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oca--an edible tuber from the Andes Oxalis tuberosa, related to sourgrass--wood sorrel.

pathetic fallacy--treatment of inanimate objects as if they had human feelings, thought, or sensations, personification or anthropomorphic fallacy.

Henry Slade was a famous 19th century spiritualist medium known for his independent slate writing abilities born in 1835 (Second Great Awakening) at Johnson’s Creek, Niagara County, New York (Burnt out area). In 1876 Charles Darwin contributed £10 — a substantial amount at that time — to the costs of Slade's criminal prosecution in London. Alfred Russel Wallace was the defence’s star witness. He characterized the defendant as an “earnest inquirer after truth in the department of Natural Science.” Slade was convicted. Darwin was delighted; he had no time for the “clever rogues” who preyed upon grieving relatives anxious to contact a loved one."

cameralism--German science of administration, originally an educational path for the civil servants of the royal chamber, hence its name.

Anscombe quartet--Anscombe's quartet comprises four datasets that have identical simple statistical properties, yet appear very different when graphed. They were constructed in 1973 by the statistician F.J. Anscombe to demonstrate both the importance of graphing data before analyzing it and the effect of outliers on statistical properties.

konzo--a chronic hypertonic (spastic) paralysis with sudden and symmetrical onset seen in poor regions of Africa. It seems to occur after weeks of consumption of varieties of cassava rich in cyanogenic glycosides (bitter cassava) prepared without proper processing (boiling or cooking) without also consuming sulfur amino acids needed to detoxify cyanide. Bitter cassava is preferred to the non-toxic sweet cassava because it is less susceptible to theft and animal predation. Konzo means “bound legs” in the Yaka language and is locally known as mantakassa in northern Mozambique (wiki).

Directoire—style in the decorative arts, fashion, and furniture design named for the period of the French Directory (1795-1799). In 1887 and 1888 Sarah Bernhardt starred

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in Tosca wearing fashions that period which was copied by French dress designers and became popular. It developed into the later Empire style.

Trivers-Willard hypothesis—a hypothesis that proposes that, if parents have information on their offspring, it is more beneficial to invest in the sex that gives them the greatest reproductive pay-off ('grand-offspring') with increasing or "marginal" investment, and that the "optimal" avenue of investment may differ according to the parent's condition. It was formally put forth by Robert Trivers and Dan Willard: Trivers, R.L., & Willard, D.E. (1973). Natural selection of parental ability to vary the sex ratio of offspring. Science, 179, 90-92. Wiki

carpaccio--a dish of raw meat or fish thinly sliced or pounded thin and served as an appetizer. While accounts of the place of origin differ, some saying Harry's Bar in Venice others saying Savini Restaurant in Galleria Vittorio Emanuele in Milan, it is generally acknowedged that the name comes from the Venetian painter Vittore Carpaccio perhaps because of an imagined similarity of the colors of the dish to the colors in his paintings. DBG

adust--dried out by heat or excessive exposure to sunlight.

nullius in verba--the Latin motto of the Royal Society of London means "on the words of no one." Nullius is the genitive of nemo (no one) and in verba means “on words.” It is a contraction of a phrase from the Epistles by Horace, nullius addictus iurare in verba magistri—“I am not bound to believe in the word of any teacher.” DBG

mannerism—a trend in art away from the rational naturalism of the Rennaissance that emphasized exaggeration of nature for artistic purposes. The bizarre elements of the work El Greco are a good example of mannerism. The style flourished in Italy from around 1520 to about 1580 when it was superceded by the baroque style. In Northern Europe it continued into the early seventeenth century. DBG

historicism (versus historism)—an approach to history that has historical prediction as the primary aim and assumes there are 'rhythms' or 'patterns', 'laws' or 'trends' that underlie the evolution of historical events. This is the approach of Hegel. Historicism is deterministic, but assumes there are set teleological ends. Historism, on the other hand, rejects this view and instead sees premises each historical situation as the outcome of unique causes. Leopold von Ranke (1795 –1886) represents this school of thought. He attempts to show to show how things really had been (“wie es eigentlich gewesen”). “History has been assigned the office of judging the past, of instructing our times for the benefit of future years. This essay does not aspire to such high offices; it only wants to show how it had really been.” ----- Leopold Von Ranke DBG

phenylphthalein—a pH indicator dye. Used as a laxitive it is habit forming and may cause cathartic colon (dilated, weak colon due to loss of neural control). Its laxitive effect comes about by stimulating electrolyte secretion and gastric motility through NO production. Research at NIEHS in the 1990’s revealed that it is a also a carcinogen and promted the FDA to propose a ban.

