The saying “to boot” comes from an Old English word bot, meaning “advantage” or “remedy.” It’s related to the contemporary English words better and best, so if something’s “to boot,”...
The word fulsome has undergone some real semantic changes over the years. It used to mean “excessive, overly full” in a negative way, but it’s come to have positive connotations for some, who think it means “copious” or...
“Catch my fade,” meaning, “I’m going to beat you up,” takes from a 100-year-old usage of fade. To fade someone meant to punish, beat, or conquer another. This is part of a complete episode.
Buck up, meaning toughen up or get it together, has a long history stemming from the days when travelling trunks had buckles on them that needed to be fastened. Over the years, variations like “buckle down” and “buckle” have...
Creative communication in a noisy world! Writing a clever 140-character tweet isn’t easy. But you know what’s even more impressive? Working all 26 letters of the alphabet into just one sentence! The term for that type of sentence is...
A wine expert with a bachelor’s degree in linguistics and a minor in French wonders about the origin of the term sommelier. It shares a root with sumpter, meaning “pack animal.” Sommelier used to refer generally to the person in...