A tatterdemalion is a fellow whose clothes are tattered and torn. It is the same as a tatter-wallop, a ragabash, or a flabergudgion; and, given the threadbare state of modern fashion, it is an eminently useful word. Tatterdemalion should even be immediately comprehensible to the uninitiated because everybody knows what …
Japan is a wonderful country, a place of poetry, because their words are so beautiful. Japan itself is Chinese for sun rising, Nippon is Japanese for the same, and their language is filled with such word-pictures. Take karaoke, which I once associated only with those who possess less shame than …
Those lucky readers who have invested in the property market will be unsurprised to discover that a mortgage is, literally, a pledge to the death. The idea is that a mortgage is a gage, or pledge, that can die in one of two ways. Either you pay the whole debt …
The fingers are the digits and are therefore used for counting. Thus did digits become numbers and when information is stored in numbers it becomes digital. The Old English names for the fingers are much more fun than those which have been more recently fangled. The index finger was once …
In the sterile hush of hospitals, amidst beeps and murmurs, there exists a word with surprising charm: “phlebotomist.” This tongue twister, with its Greek roots meaning “blood-taker,” doesn’t readily roll off the tongue. Yet, within its syllables lies a hidden elegance, a beauty unveiled upon closer examination. Imagine, if you …
It was, I believe, a certain M. Étiemble who devoted a whole book to the condemnation of what he called Franglais — the long-term debauching of French by commercial English (strictly speaking, commercial American). However such a liaison may be refused benefit of academy, nothing can prevent its becoming a …
Elope is a lovely word, especially if you leap into an elopement with an interloper. There are a whole bunch of lope-words spread around the languages of Northern Europe and they all mean pretty much the same thing: a stride, a run, a jump, a leap, a bound. There was …
One of the many etymologies I’d never noticed before is that of neighbour. It comes from neah-gebur, which means, essentially, nearby farmer. Neah as in modern English nigh or near, and gebur, which was Old English for farmer, or dweller. In its Dutch form, that’s the origin of the Boers …
Not of this blog, but of the dictionary. It suddenly occurred to me to wonder what was right at the back of the OED. So whilst at the library, I pulled out volume twenty and flicked past zonkey (the offspring of a zebra and a donkey), zygology (the study of …
Ah, ante-jentacular – what a delightfully obscure yet useful word! It perfectly captures the pre-dawn activities that kickstart our day, be it a bracing shower, a stimulating coffee, or even a slightly more adventurous bloody mary. Is there anything specific you’re enjoying ante-jentacularly today? Perhaps you have a particularly delicious …
