Posts in Origin of the word
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Origin of the word "Reunion"
What speakers mean by it In present-day English a reunion is two closely related things. It is the act, or the resulting state, of coming together again after a split. It is also a planned gathering o
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Origin of the word "Stroma"
A supporting bed, not a bedspread In current English, stroma belongs to laboratories and clinics, not to bedrooms. Anatomists use it for the connective-tissue frame of an organ: the mesh that holds a
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Origin of the word "Baruch"
A proper name, not an English adjective In current English, baruch is almost never a common word. It is a proper name. It identifies Jeremiah’s scribe in the Hebrew Bible, a short book kept in Catholi
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Origin of the word "Uninteresting"
English speakers reach for uninteresting when something fails to hold the mind: a flat topic, a lifeless lecture, a stretch of road with nothing to look at. Dictionaries gloss it as dull or boring, th
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Origin of the word "Wolfhound"
What the word names now A wolfhound is a very large dog of a type once used to hunt wolves or to keep them away from livestock. In current English the word mostly labels a handful of recognized breeds
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Origin of the word "Shipowner"
What the word names now A shipowner is a person or a company that holds title to a vessel, or that holds shares in one. In ordinary English that is still the core: not the captain, not the charterer,
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Origin of the word "Flavouring"
What it names now In British English, flavouring is first of all a kitchen noun: a substance, natural or manufactured, added to food or drink so that the mixture tastes of something in particular. Van
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Origin of the word "Yarn"
Yarn is both a material and a story. In ordinary English it is a continuous strand of fiber, natural or synthetic, twisted so it can be knitted or woven. Sailors and rope-makers still use the same wor
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Origin of the word "Limitless"
Limitless names what has no bound: a stretch of space that does not close, a store of energy or money that does not run out, a desire that does not meet a ceiling. In current English it is a straightf
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Origin of the word "Grandnephew"
What the word names A grandnephew is the son of your nephew or niece: in other words, the grandson of your brother or sister. English also uses great-nephew for the same boy, and standard dictionaries
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Origin of the word "Unwashed"
A laundry word that learned to sneer Unwashed is, first of all, a blunt English adjective: not cleaned with water. It sits as easily on dishes, hair, fruit, or a shirt as it does on a person who has s
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Origin of the word "Laramie"
In English, Laramie is first of all a place-name. Readers meet it as a city on the high plains of southeastern Wyoming, as a river that joins the North Platte, as a nineteenth-century fort, as a count
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Origin of the word "Algonquin"
What the name refers to now In present-day English, Algonquin most often names an Indigenous people whose historic country lies along the Ottawa River and its branches in western Quebec and eastern On
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Origin of the word "Tigon"
A name for one parental cross In present-day English a tigon is the hybrid cub of a male tiger and a female lion. Zoological shorthand writes the pairing as a Panthera tigris sire and a Panthera leo d
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Origin of the word "Chlorine"
A gas named for its colour Chlorine is the English name of the halogen element with the symbol Cl: a heavy greenish-yellow gas with a sharp smell, used as a bleach, an oxidiser, and a disinfectant. In
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