blogging

How did the Oceans Get their Names?

Niall O'Donnell 16 Comments

Quite simply, in the case of the Pacific at least.

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Get your Mind out of the… Restroom? Euphemisms for Toilet

Niall O'Donnell 23 Comments

Seriously, please. After I wrote about eau de Cologne recently, a few of you referred to eau de toilette in the comments, and it’s clear similarity to the English word toilet (and in fact, eau de toilette could be directly translated as toilet water).

Toilet is a surprisingly interesting word. On the surface of course it just refers to the object that stands in your bathroom, but how and when people use it (the word, not the actual toilet) varies quite a bit around the world.

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Alright or All Right?

Niall O'Donnell 6 Comments

You may have thought yesterday, when reading about the word almost, that there are a few other similarly-constructed words in English. There’s already, alright, and altogether, all of which are really just all + ready/right/together. And often you can replace the single word with all + together etc. Not always though…

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Cologne

Niall O'Donnell 15 Comments

I’ll be driving to Cologne in the morning, so I may not get much writing done over the weekend.

Cologne of course, is a city in western Germany.

Cologne though, as in cologne with a lower-case C when it’s not at the start of a sentence, is something a man sprays on himself to smell nice.

The reason we use the name for both is pretty straightforward.

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Taking Things Literally

Niall O'Donnell 7 Comments

While writing yesterday, I was thinking about my tendency to think about language in general as I’m going about my daily life. Obviously this is something I do more often since beginning to work in the English-language teaching industry, but I realised that I’ve actually been doing it for a long time: just not in the same way.

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You Look Well or You Look Good?

Niall O'Donnell 10 Comments

You? Why for you, both are correct!

😉

Seriously though, are both of these correct? Do they have the same meaning?

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Well, Well, Well

Niall O'Donnell 5 Comments

I hope today finds you well.

Yesterday I mentioned that well is quite a common filler in English, used to give us a moment to think, or even for no particular reason at all. After I finished writing, I asked myself, Why well?

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