Welcome to Origin of the words
Thoughts, stories, and ideas from this author.
Recent posts
-
Origin of the word "Baba"
Several lives in two syllables In English, baba is a rum-soaked yeast cake, a grandmother, a father, and sometimes a holy man. Menus print rum baba. Slavic families use the same shape for an old woman
Read more -
Origin of the word "Angostura"
In English today, angostura is most often a bottle: a concentrated herb-and-spice bitters with a yellow cap and a label too large for the glass. Bartenders dash it into an Old Fashioned or a Manhattan
Read more -
Origin of the word "Fearless"
What speakers mean by it Fearless is an everyday English adjective for a person, act, or style that does not give way to fear. Dictionaries pair it with brave and intrepid. In current use it covers bo
Read more -
Origin of the word "Hindustan"
A name English still keeps in reserve In present-day English, Hindustan is a geographical name rather than a word people reach for every day. Dictionaries still list several scopes for it. It can mean
Read more -
Origin of the word "Ecclesiastes"
What English uses the name for In modern English, Ecclesiastes is almost always a book title. It names a short work of wisdom literature in the Hebrew Bible and the Christian Old Testament, the text t
Read more -
Origin of the word "Airdrome"
A landing ground, not a flying machine In American English, an airdrome is a place from which aircraft operate: a field with runways, hangars, workshops, and often a passenger or cargo terminal. Dicti
Read more -
Origin of the word "Saccharum"
A specialist word beside everyday sugar In present-day English, saccharum is not the word people use at the table. Dictionaries keep it as a learned noun: capitalized, it is the genus of tall tropical
Read more -
Origin of the word "Gobi"
A map label that started as a landscape word In English, Gobi almost always names one place: the huge arid belt that runs through southern Mongolia and into northern China. School maps print it as the
Read more -
Origin of the word "Latent"
Present, but not on view In current English, latent describes something that already exists and still refuses to show itself. A latent talent is real before anyone has seen it used. A latent infection
Read more -
Origin of the word "Pedaller"
A rider, not a lever A pedaller, in ordinary British English, is a person who pedals. The word almost always names a cyclist, though it can fit anyone working a machine with the feet. American spellin
Read more -
Origin of the word "Pannier"
A pannier, in ordinary English, is a bag or basket meant to hang at the side. Cyclists know it as one of a pair of luggage bags clipped to a rack over a rear wheel. The same noun still names a large b
Read more -
Origin of the word "Windward"
Facing the weather In ordinary English, windward is the direction from which the wind blows, or the face of a thing that meets that wind. A ship has a windward side and a leeward side. So does a mount
Read more -
Origin of the word "Oxcart"
What speakers mean by it now An oxcart is a wheeled load-carrier built to be pulled by one ox or by a yoke of oxen. In current English it still names that working vehicle, not a horse-drawn farm cart
Read more -
Origin of the word "Fluorspar"
In English today, fluorspar names calcium fluoride, the cubic halide mineral also catalogued as fluorite. Chemical traders and steelworks still use the older compound when they grade ore, buy flux, or
Read more -
Origin of the word "Microfilm"
A roll of reduced pages Microfilm is photographic stock that holds books, newspapers, letters, and other graphic matter at a size too small to read without a lens or a projector. In libraries it usual
Read more