Posts in Origin of the word
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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
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Origin of the word "Monocracy"
A rare label for one-person rule In present-day English, monocracy means government by a single person. Desk dictionaries gloss it as autocracy: political power held by one human being rather than by
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Origin of the word "Meltwater"
Water from thaw, not from a tap In current English, meltwater is the liquid released when snow or ice turns to water. Hydrologists and physical geographers use it for runoff from a snowpack, a glacier
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Origin of the word "Agaricus"
A scientific name that reached the kitchen In English, agaricus is the Latin genus name that has slipped into ordinary mushroom talk. It marks a group of gilled fungi that includes the cultivated butt
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Origin of the word "Trail"
What English uses it for now Trail names a line left behind, and the verb that makes that line. A dress trails on the floor. Vines trail over a wall. Smoke trails from a chimney. A hound trails a scen
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Origin of the word "Radiation"
Today the English noun radiation usually names energy that travels as waves or particles: sunlight, infrared heat, radio waves, X-rays, and the mix of particles and gamma rays given off in radioactive
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Origin of the word "Unvarying"
What it names now Unvarying describes a thing that stays the same. A rhythm can be unvarying, a daily routine, a climate, a level of attention. Current dictionaries treat the adjective as meaning not
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Origin of the word "Salient"
What English does with it now In current English, salient names what stands out. The salient points of a brief are the ones a reader is meant to keep. A salient trait is conspicuous rather than backgr
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Origin of the word "Madder"
A plant, a dye, and a color In present-day English, madder is first of all a plant: Rubia tinctorum, a scrambling Eurasian herb of the bedstraw family, with whorls of leaves, small yellowish flowers,
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Origin of the word "Tactile"
What the skin reports Tactile is the English adjective for what belongs to touch. A sensation is tactile when the skin, not the eye or the ear, is doing the work. An organ is tactile when it is built
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Origin of the word "Brig"
A brig, in ordinary English, is a two-masted sailing ship with square sails on both masts. In American naval speech it is also the lock-up on a warship, and by extension a military jail or guardhouse.
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Origin of the word "Netherlander"
A netherlander is a native or inhabitant of the Netherlands. Everyday English prefers Dutch, and older writing also has Hollander. Those rivals are useful, but they hide the geography that this demony
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Origin of the word "Pinecone"
A seed case named for its shape A pinecone is the woody, overlapping seed case of a pine tree. Botanists call the same organ a strobilus: a compact spiral of scales that opens as it dries and sheds se
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Origin of the word "Pitilessness"
What it names now Pitilessness is the state of showing no pity. In current English it points to a settled absence of mercy: the hardness of a person who will not relent, or, by a familiar extension, t
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Origin of the word "Forbiddance"
What speakers mean by it Forbiddance names the act of telling someone not to do a thing, and, in some dictionaries, the condition of being under that ban. It can also stand for an edict or official pr
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