I was in Italy for a few days recently, and near my hotel I noticed a sign indicating that autostop was not permitted. You might have figured out that autostop is the Italian word for hitchhiking. Continue reading
What’s so bad about being on the B-Team? I mean, sure, they’re obviously not as good as the A-Team, but they’re still better than the other 24 teams! Continue reading
Yes, but how many? Wait, that doesn’t make sense, does it…?
Obviously you can’t say four clothes or five clothes. But why? Continue reading
Oh, hi there!
I’ve been taking a bit of a break, to recharge my batteries. But I’m nicely refreshed now!
The other day, I saw a tweet which pointed out the resemblances between the words for night and eight in various European languages. They’re obviously only one letter apart in English, and there’s a similar… similarity between the words in other languages: Continue reading
-Going anywhere nice this year? Going abroad?
I haven’t had a haircut in a while, so I haven’t had the pleasure of such charming conversation recently. But I recently thought about the word abroad while reading. You see, it was being in the more old-fashioned way, as in: Continue reading
I live near an area in Dublin called Ringsend. A slightly unusual name obviously, but for someone reason I only thought today about how the name doesn’t really make any sense whatsoever.
How can a ring have an end? The whole point of rings is that they don’t have an end. So where does Ringsend come from then? Continue reading
I had a moment of inspiration today about the word ocarina. In case you’re unaware of what it is, an ocarina is small wind instrument that probably became a lot more famous around the world after it was prominently featured in the 1998 N64 videogame The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time.
Of course, being as cool as I am, I was already familiar with the instrument, as it had featured as a useable item in the 1993 Gameboy game The Legend of Zelda: Link’s Awakening.
Anyway, today I saw a picture of an ocarina somewhere, and it made me wonder if the word’s related to geese somehow. Continue reading
English-Language Thoughts 