon.” It’s… Continue reading

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