Ex-lax was first sold in 1906 and was manufactured by Sandoz until Sandoz and Ciba Geigy merged to become Novartis, the drug giant based in Basel, Switzerland. When the

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findings about carcinogenicity came out, Novartis switched Ex-Lax from phenylphthalein to senna a kind of bean which contains a different class of laxatives, the anthroquinones.

Correctol—also contained phenylphthalein until Schering-Plough switched December 1995 to bisacodyl, an indole similar to phenylthalein.

Dulcolax— another Novartis product, contains bisacodyl (biss-ACK-oh-dill) a diphenylmethane derivative originally developed due to its similarity to phenolphthalein and introduced as a laxative in 1953.

dihydrophenylisatin—in prunes is similar in structure to phenylphthalein and likewise promotes electrolyte secretion and gastric motility.

http://www.junkscience.com/news/exlax.html

DBGdook--University of New Jersey at Durham. As in “Dook sucketh.” Source: Doggie Fizzle in Urban Dictionary. DBG

sucketh--(archaic), third-person singular simple present indicative form of suck (q.v.). As in, “Yea, verily, dook sucketh, yet into the current Day and shall henceforth and throughout all Eternity, yea, even unto ye Day of Judgment." DBG

suck--O.E. sucan, related to German saugen "to suck;" and Latin, sugere "to suck," Slang sense of "be contemptible" first attested 1971. “Suck eggs,” is from 1906. “Suck hind tit,” in the sense of "be inferior" is American English slang first recorded 1940. See, “dook.” Source: Online Entomological Dictionary.

http://www.chapelhillnews.com/192/story/6646.html

lapidary—having to do with stones, especially precious stones, from L. lapis, lapidis--stone. But also things engraved on stone and figuratively, “short, precise, and elegant, like an inscription on a monument.” Webster’s “Like many of his contemporaries , Willis preferred to convey his opinions in speculative, lapidary passages rather than in dull, precise anatomical terminology.” DBG

cautelous—cautious, from L. cautela--caution. Also crafty; deceitful; false.

weapon-salve—a substance which when applied to the weapon that caused a wond would serve to cure that wound. By putting the weapon into a special ointment the vital sprits in the congealed blood could be made to reunite with the victim's body. according to one explanation. Current in 1630's Britain. Opponents argued that Aristotle had shown that forces conld not act at a distance.

divinatory lots—mideval practice of using lots to devine God's providence. Also called sortilege. Opponents held two views, one that casual use of lots was irreverent, the other that random happenings have no connection to God's will.

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sortilege—the act or practice of drawing lots; divination by drawing lots. See divinatory lots.

hecatomb—(heck-a-tome) a great sacrifice; an ancient Greek or Roman sacrifice of 100 oxen from the Greek hekaton "one hundred" and bous "ox."

pipian squash—a type of zucchini popular in Central America. It is lighter colored than zucchinni.

trigeminal—of or relating to the fifth cranial nerve (CN V). From the Latin, triplet, from tri- + geminus twin.

dash—see hypen.

hyphen—a very short one line used as puctuation (-), the dash is the long one and always has a space on either side ( — ). It is inside words joining them so seen when a word is continued on a new line in words like twenty-two, when talking about a prefix or suffix. From from Gk. hyphen "mark joining two syllables or words," probably indicating how they were to be sung, "together, in one," lit. "under one," from hypo "under" (see sub-) + hen, neut. of heis "one."

dash refers to a quick movement from Anglo Saxon.

em dash (—)shows an interruption to the flow of a sentence on the end or as a mid-sentence explanatory phrase

The en dash (–) links numbers, in place of the word “to” (2005–07 instead of from 2005 to 2007 or it showed joint authors (the Smith–Brown report)

Keyboards don’t have dashes and the corrections made by computers don’t distinguish between the em and en dashes.

dashboard of an automobile is first recorded 1904, from earlier meaning "board in front of a carriage to stop mud from being splashed ("dashed") into the vehicle by the horse's hoofs" (1846).

Euler line—see centers of a triangle

centers of a triangle —there are different centers to a triangle, the first three discussed here all lie on a line—the Euler line. The centroid is real important. There are others: the Gergonne point, the Fermat point (this is the point which minimizes the sum of the distances from the three vertices; also called the isogonic center or the Rorricelli point), the congruent isoscelizer point, the Lemoine point (also called the symmedian point or the Grebe point), and the Spieker center (a kind of incenter). Here is a very interesting link describing them better (with pictures): http://www.jimloy.com/geometry/centers.htm

Spieker center—see centers of a triangle

congruent isoscelizer point —see centers of a triangle

Gergonne point—see centers of a triangle

Fermat point—see centers of a triangle

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isogonic—having or making equal angles; see centers of a triangle.

