After our conversation about mini-seasons between the usual winter, spring, summer, and fall, listeners share other examples: stick season in Vermont and mud season in Michigan. The Old English word for “February,” solmonath, may derive...
A delightful new book offers a taste of life in early medieval England through everyday vocabulary of that time and place. It’s called The Wordhord: Daily Life in Old English, by Hana Videen (Bookshop|Amazon). The book includes helpful...
Need an Old English word for “sneeze”? How about fnēosung? This is part of a complete episode.
Justin from Kalamazoo, Michigan, saw a Heinz 57 ketchup ad that mentioned euchred figs, sometimes spelled euchered. He’s familiar with the card game euchre, but why euchred figs? Although a handsome booklet produced by the H. J. Heinz company...
What do we mean by the expression for a spell, meaning “for a period of time”? It’s mere coincidence that this term is written the same way as the word spell meaning to “arrange letters to form words” or spell as in...
Paul in Camden, Maine, has adopted a new pup, and the dog’s exuberant face-licking has Paul wondering about the many meanings of the word lick, which include getting his licks in and takes a licking, which refers to the act of forcefully...