Hugh in Newton, Massachusetts, noticed two very different senses of quarry, represented in John Singer Sargent’s painted stone quarries and Gustave Courbet’s The Quarry, with its fallen stag. They’re different words. The excavation sense goes back...
Why do we vote at a polling place? Pol in Middle English simply meant head, and polls are the place where heads are counted. The Middle English word for head also gives us get polliwog, a young frog with a wiggly head, and tadpole, those toads and...
Why don’t nouns have gender in English they way they do in Spanish, French, or German? Before the Middle English period, nouns in English were either masculine, feminine, or neuter. Over time, however, we’ve moved away from the...
Frank in Coronado, California, wondered about bailiwick after hearing an attorney say that something wasn’t his bailiwick. The word combines bailiff with wick, an old term for a farm or village. In Middle English, a bailiff was a public...
Dan in San Diego and friends were stumped after one friend jokingly called himself a woman’s mistress. There isn’t a crisp modern equivalent for an unmarried man involved with a married woman, partly because master and mistress once matched each...
In this week’s episode: Just how far back could you go and still understand the English people were speaking? We crank up our trusty time machine to find out. Hint: You’d probably have a tough time getting around in the eighth century...