Rorricelli point—see centers of a triangle

coulis—(pronounced koo-LEE) a form of thick sauce made from puréed and strained vegetables or fruits. from Latin colare, to strain. Other derivatives of colare are colander and percolate.

butterfly effect—situation in which a small event initiates a chain of events leading to large-scale alterations of events. The “Butterfly Effect”, or more technically the "sensitive dependence on initial conditions", is the essence of chaos theory. The name come from the ide that "the flap of a butterfly’s wings in Brazil could set off a tornado in Texas." An example is a ball rolling in different directions down a hill depending on slight differences in the position in which it is placed at the top of the hill.

Streets of Cairo—the oriental-sounding melody (da da da da…da da dada dada da) was introduced by Sol Bloom, a show business promoter who later becme a U.S. Congressman. He was entertainment director of the Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition of 1893 celebrating the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ discovery of the New World. One of its attractions, called A Street In Cairo included snake charmers, cmel rides and the infamous dancers that later spawned the legend of Little Egypt. Bloom said he improvised the melody on the piano at a press briefing in 1893 to introduce Little Egypt. He didn’t copyright it and it was widely copied. There are suggestions that the tune was derived from other sources. The first five notes of a French song, “Echos du Temps Passe” published in 1857 are identical and the melocy may have even preceded this. Source: http://www.shira.net/streets-of-cairo.htm

fusiform—tapering at each end, from Latin fusus—spindle.

concussion—definitions vary, but most include references to trauma to the head and disturbance of brain function with loss of consciousness and/or a period of amnesia. Ambroise Paré (1510–1590) is said to have coined or at least popularized the term in his medical writings. Synonymous with an older term, commotio cerebri. More recent terms are traumatic unconsciousness, mild brain injury. Noun formation from L. concutio, concutere, to shake together, a combination of cum and quatio, quatere, to shake from the past participle of which comes our English word, quash. DBG

nudiustertian—the day before yesterday.

oxter—armpit.

pilliver—old English word meaning a pillowcase.

vomitory—passageway leading to a tier of seats in a theater, (especially a Roman amphitheater), or a stadium from Latin vomo, vomere, to vomit.

agenda—feminine future participle of the verb agere--do or act, so it is an adjective with the meaning “to be done.” It is used in the sense of [items] to be done or acted on [at a meeting].

dressing sack—a dressing gown, circa 1900-1917. A loose-fitting dress hanging straight from the shoulders without a waist (a kimono, chemise, shift, pullman robe) or a full loose hiplength jacket.

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graham gems—gems are sweet quick bread muffins baked in a muffin pan or gem pan Graham gems are made with Graham flour, a type of wheat flour made by grinding the endosperm , bran and germ of wheat separatredly (the endosperm is ground to a fine white flour while the other two are coarsely ground). Graham flour is named after American Presbyterian minister Rev. Sylvester Graham (1794-1851) a diet reformer and advocate of bran.

burned over district—an area in central and western New York State. The name was inspired by the notion that the area had been so heavily evangelized during antebellum revivalism as to have no "fuel" (unconverted population) left over to "burn" (convert) during the Second Great Awakening. The name was popularized by historian Whitney Cross in his 1950 book The Burned-over District: the social and intellectual history of enthusiastic religion in western New York State, 1800-1850. The term appears to have been coined however, by Charles Grandison Finney who in his 1876 book Autobiography of Charles G. Finney referred to a "burnt district" (p78). The area was breeding ground for numerous sects and movements such as the Mormons, Seventh Day Adventists, Christian Scientists, Shakers, Oneida Collective, Spiritualist movement (Fox sisters of Hydesville, New York), Fourierist socialist collectives , Kingdom of Matthias , Millerites, Seneca Falls Convention (Elizabeth Cady Stanton), Skaneateles Community, and Hunter Patriots. Some people feel that part of this push toward revival of Christian beliefs and reform of prisons, asylums and schools was more aimed at producing a tractable, sober working class than religious zealotry per se.

hunge—act of giving an animal (such as a dog, cat or farm animals) medicine or supplements, by force, that they would not voluntarily eat on their own. Urban Dictionary

eleven—the oldest form of eleven in English is endleofan (which appears in King Alfred's translation from the Latin of Bede's Ecclesiastical History). The original Germanic root was something like ainlif: ain, one, and lif, left. In modern German they contract it to elf. Twelve is from something like twe, two, and lif, left

twelve—see eleven

Lake Wobegon effect—tendency to over rate one’s own abilities or abilities of specific groups. Examples: overrating executives in determining their salaries; in surveys most people to describe themselves or their abilities as above average; in many educational tests a vast majority of participants achieve results above the norm. Also called the “above average effect” or the “better-than-average effect”). From the fictional town of Lake Wobegon from the radio series A Prairie Home Companion, where, according to the presenter, Garrison Keillor, "all the women are strong, all the men are good-looking, and all the children are above average."

electroporation—production of a significant increase in the electrical conductivity and permeability of the cell plasma membrane by the application of an electrical field.

