The Anglo-Saxons were beautiful poets, proud warriors, and incurable horn-dogs. — At some point between 1072, when the Bishop Leofric bequeathed “a large English book about a bunch of stuff, written in verse”¹ to the Exeter Cathedral Library, and the 19th century, when we all started to think that Anglo-Saxon-core was actually very retro chic, somebody decided that the single most…

Delving into the Lexicon of Transition and Farewell — Summer is coming to an end. And even if this is rather tragic for many of us, the wheel of the seasons keeps spinning, and in the other hemisphere, summer is about to begin. Now, it’s almost time to wear a jumper and prepare for darker, shorter days. This is…

Really drives home how differently people did metaphors in the Middle Ages. — Most words have a pretty interesting backstory when you look into them, but a lot of them grew up in a fairly recognizable way — going to word school, getting a word job, maybe settling down with another word and having little word children. But some words did things the…

Some perfectly normal-seeming words that are actually two other words standing on top of each other in a trench coat. — Because there is no justice in the world, “portmanteau” does not quite qualify as a portmanteau (it’s just a garden variety compound), even though it is made up of two words. Borrowed into English in the mid-1500s, it was formed from the French words porte (carry) and manteau (cloak), and…

The transcendent emotional experience of every writer — Once or twice a year, you’ll see me sitting on the couch, consoling my long-time partner who is sobbing. My hand is on her back. Her face is in her hands. An observer might assume there was a death in the family. In reality, she has to write for an…

On the marvelous achievement of 8 consecutive buffalos, and other equally wonderful stupidities. — As far as I can tell, the American bison has never bothered to majestically roam the plains of Buffalo, New York — probably because there’s not enough grass — which means that the idea of Buffalo buffalo, like “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo,” will never be more…

When the snafu goes fubar and suddenly you have a tuifu on your hands … — A February 1944 issue of Newsweek magazine has a brief gloss on “The State of the Language” that poses more questions than it gives answers: Recent additions to the ever-changing lexicon of the armed services: Fubar: Fouled up beyond all recognition. Janfu: Joint army-navy foul-up. Jaafu: Joint Anglo-American foul-up. “Fubar”…

You’ll never look at pumpernickel the same way again. — Halloween is still more than 100 days away, so it’s troublingly early to be turning up the spookiness dial (yes, we have a spookiness dial), but there’s no law I’m aware of that says you can’t talk about goblinwords™ in the summer if you feel the urge, and so here…

The earliest appearance of a uniquely American idiom — It’s vulgar, it’s evocative, it’s distinctively American, and there’s actually a second part of the original phrase that gives it even more color. You’ve likely encountered it as, “I don’t have a pot to piss in,” “So poor he didn’t have a pot to piss in,” or “Ain’t got a…