word history

Once, Twice, Three Times…

Niall O'Donnell Leave a comment

I was wondering this morning why we say once and twice as alternatives to one time and two times in English.

It’s one of these things learners of English find it hard to remember to use. Partly it’s because there’s no greater pattern at work, as for every other number after one and two we just say three times, four times etc. It’s also because most other languages use the equivalent of one time and two times.

So why does English have to be awkward, once again, and not just use one time and two times? Continue reading →

Then!

Niall O'Donnell 1 Comment

Yes, before you ask, I did just choose this title because the last post was called Now? Though it’d probably be more logical to have written this one first, as it’d appear below the other post. Ah well, nothing I can do about that now.

Anyway, even if my motivation for choosing this title was rather flippant, looking into it, then is quite an interesting word. Continue reading →

For the Love of Cats

Niall O'Donnell 3 Comments

I came across a video somewhere on the internet today, of someone’s front-door security-camera footage. It showed a delivery man petting the homeowner’s cat, and the uploader had captioned it something like, Check out the UPS guy loving on my cat.

Well that’s a new one, I thought. Loving on. Hating on I’d heard of, but not loving on. Continue reading →

Christmas Crackers

Niall O'Donnell 4 Comments

I was looking at some Christmas crackers today (it’s Christmas), and I realised how the word cracker can be used to refer to very different things. There are Christmas crackers, but then there are also crackers you can eat with cheese, and something that you generally think is great can be described as a cracker).

Before I go any further, I’ve just thought to myself that Christmas crackers aren’t really popular in the United States (I couldn’t even find a picture of one in WordPress’ free-picture library, so I went with the cute dog instead), and as about half of you reading this are from that part of the world, I should explain what they are. They look like this: Continue reading →

As Happy as Larry

Niall O'Donnell 3 Comments

I heard someone use this expression the other day, and of course the first thing I thought was: Who’s Larry? Continue reading →

Inhibition

Niall O'Donnell Leave a comment

OK, so as per yesterday, inhibition isn’t really the opposite of exhibition. Of course there’s still a basic relationship of contrast between the two. Continue reading →

Blackmail

Niall O'Donnell 3 Comments

Imagine, completely hypothetically, that the President of Russia had information he could use to blackmail the President of the United States. Crazy, I know, but reading about this possibility recently made me think about the word blackmail. Continue reading →