Queckenstedt's maneuver--outdated clinical test for spinal stenosis Lumbar spinal pressure is measured before and after compresession of both jugular veins. If no rise in lumbar pressure stenosis is assumed. Named after Hans Heinrich Georg Queckenstedt

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who described it in 1916 (Queckenstedt, H. H. G. (1916). Zur Diagnose der Rückenmarkskompression. Deutsche Zeitschrift für Nervenheilkunde, 55, 325–333).

rule of thirds--compositional rule of thumb stating that an picture should divided by two equally-spaced horizontal lines and two equally-spaced vertical lines and the objects in the picture aligned on these rather than centered. It was apparently first stated in 1797: “Sir Joshua has given it as rule, that the proportion of warm to cold color in a picture should be a two to one, although he as frequently deviated therefrom; and Smith, in his “Remarks on Rural Scenery,” would extend a like rule to all the proportions of painting,saving one third of land, should have two-thirds of water and these together, forming about one-third of the picture, the remaining two-thirds to be for air and sky; and he applies the same rule to the crossing and breaking of lines and objects, &c.” 1845 reference to J T Smith's illustrated book, published in 1797, defining a compositional "rule of thirds"--Wiki

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& (see ampersand)

@ use in business actually goes back to late medieval times. An Italian academic, Giorgio Stabile, a professor of the history of science at La Sapienza University, found it used in a letter written in 1536 by a Florentine trader named Francesco Lapi (Whilan, Philip Merchant@florence, Guardian, 31 July 2000, Section 1, page 12.) where it was used to represent a gauge of quantity, the "anfora," or jar. At that time, it was either a unit of weight or of volume based on the capacity of the standard terracotta jars that were then employed to transport grain and liquid about the Mediterranean (the capacity was about one thirtieth of a barrel). The sign was a handwritten letter A (for amphora), embellished in the typical Florentine script.

= the 'equals' symbol appears in Robert Recorde's book The Whetstone of Witte published in 1557. He justifies using two parallel line segments:- “... bicause noe 2 thynges can be moare equalle .” The symbol = was not immediately popular. The symbol || was used by some and ae ( or oe), from the word 'aequalis' meaning equal, was widely used into the 1700s.

a cappella—Italian it means in chapel or choir style, but see “chapel” for more.

abbrev.—the abbreviation for abbreviation.

abjad--type of writing system in which there are only letters representing consonants (a synonym is “consonantary”). The word “abjad” comes from the first letters of the Arabic alphabet. All abjads are used to write Semitic languages and can be traced to the ancient proto-caananite script. The Greek alphabet was developed from from the Phoenician abjad by dropping letters for sounds not found in the Greek language and turning others into vowels. Srprsngly, mny nn-Smtc lnggs sch `s `nglsh cn b wrttn wtht vwls `nd rd wth lttl dffclty.)--Wikipedia.

abjad or consonantary—signs represents a consonants and there are no vowels (ancient Hebrew or Arabic)

abugida or alphasyllabary —signs represents a consonants and the vowels are indicated by marks attached to the signs.

alphabet—signs represents both consonants and vowels (ancient Greek, the

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modern Latin alphabet)logography—signs represents a whole words (Sumerian, Egyptian hieroglyphics,

and Chinese). syllabary—sign represents a syllable (Japanese hiragana and katakana, or Korean

hangul).

abracadabra—The magician waves the wand and intones "Abracadabra." Something amazing and mysterious happens. This very ancient word has always been associated with mystical powers, and it comes down almost unchanged from its origin. The oldest known users of this word were members of the ancient Alexandrian Gnostic sect of the Basilidians in the second and third centuries AD. They probably based their mystical word "abrasadabra" on the name of their deity, Abraxas. Another possible origin involves the three Hebrew words Ab (the father), Ben (the son) and Acadsch (the holy spirit). Today the word might be used frivolously as a flourish for parlor tricks, but in the past its profound mystical powers were taken very seriously. For many centuries it was

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worn as a charm, written in an inverted triangle. At the top the whole word appeared, and on each succeeding line the last letter was removed, until the last line showed only the letter "a." With each letter that disappeared, it was believed that one trouble would disappear.

abstemious and abstain look alike, and both have meanings involving self-restraint or self-denial. So they must both come from the same root, right? Yes and no. Both get their start from the Latin prefix "abs-," meaning "from" or "away," but "abstain" traces to "abs-" plus the Latin verb "tenere" (meaning "to hold"), while "abstemious" gets its "-temious" from a suffix akin to the Latin noun "temetum," meaning "intoxicating drink."

abulia—combines the prefix "a-," meaning "without," with the Greek word "boule," meaning "will." Although "abulia" can refer to the generalized indecision that sometimes afflicts us all, it is most likely to be used in medical or psychological contexts to describe more severe physical or mental conditions that make it difficult or impossible for an individual to act or make decisions.

abyss—from the Greek, abyssos (bottomless).

acarology--the scientific study of mites and ticks [L. acarus; Gr. akari--a mite.]

accidie—[from a = not + kedos = care] is Old French for sloth or torpor. It refers to acedia (sloth), one of the seven deadly sins, and is used primarily in reference to spiritual apathy, especially as it affects monastic life. (Laureen Martin) acedia ace dia noun 1. the deadly sin of sloth 2. spiritual torpor and apathy From The New Yorker, "Who Speaks for the Lazy?" Those in whom the spirit failed to move or to be moved were afflicted with acedia-a condition the early Church fathers felt deserved a measure of compassion, along with the usual tsk-tsking. By the late Middle Ages, acedia had come to include the notion of worldly sloth.

accolade—from the French verb accoler, which means to throw one's arms around another's neck, to embrace, and ultimately from the Latin term collum, meaning neck, also the ancestor of the English word collar. When it was first borrowed from French, accolade referred to a ceremonial embrace that once marked the conferring of knighthood. The term was later extended to any ceremony conferring knighthood (such as the more familiar tapping on the shoulders with the flat blade of a sword), and eventually extended to honors or awards in general.

acedia— sloth, one of the seven deadly sins; spiritual torpor and apathy, especially in monasteries, from Gr akedia, from a- not + kedos care. Acediast - one afflicted with acedia.

acerbic—emotionally bitter. from the Latin adjective acerbus meaning bitter related to the word acer, sharp. Related English words are acrid, acrimonious and exacerbate.

acolyte—"keleuthos," a Greek noun that means "path" and that is itself the parent of "akolouthos," an adjective that means "following."

acorn—An acorn is the nutlike fruit of an oak tree. It may seem like a kernel of corn, implying that the word came from some association of oak and corn. While that association contributed to the word's evolution, the real origin is different. The original Old English word was aecern, which was the name for the fruit of a tree that could be

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found in fields and meadows. The association was with the word aecer (open land), from the Latin ager (field). Here is an example of what is called folk etymology: the word aecern seemed similar enough to "oak corn" that it evolved in that direction, under the influence of popular usage. After all, there are peppercorns, so why not oak corns? Early spellings of the word, such as okecorn and akecorn, reflect this misunderstanding. Some other words from the ager root:agriculture—the art and science of growing crops and livestock agrarian—of agriculture, land, and rural matters acre—a measure of land area peregrine—foreign, alien; wandering, migratory pilgrim—one who travels agrostology—the study of grasses

acre—a measure of land area from Latin, ager (field). An acre is 90 yards of a a football field.

acrostic—a message encoded in certain letters of a poem or story

acumen—our English word retains the spelling and figurative meaning of its direct Latin ancestor, a term that literally meant "point." That Latin root traces to the verb "acuere," which means "to sharpen" and which derives from "acus," the Latin word for "needle." In its first known English uses in the 1500s, "acumen" referred specifically to a sharpness of wit.

adventitia—the outermost connective tissue covering of structures not covered by serosa. The covering is derived from surrounding connective tissue, but does not form an integral part of the tissue. The word is from the Latin, adventicius, coming from outside, from ad and venio.

affable—from the Latin "affabilis," which comes from the "fari" relative "affari" ("to speak to"), plus "-abilis," meaning "able." Some other "fari" derivatives are "infant," "fable," and "fate." "Infant" comes from the Latin "infant-, infans," meaning "incapable of speech" or "young"; it is ultimately from "in-" plus "fant-, fans," and "fans" is the present participle of "fari." "Fable" comes from the Latin "fabula," which comes from "fari" and means "conversation." "Fate" comes from the Latin word "fatum," meaning "what has been spoken" and deriving from "fatus," a past participle of "fari."

afflatus--inspiration; an impelling mental force acting from within or divine communication of knowledge. Bob Weekley

aftermath—aftermath is a second crop, planted after a previous crop has been grown and harvested in the same year. Usually the first crop was grass or a similar grazing crop, which had to be mowed down at the end of its growing season. By the 17th century, the Old English aftermaeth (after mowing) began to take on a connotation of "a resulting condition," leading to the modern meaning of the word.

agentive suffix—an ending to a word (suffix) that turns it into a person (agent). The most common are "-er", "-or", "-ary", and "-ster" (as in “driver,” “orator,” “functionary,” and “spinster”), but “-o” is used less commonly (as in "sicko" “wino,” “fatso,” and “weirdo”).

aghast—Someone who is aghast is dumfounded, astounded, struck by shock, terror, or amazement. "I froze, staring aghast at the sudden apparition." Someone who sees a

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ghastly sight may well be aghast, and the words are related. The same goes for ghost, and both words contributed to the modern spelling of aghast, by adding the silent h. There is no relation to the word gaze, although Shakespeare wrote a line "All the whole army stood agaz'd on him." In Middle English, agast (terror-struck) was the past participle of agasten, from Old English gaestan (to frighten, to torment). That word was itself derived from Old English gast (ghost, breath, spirit). Although it may seem like gast was the source for our modern word gust (sudden wind or draft), that word comes from the Old Norse gustr (cold blast of wind).

agio—The charge for exchanging currency.

agnate—pertaining to relatives on the father’s side of the family, from past participle of Latin agnoscere (to recognize). In Latin agnatus refers to children born into a family where an heir is already in place. See enate.

ahimsa—Hindu and Buddhist doctrine of refraining from harming any living being. Ahimsa comes from a Sanskrit word meaning noninjury.

akimbo—the arms-on-hip-position. In the 1400's, the spelling "in kenebowe" was used. The "...bowe" part is the same as our "bow" meaning curve. DBG

alamo—the Spanish name for the poplar tree (the mission was named for the trees that grew near it). Spanish speakers used "alamo" as the basis for their word "alameda," which can name either a grove of poplars or a tree-lined avenue.

alarm--From the Italian, All'arme--To arms! (Curious Word Origins)

albatross--very large, white bird with long, narrow wings, hooked beaks and webbed feet. Figuratively the word albatross also means an unwelcome burden. The wings of the wandering albatross, Diomedea exulans, are twelve feet long, but only nine inches wide. The high aerodynamic efficiency of the wings allow Albatrosses to travel long distances out of sight of land by gliding along up-welling wind fronts. They use their hooked beaks to snatch floating marine life off the surface. Their awkwardness on land led to the nickname Gooney bird. The figurative meaning of the word albatross comes from Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s Rime of the Ancient Mariner. In the poem a sailor shoots an albatross and as penance has to wear it as a burden around his neck. The word albatross may come from the Spanish alcatras, pelican influenced by alba, white. Albatrosses belong to the avian order Procellariformes (tube-nosed swimmers) which includes petrels, shearwaters, and fulmars.

albedo—the fraction of electromagnetic radiation that is reflected from its surface. Usually, the word refers to visible light, and the object is a celestial body. Example: "The Earth's overall albedo is higher during winter in the northern hemisphere, when so much ground is covered with snow." In Late Latin, albedo was whiteness, from Latin albus (white). That root gave us many "whiteness" words, including these: albino: person or animal lacking pigment album: originally, an autograph book albite: white variety of the mineral feldspar albumen: the white of an egg albescent: becoming white or whitish aubade: music about the breaking of day auburn: reddish brown, from Old French aborne (blond)

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alembic—a piece of distillation apparatus, still used to produce cognac, a brandy distilled from white wine in western France. Al-anbiq means the still in Arabic, but it was derived from the ancient Greek word for still, ambix.

alexithymia—a deficit in emotional awareness or comprehension associated with various disorders such as PTSD and anorexia. Alexithymics don’t talk about their emotions, they have poor interpersonal relationships and often have psychosomatic or somatoform complaints.

alienist—a psychiatrist, from the Latin word "alius," meaning "other" by way of the French "aliene" ("insane") and "alieniste," a doctor who treats the insane. The word first appeared in print in English in 1864, but it was preceded by the other "alius" descendants "alien" (14th century) and "alienate" (used as a verb since the early 16th century). "Alienist" is much rarer than "psychiatrist" these days, but at one time it was the preferred term. MW

allegory--from Greek allos meaning other and agora meaning gathering place.

alligator—the large semi-aquatic reptile was not derived (as some have supposed) from the Latin alligare (to bind), even though one who is caught in an alligator's teeth is certainly bound up! The real origin is the Spanish el lagarto (the lizard), which itself came from the Latin lacertus (lizard). In the sixteenth century, only the noun was used, so the reptile was called lagarto, but a century later the article el had become part of the English word, forming ellagarto, and then alligator. The last transformation is an interesting example of what is called taboo deformation by linguists. Words that carry feared or forbidden meanings often undergo exchanges of some letters. Another example of taboo deformation is the word crocodile, the name for another kind of fearsome lizard, which was transformed from the Middle English cocodril.

altricial—Creatures that are altricial are helpless, naked, and blind when they are first born. The word is derived from Latin altrix, the feminine form of altor (nourisher), from alere (to nourish), because altricial birds must be directly nourished by their parents before they can take care of themselves. The opposite of altricial is precocial, from the Latin praecox (premature; not fully ripened or cooked), the same root as precocious (maturing early). Precocial birds are covered with down when they are born, and can run about immediately and feed themselves. The Latin alere has contributed to several other modern words about nourishing and growing: alible—nourishing; aliment: nourishing substance—food; alimentary canal—the gut; alimony: payment (nourishment) to support an ex-spouse;

alumnus—a past graduate from Latin meaning foster-child derived from the verb alo, to nourish.

amacrine—lacking a long, fibrous process, from Greek, a-, without and makros, long.

ambiance—ambient from Latin ambiens, present participle of ambire (to surround). That's a compound of ambi- (around) and ire (to go). Something that is ambient "goes all around."

amnesty—loss of memory—When a lawyer begs amnesty for his client, he is actually asking the judge to have an attack of amnesia. The first person in history to grant amnesty was reported to have been a Greek general who said that he would forgive his enemies and "not remember" (Greek a-, "not," mnasthai, "to remember") their misdeeds.

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And from this we inherited our two English words, amnesia, "loss of memory," and amnesty, "a pardon for offenses." Pat Shettel

amok—since the 16th century, visitors to Southeast Asia have reported on a psychiatric disorder known in Malay as "amok." Typically, the afflicted person (usually a Malay man) attacks bystanders in a blind frenzy, killing everyone in sight until he collapses in exhaustion or is himself killed. The term "amok" (and the murderous spree it names) made an impression on English speakers. By the 17th century, both the noun and adverb forms of "amok," as well as the phrase "run amok" (a translation of the Malay verb "mengamok"), were present in English. Time has mitigated the bloody nature of "amok," and nowadays it usually describes the unruly and not the murderous.

ampersand—The ampersand was invented in 63 BC by a Roman named Tiro as part of his Latin shorthand system. The symbol is a condensed form of the Latin word et (and). Depending on which font your computer is using to show this text, you might be able to see the crossed "t" at the lower right corner of the "and" symbol. The English name of the symbol comes from the way English school children used to say the alphabet. At the end, they would say "X, Y, Zed, and per se and." The last part refers to the "and" symbol, which is per se (by itself) the word "and." Over time, "and per se and" became "ampersand."

anabolism—formation of complex molecules in life processes

anachronism—something out of place in time or chronology from chronos, time, and ana, up, back, or again, sometimes distinguished from parachronisms, chronological errors in which dates are set later than is correct.

Anacreontic--Celebrating love and drinking. After Anacreon, a Greek poet in the 6th century BCE, noted for his songs in praise of love and wine. The US national anthem 'The Star-Spangled Banner' is set to the tune of the English song 'To Anacreon in Heaven' which was the 'constitutional song' of the Anacreontic Society, a gentlemen's music club in London.

analemma—If you record the exact position of the Sun in the sky at the same clock time every day for a year, the resulting collection of points is called the Sun's analemma. It's a figure-8 with the northern loop smaller than the southern loop. The shape is the result of the tilt of the Earth's axis and the shape of its orbit around the Sun. Because the Earth's orbit is not perfectly circular, the analemma is a loopy shape rather than a simple line. To properly calibrate a sundial, one must know the Sun's analemma and the local latitude. The word is Latin for sundial, from the Greek analambanein (to take up), from ana- (upward) and lambanein (to take). Also from that root is analeptic [adj., n. an-uh-LEP-tik] (restorative or stimulating, or a stimulating medication).

ananda—Sanskrit word for bliss. A naturally occurring endocanabiod, anandamide, binds to canabinoid receptors in the brain, the same receptors that bind tetrahydrocannabinol, the active ingredient in marijuana. Anandamide is released from rat brain neurons by a unique mechanism: it is stored in the cell membrane in the form of a phospholipid precursor, which is cleaved by a calcium- and activity-dependent enzymatic reaction. Anandamide and two other cannabinoid mimics are present in cocoa powder and in chocolate. Cannabinoids may inhibit new synapse formation and are now

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thought to facilitate aversive memory loss in the amygdala through an inhibitory effect possibly on GABA-using neurons. Internet

ancilla—an aid to achieving or mastering something difficult from the Latin "ancilla," literally "female servant.

anfractuosity—channel, crevice or passage full of windings and turnings. The word comes from Latin anfractus, a bending around, from the verb frangere, to break. So it is a close cousin of the much more recent fractal, as well as fracture, fragile, refraction, and, rather less obviously, infringe and osprey (the latter ultimately derives from ossifraga, bone breaker, originally applied to the lammergeier, (Bearded Vulture, Gypaetus barbatus) a raptor of the Pyrenees mountains with a yellow-orange body, long, black, narrow wings and a tail that is large and lozenge shaped.

