Tag archives: word origins
The rise of the app
With Apple’s latest iPhone released today, and its Google rival reportedly soon to follow, there will soon be more ‘apps’ in use than ever before. For the increasing number of us who own a smartphone or tablet, apps have become a part of 21st century life. And they’re big business: the market in apps is [...]
Flannel trousers are not English!
One of the facets of English that makes a job working with dictionary data so interesting is its readiness to appropriate loanwords from other languages – seeing the etymology of a familiar word such as ‘ketchup’ for example, and finding it probably has its origins in Chinese. Everybody needs good neighbours We see plenty of [...]
When worlds collide: science or science fiction?
The discovery, reported this week, of a faster-than-light neutrino shows just how easily the line between science and science fiction can become blurred. Equally, to the uninitiated, the language of science can be indistinguishable from the language of science fiction. We all know, alas, that Superman does not really exist, but how about the kryptonite [...]
Does being ostracized have anything to do with the behaviour of ostriches?
It’s a nice idea, but the two words are in fact quite separate. Ostrich comes from an Old French word ostruce, dating right back to the twelfth century. The Latin term for the bird was struthiocamelus, meaning a ‘sparrow camel’, a word coined after the first encounters with ostriches, probably because of the animal’s long [...]
How Latin outlived the Romans
Latin was of course spoken by the Romans – a people who dominated the planet for much of the classical period. Classical Latin has survived through the literary works of scholarly Romans such as Virgil and Cicero and subsequently today you may find yourself casually using a Latin word or phrase without even realising its [...]
Which word is older?
As part of our occasional series, have a look at these five pairs of related words and see if you can guess which entered the language first.
Five events that shaped the history of English: part two
1066 and after The centuries after the Norman Conquest witnessed enormous changes in the English language. In the course of what is called the Middle English period, the fairly rich inflectional system of Old English broke down. It was replaced by what is broadly speaking, the same system English has today, which unlike Old English [...]
Five events that shaped the history of English: part one
The Anglo-Saxon settlement It’s never easy to pinpoint exactly when a specific language began, but in the case of English we can at least say that there is little sense in speaking of the English language as a separate entity before the Anglo-Saxons came to Britain. Little is known of this period with any certainty, [...]
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