Welcome to Origin of the words
Thoughts, stories, and ideas from this author.
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Origin of the word "Five"
A number that barely moved Five is the English name for the integer after four. Speakers use it as a cardinal (five days), as a label for a set of that size (a basketball five), and, in North American
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Origin of the word "Damn"
A curse that used to be a verdict In modern English, damn works as a verb, a noun, an intensifier, and a blurt of irritation. Speakers use it to consign someone to hell, to pan a bad play, or simply t
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Origin of the word "Change"
A word for difference itself English speakers put a heavy load on change. The verb can mean to make something different, to put one thing in another’s place, or simply to become other than it was. The
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Origin of the word "Crazy"
The origin of the word crazy is less a story about minds than about breakage. In present-day English the adjective is unusually stretchy. It can still name real mental distress, and dictionaries still
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Origin of the word "Minute"
English keeps two lives under one spelling. Stressed on the first syllable, minute names a sixtieth of an hour, a sixtieth of a degree of arc, a vague short wait, and, usually in the plural, the offic
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Origin of the word "Death"
In ordinary English, death is the end of a living body: the event of dying, the condition of being dead, and sometimes the thing that causes either. We also stretch it to cover the collapse of an inst
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Origin of the word "Stuff"
A catch-all that used to be more specific In present-day English, stuff is the everyday name for things you do not bother to name. It covers belongings, materials, odds and ends, and, more loosely, af
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Origin of the word "Late"
A word for delay, once a word for slowness In current English, late is mainly a time word. A payment is late when it misses the due date. A frost is late when it arrives near the end of the season. Ni
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Origin of the word "Part"
A piece of almost everything In modern English, part names a portion of a whole, a component inside a machine, a share of work or profit, a role in a play, a line of music, or, in American usage, the
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Origin of the word "Person"
A name for one human In ordinary English, person means a single human being: one individual rather than a crowd, an animal, or an object. Law stretches the same noun to a company that can hold rights
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Origin of the word "Water"
A household word with a prehistoric stem Water is the ordinary English name for the liquid that falls as rain, fills rivers and seas, and, when the temperature shifts, becomes ice or steam. The same n
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Origin of the word "Working"
A form that does several jobs at once In current English, working is the everyday -ing form of the verb work. It can name an action in progress, the activity itself, or a place and method by which som
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Origin of the word "Second"
What English uses it for now In everyday English, second does more than one job. It is the ordinary ordinal after first: the next place in a line, the next year in a sequence, the runner who finishes
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Origin of the word "Young"
A word for early life In everyday English, young names an early stage of life or growth. A child is young, a sapling is young, and a company still finding its shape can be called young as well. The ad
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Origin of the word "Doctor"
What the word names now In ordinary English, doctor most often means a physician: a person trained and licensed to treat the sick. The same noun still names someone who holds a doctorate, and the abbr
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