When writing textbooks about slavery, which words best reflect its cold, hard reality? Some historians are dropping the word slave in favor of terms like enslaved person and captive, arguing that these terms are more accurate. And raising a...
Cobwebs are spiderwebs, especially the dusty, abandoned kind that need sweeping away. Middle English coppe or cop meant “spider” or “round thing,” and cob survives mostly in this compound. A related old word, attercop, combines a word for “poison”...