Who would’ve thought this Monday evening that we’d all be reading and talking so much about a cemetery? But these days you just never know what’s going to happen, and now I’m thinking about the word cemetery. Continue reading
Cemetery Man
word history
Out, Damn’d Spot!
I was thinking this morning that the word spot is one of those simple unassuming words that actually has a lot of quite different meanings, and can be used as verb and a noun.
I find it particularly interesting in that it began with a more abstract, poetic meaning, and later on came to be used in more mundane ways. Continue reading
Dilettante
I was thinking yesterday about how I’m a bit of a dilettante when it comes to music. I like a lot of acts and genres, but I couldn’t narrow my preferences down to anything very particular. Continue reading
Capital or Capitol?
Usually, it’s capital that you need. But sometimes, and specifically right now if you’re in the United States, capitol’s the word you’re looking for. Continue reading
Outro
While running today, I thought that the song I was listening to in the moment perhaps wasn’t best suited to being on my running playlist, because it had a long, quiet outro. Then I thought, Outro? Now that’s… Continue reading
YouTube
I can’t believe I never thought about this before, especially as I’ve already written about the origins of names of popular websites/social media. But I was mindlessly looking at my screen and saw YouTube written there.
This one’s not too hard to figure out if you’re of a certain vintage, or simply American. The You part, obviously is pretty straightforward: you can upload your videos to the website. But in what sense is it a tube? Continue reading
Boo!
You might hear this sound quite a bit over the next few days. Perhaps someone might be trying to give you a scare. Or perhaps they might be expressing disapproval at your choice of Hallowe’en costume. But why do we always use boo to frighten or to show disapproval? Continue reading
English-Language Thoughts 