Onomastics is the study of the origin and history of proper names. Many family names, such as Smith and Cook derive from occupations. That poses a conundrum for Marina Abbott from Sonoma, California: If abbots traditionally took a vow of celibacy...
Caroline calls from Clinch Mountain, Tennessee, to ask about two puzzling uses of the word fell, and not as in the past tense of fall. In books by J.R.R. Tolkien, she’s seen fell used as an adjective meaning “dreadful” or “evil.” It’s the same fell...
What’s the difference between cavalry and calvary? The first of these two refers to the group of soldiers on horseback and is a linguistic relative of such “horsey” words as caballero, the Spanish horse-riding gentleman, and cavalcade, originally a...
Sure, it’s scary to send your writing to a literary agent. But pity the poor agent who must wade through hundreds of terrible query letters a week! One of them shares excerpts from those hilariously bad query letters on a blog called SlushPile Hell...
There’s a proper noun out there that rhymes with orange, and it’s The Blorenge, a hill in Wales. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Rhymes with Orange” Grant, I was so excited this week to learn about a prominent hill in southeast...
A fifth-year senior? That term is so 2007. These days, college students just refer to that extra year of school as taking a victory lap. Grant shares this and other examples of campus slang collected by University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill...