Do you refer to your dog or cat as “somebody”? As in: When you love somebody that much, you don’t mind if they slobber. In other words, is your pet a somebody or a something? Also, for centuries, there was little consistency in the...
Theresa in Lyman, South Carolina, says her mother has long used the word quare to describe someone who is “odd” or “set in their ways” or otherwise “peculiar,” as in They’re the quarest people I’ve ever met. The term quare, also spelled quar...
The editors of the Oxford English Dictionary recently added several Irish English terms. One of them is segotia, which means “friend.” There’s an entry for this word, also spelled segocia, in Grant’s own book, The Official...
Bockety is an adjective, probably from Irish, now entered in the Oxford English Dictionary. It can describe a person who has trouble walking or an object that’s gone rickety or run-down: my bockety old chair, say, or a bockety knee that won’t quite...
David in Austin, Texas, wonders if smithereens, meaning “bits” or “fragments,” as in explode into smithereens, refers to little bits of metal left over from blacksmithing. Actually, the origin of smithereen is uncertain, although it may come from...
Elizabeth in Billings, Montana, grew up in Ireland using bollix or bollocks to mean making a mess of things, as in “I’ve really bollocksed this up.” The word is related to balls and originally referred to testicles, which helps explain why a...