etymology, Word of the Week 0 comments
Etymology is the study of the origin of a word and the historical development of it’s meaning. My question for the day, how do they know? Sometimes it’s obvious. Let’s take the example of military terms. “Got your back” is bandied about so freely that the words run together. In 2011, when President Obama visited […]
Word of the Week – proverb “’Tis better to light one small candle than to curse the darkness.” It’s a comforting message from my mother that I carry around in my head, a proverb, allegedly, first used in 1907 in a sermon by W.L. Watkinson. Some websites suggest that it originated with Confucious. Others mention, […]
All right, scholars, let’s talk about the choice of the second person imperative. Well we know, it’s seldom that a writer of fiction would address the audience as “you.” It’s used in “didactic” writing, referring to texts that are intended to teach, preach or advise. Better watch out if you’re trying to engage your reading […]
etymology, Travel, Word of the Week 1 comment
Shakespeare & Co. is an English language bookstore on the Seine, opposite Notre Dame. Established in 1951, it was a mecca for expat writer/visitors including Allen Ginsburg, Anais Nin, Henry Miller, Lawrence Durrell, James Baldwin …. The building had originally been a monastery and each monastery had a “frère lampier” whose duty was to light […]
Dateline: Paris. Newsflash, the Parisiens are different from you and me. They’re not really keeping up with the twenty-four hour news cycle of attack, counter-attack in the U.S presidential election. I’m probably the only person in this city, awake at 5:00AM, wondering about the use of unhinged. It’s not a new word. Used in the sense […]
etymology, Word of the Week 0 comments
Beware. The urge to rhyme is a jolly, seductive joy and limericks are meant to cause trouble. The name is associated with the city and county of Limerick in Ireland, and the ditties date back to the 1800s. A limerick is a type of nonsense verse with five lines: one, two and five rhyme together; […]
etymology, Word of the Week 2 comments
Well, “treppenwitz” isn’t really an English word, but we need one like it. In German, it’s literally “staircase wit,” meaning that devastating rejoinder you think of after you’ve left the scene of the debate. Yes, whether we like it or not, debates are approaching and the candidates are getting plenty of advice from the pundits. […]
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Writers are tempted to paint the portrait of a true Southern lady or gennemun with that soft, humid voice reminiscent of Faulkner. Most experts warn us not to try it. Mark Twain got away with it, but that was a long time ago. We know what the accent sounds like. They teach it to actors, […]
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The official language of the U.S Virgin Islands is American English. British Virgin Islands uses the Queen’s English. But that’s not what you’ll hear on the street. Native born citizens of the islands speak Virgin Islands Creole, known locally as “dialect,” incomprehensible to you and me. To linguists, it’s not really an English dialect, it’s […]
etymology, Word of the Week 0 comments
The term spinmeister, also known as the spin doctor, arose in the 1990s, meaning the one who provides a favorable slant to an item of news or a potentially unpopular policy. Meister is a suffix suggesting expertise, frequently ironic, derived from the German for master. Different origins are given for of this use of spin. Wikipedia […]