Add an o to the middle of God and what do you get? If you think that’s cool, try taking the D from Devil!
A neat little trick, one of those little things people use to show how apparently obvious things can go unnoticed right beneath our noses. Of course God is only one letter from good! But is there anything to the similarities between these words? Continue reading
I’ve encountered the word campaign so often later (generally preceded by presidential), and then, last week, I found myself camping for a few days. And I wondered: camp/campaign: are they related somehow? And how was it that the word campaign is so similar to words for countryside like campagna (Italian) campagne (French, and no Autocorrect, I didn’t mean champagne)? An investigation was in order, so down the etymology rabbit hole I went… Continue reading
Reading through the blogs that I follow, I’ve noticed that the subject of many of them is the fall. That melancholy time when the leaves change colour, the tourists fade away, and the evenings gradually get that little bit darker each day. It’s a beautiful time of year in many ways, but, not being American, whenever I see the word fall, I hesitate for a brief moment before I realise what people mean. Because of course, I say autumn, not fall. Why do we have these two, very different, words? Continue reading
Being a response to the Daily Prompt: https://dailypost.wordpress.com/prompts/eclipse/
An interesting little word. If you were in some parts of Africa this week you would have borne witness to a solar eclipse this week, and next year Americans will have the same opportunity. There’s something about a solar eclipse that still fascinates us. Even now that we understand them, experiencing darkness during the middle of the day is still hard to get our heads round. It turns one of our most basic expectations about the world upside down. And I think it helps connect us with our primitive past (can you imagine what a total solar eclipse must have been like when it arrived without warning before people understood them and could predict them?), and makes us realise that for all our advances, there’s still so much that we can’t control. Continue reading
Sidewalk: at first glance, the words seems like an excellent to look at the differences between American and British English, with both footpath and pavement being used in British English.
What I’m more interested in though, is the word’s modernity (its first recorded use in the 18th century). I’m always curious about the etymology of words, and the long, meandering histories they can have. I’m fascinated by where words come from, how they evolve over time, and how they’re related to other words. But a modern word like sidewalk might seem to deny me that story. Neologisms like sidewalk require someone or some people to consciously coin a word, rather than it developing naturally over time. Continue reading
I’ll be beginning a well-earned break from work today, and spending a few days in Barcelona. It’s my first time there, so I’m very excited to see it. Like many European cities, Barcelona is bilingual, with most of its citizens speaking Spanish and Catalan. So in honour of Barcelona, I thought I’d see if there were any common English words that were derived from Catalan. Words such as: Continue reading
Every four years, at least once while watching the Olympics, I’ll have a look at the schedule for the day, I’ll come across a sport listed and ask The what??? Keirin!? What on earth is that!? It seems that with every Olympic Games my vocabulary widens thanks to names of specific forms of sports I’ll never encounter again in my life. So here’s a quick look at some of those oh-so specific terms we’ve been hearing for the last week and a bit:
Keirin: a type of cycling race in which the riders sprint after a few speed-controlled laps in which they have to follow a man on a motorized bicycle called a derny. When I see the derny rider, I always think: Who is he? Does he only ever ride a derny? What does he do with the rest of his time? I don’t think I could do that, help people win glory without having a chance myself. Also, it looks really silly.
Repechage: a stage in a competition in which competitors who failed to proceed to the final round, usually by a small margin, get another chance to qualify. It sounds much nicer than losers’ round, but then when you consider the original meaning in French—fishing out/rescuing—the name sounds deliberately humiliating.
Shuttlecock: Hee hee! The little thing they hit around in badminton. Shuttle coming from the meaning to move quickly back and forth, and cock from its resemblance to a male bird’s plumage (and nothing else).
Fosbury Flop: The method employed by high jumpers to go over the bar backwards. Popularised by American athlete Dick Fosbury in 1965. Before he introduced his technique, athletes used a variety of forward-facing methods, all of which looked incredibly undignified, and can be seen in video below:
Laser Radial: Not a classic sci-fi novel, but a class of sailing boat, seemingly so-called because it sounds cool. And why not?
Corruption: sadly, there are probably too many words to cover here, so I’ll have to do another list of Olympics-related corruption vocabulary.
English-Language Thoughts 