Nook-shotten is an old word meaning that something has many corners or projections. Shakespeare used it in Henry V when he spoke about the nook-shotten isle of Albion. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of ““Nook-Shotten” Describes...
Kennings are compound words that have metaphorical meanings, such as whale-road meaning “sea.” They’re often found in Anglo-Saxon poetry, such as The Seafarer and Beowulf, but there are modern ones as well, such as rugrats for...
Is it okay to make a verb out of a noun? Yes! It’s estimated that twenty percent of English verbs started as nouns. Just think of the head-to-toe mnemonic: you can head off a problem, face a situation, nose around, shoulder responsibility...
Some business owners give their establishments names like “Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe.” What most people don’t realize is that the letter Y in this case is a vestige of a letter we no longer use, and has a “th” sound. More...
Kara from Rockwood, Tennessee, asks about boogeyman after hearing in Port-au-Prince that the word came from a Haitian slave-revolt leader named Bokman. That story is unlikely, because related words are older than the revolt that led to Haiti’s...
A San Diego woman who’s homeschooling her children wonders if there’s a formula that explains why nouns like teacher and writer end in “er,” while others, like professor and conductor, end in “or.” She suspects it...