Some college students are using the word loyalty as a synonym for monogamy. Are the meanings of these words now shifting? Plus, a biologist discovers a new species of bat, then names it after a poet he admires. Also, warm memories of how a childhood...
Why would some Spanish speakers use adaptations of certain English words when perfectly good Spanish words for the same thing already exist? Plus, handy terms in a dictionary of the Sussex dialect from 150 years ago: Back then, a dezzick was “a...
John in Tucson, Arizona, remembers his grandfather from Sharon, Vermont, saying possessives such as hisn, hern, yourn, and ourn, as in Those cattle are hisn or That house is hern. These archaic forms go back to Middle English, shaped by analogy with...
Aaron in Los Angeles, California, notes while using public transit in Britain he and other passengers were instructed to alight from the front, meaning “exit the car from the front.” Alight comes from an Old English word alihtan, literally, to...
The word cloud comes from Old English clūd, meaning “rock” or “hill,” making it a relative of the word clod. The sense of a “hill” or “mass of rocks” was later applied to those vaporous hills in the sky. This is part of a complete episode...
How did quid come to be British slang for that unit of currency called a pound? It’s tempting to assume this quid is from Latin quid pro quo, meaning “something for something.” However, a more likely explanation may be that it’s from an entirely...