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Put A Little Irish in Your English

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...

More than Four Seasons

Hayley, a poet, grew up in Kansas City, then moved to Minnesota’s Twin Cities. After the last two winters there, she’s begun to wonder: Have English speakers ever referred to more than four seasons in English? Do other cultures measure...

Pull The Other One With Bells On

In English, if you doubt what someone is telling you, you can say so with such idioms as Stop pulling my leg or Pull the other one — it has bells on. Other languages have similarly colorful phrases for expressing skepticism. In French, you might say...

Rhyming Goodbyes

For a casual goodbye in English, we might say See you later, alligator or After while, crocodile. Many languages have similarly silly rhyming goodbyes. In Spanish, you can say Ciao, pescao! or “Bye, fish!” In Dutch, it’s Aju...

Minima and Maxima

Celia, from Spokane, Washington, is unhappy that fewer and fewer English speakers seem aware of the correct plurals of Latin and Greek words. She is bothered, for example, when someone refers to minimums rather than minima. Minima is more often a...