Although the expression in its current form came first from the pen of Frederick Marryat, the idea had been around for a long time before that – but not quite as we know it. James Boswell came close when in 1769 he wrote that the ‘delicate and polite’ Mr Berenger …
Penthouse is a fine example of a word that has come about by the workings of folk etymology. Old French had the word apentis to denote ‘an outhouse projecting from the side of a main building’.The word was a borrowing of medieval Latin appendicium, ‘appendage’, a derivative of the Latin …
Is the euphemism dying out? Growing up in 1960’s England there was an entire sub-lexicon of phraseology to cover just about everything.. It was the Golden age of euphemisms. Nobody died of pneumonia, diphtheria or tuberculosis, they were peaky, then poorly, then passed over. Some adults had to be watched …
Most of us know the difference between the intimate French tu and the more impersonal (and polite) vous. A similar distinction exists in Arabic between anta (‘you’ singular) and antum (‘you’ plural) – addressing an important person with anta (anti is the feminine version) rather than antum would be considered impolite. In Vietnam there are no fewer than eighteen words for ‘you’, the use …
Exclamations are generally used to express a sudden reaction: to something frightening, incredible, spectacular, shocking or wonderful. Best not attempted by the visitor, they are better heard from the mouth of the native speaker than read off the page: aaberdi (Algerian) a cry used when learning fearful news aawwaah (Dardja, Algeria) a …
The making of lipograms—writing that purposely omits a certain letter of the alphabet—has a long history in literature. The word comes from the Greek lipo, meaning “lacking,” plus gramma, meaning “something written or drawn.” The first lipogram may have been an ode to centaurs by Lasus of Hermione (born 568 B.C)which …
As we all know, fingers are the digits and are therefore used for counting. Then digits become numbers and if you store information it becomes digital. All rather dull really. But the Old English names for the fingers are far more interesting than all matters digital.. The index finger was …
Apparently not…as you will find out below: 1. Herquebus (c.1566) The noun buss, meaning ‘a kiss, especially a loud or vigorous one – a smacker’, is first found in the mid-16th century, according to the wonderful people responsible for the OED. It may be a variant of the earlier bass …
On March the 21st, 1754, British nobleman and author Horace Walpole coined the word “serendipity” in a letter to his friend Horace Mann. Walpole used it in reference to the Persian fairy tale The Three Princes of Serendip, in which characters continually make pleasant discoveries by accident. “Serendipity” was one …
I am pleased to announce that I have been taken on by an American literary agent, the charming Priya of the Lotus Lane Agency. This prompted me to dig up from one of my many boxes an American-English dictionary. It is a slim volume, almost bulimic, and it was first …
