She sells seashells by the seashore. Who is the she in this tongue twister? Some claim it’s the young Mary Anning, who went on to become a famous 19th-century British paleontologist. Dubious perhaps, but the story of her rise from seaside...
A monk at St. Gregory’s Abbey in Three Rivers, Michigan, a Benedictine monastery in the Episcopal Church, shares some of the terms used there on a daily basis. The monks gather seven times a day to pray as a group, a practice called corporate...
Is there something inherent in English that makes it the linguistic equivalent of the Borg, dominating and consuming other languages in its path? No, not at all. The answer lies with politics and conquest rather than language itself. Plus: a new...
Books were rare treasures in the Middle Ages, painstakingly copied out by hand. So how to protect them from theft? Scribes sometimes added a curse to the first page of those books that was supposed to keep thieves away — and some were as vicious as...
Birds inhabit many English words and phrases. The flower called larkspur is named for the way its blossom resembles the spur on the toe of a lark. Columbine derives from Latin columba, “dove,” a reference to the way this flower resembles...
The new Downton Abbey movie is a luscious treat for fans of the public-television period piece, but how accurate is the script when it comes to the vocabulary of the early 20th century? It may be jarring to hear the word swag, but it was already at...