Not a word you come across every day, this one.
If you’re understandably unfamiliar with it, it’s a term for a building reserved for the quarantine of lepers or poor people with other diseases. I was reminded of it while writing earlier about the word quarantine and its Venetian origins. Continue reading
Hello from quarantine!
Yes, I’m currently under quarantine here in Palermo, as part of the national lockdown in Italy to curb the spread of COVID-19. Continue reading
I’ve often wondered why we use the word derby to refer to a match between two sporting rivals (in most forms of English at least, as the term crosstown rivalry is also used in the United States), considering that Derby is also the name of a city in England. I’d always imagined there must be a connection between the two uses of the word. Continue reading
I discovered an interesting bit of etymology recently. I was reading SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome by Mary Beard. In a chapter about work and business, she mentioned a Latin word – otium. Continue reading
Have you ever wondered why both F and Ph can have the same sound in English?
Phone, philosophy, Philadelphia: force, far, fair etc. Continue reading
I’ve been thinking about my watch a lot lately. Well, maybe not a lot, exactly, but more than normal.
You see, my watch has recently started losing some of its batons. Continue reading
I was reading a novel recently in which a character speaks a language which doesn’t have the concept of the first and second person, basically no concept of I (or me) and you. As a result of this, the character himself cannot conceive of these concepts. Continue reading
English-Language Thoughts 