On the website Ask Metafilter, I answered a question about dictionaries that I want to elaborate on here. Metafilter user “Aswego” inquired: Is there some super-secret linguistics resource that sorts dictionaries by...
When I read this narrative about the making of the first edition of the Oxford American Writer’s Thesaurus by former coworker Erin McKean, I was reminded of something that happened. I was one of the book’s editors and worked with its...
On wordorigins.org, etymologist Dave Wilton is going through the Oxford English Dictionary year by year to find the earliest citations for various words, which offer an unusual linguistic glimpse into that particular year. The year 1937, for...
Dave Wilton’s wordorigins.org notes two Yiddish words with first citations from 1937 in the Oxford English Dictionary: bupkes, meaning nothing, and zaftig, also spelled zoftig, meaning big, plump, soft, or juicy. Bupkes may originally have referred...
Why do auctioneers talk so fast? Martha and Grant discuss the rapid-fire speech of auctioneers, and how it gets you to bid higher. Also, why so many books have ridiculously long titles, where you’d have sonker for dessert, and an appreciation...
Why are floors of buildings called stories (or storeys)? One theory suggests that an Latin architectural term historia once referred to the stained-glass windows or the ornate statues around the edifice. But the etymology is unclear. This is part of...