animadversion—a critical remark from the Latin phrase animum advertere, meaning to turn the mind to. It is easy to see how we also get advertise, adverse and adversary from advertere.

anion—negatively charged atom

annus mirabilis—wonderful year. To British poet John Dryden, the "year of wonders" was 1666. That was the year of a great British naval victory over the Dutch, as well as the date of the great London fire. When he titled his 1667 poetic review of 1666 and its events "Annus Mirabilis," Dryden became one of the first writers to use that Latinate phrase in an otherwise English context.

antinomian--"one who maintains moral law is not binding on Christians under the law of grace," 1645, from M.L. Antinomi, name given to a sect of this sort that arose in Germany in 1535, from Gk. anti- "opposite, against" + nomos "rule, law" (other words with “nomos” root: numismatics, anomy, antinomian, Deuteronomy, metronome, autonomy, taxonomy, astronomy, economy). [Dictionary.com]

antonomasia—This word has two meanings, 1) the use of a title for a person’s name, “His Majesty” instead of “The King,” or “the philosopher, instead of “Aristotle.” 2) the descriptive use of a proper name to emphasize someone’s traits, for instance, when a wise man is called a Solomon, or an eminent orator a Cicero. DBG

aorta—From the Greek, that which is hung.

aphorism—from Greek aphorismos it was used in English until the 1700's for medical maxims especially those in the Hippocratic corpus such as this one from the Hippocratic book on the principles of diagnosis and treatment of disease, "Life is short, art long, occasion sudden and dangerous, experience deceitful, and judgment difficult." DBG

aplomb—ultimately comes from the French phrase "a plomb," meaning "according to the plummet." A plummet is a lead weight that is attached to a line and used to determine vertical alignment. In French, the literal meaning of "aplomb" is "perpendicularity," and the extended meaning is "composure." English speakers borrowed "aplomb," in its extended sense, in the 19th century. The French "plomb" is also the source of the English word "plumb," meaning "to measure depth" and "to explore critically and minutely." MW

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apocope (a-pock-o-pea)—Leaving out the last letter, syllable, or part of a word. Examples: diggin’, math. From the Greek word apokoptein, to cut off, made up of apo- plus koptein, to cut. Quinion

apoplexy—neurological failure associated with a cerebral stroke

aposematic—An animal that shows aposematic coloring advertises its inedibility or dangerousness by wearing bright warning colors. There are aposematic black and yellow wasps, and the black widow spider with its red hourglass shape. There are aposematic fish, like the colorful lionfish, which can kill a human by a touch of its poisonous sting barbs. The word begins with the Greek prefix apo- (off, away from), and ends with sematic, which is a word in its own right (serving as a warning or signal of danger), from the Greek sema (sign). So aposematic coloring is a signal of danger, which tells the observer to get away. Here are more off and away words: apostrophe: a punctuation mark that is up above the text apogee: the most distant point in an orbit around the Earth; aposiopesis: a sudden breaking off in the middle of a sentence; apostasy: abandonment of one's religious faith, political party, or principles; apology: a speech that "explains away" an offense, fault, or mistake

apostate—a person who betrays or deserts his cause or especially his religion. From the Greek απο, apo, "away, apart", στασις, stasis, "standing." In Islam apostasy is punishable by death. One of the most famous apostates was Julian the Apostate. Constantine’s Edict of Milan had established Christianity as the official religion of the Roman Empire in 312 AD. Julian (331-363) tried to abolish Chrisitanity and restore paganism in the empire.

apostrophe—You know what this is. It is a figure of speech by which the orator or writer suddenly breaks off from the previous method of his discourse and addresses, in the second person, some person or thing, absent or present. (fr. Gr. a turning away)

apotheosis—a perfect example of something, referring to things ranked among the gods or that have achieved divine status. Hercules was the son of Zeus, but had to do twelve labors to become a god. The word has come to mean something worthy of such elevation, or a perfect example or ultimate form.

apposite—highly pertinent, fitting, suitable, appropriate, apt, proper, relative to, or relevant.) Her hat, not quite apposite for the solemn occasion, was a little number by Rudi Grotto, the bad boy of headgear. It looked like Bambi in the land of Cockaigne — or Breughel in Disneyland. ("Cockaigne" [pronunciation similar to "cocaine" but with a nasalized n] — literally, cake land, cognate, "cooky": An imaginary country of idleness and luxury, the subject of a fourteenth-century French fable.) Laureen Martin, November 1999.

appreciable—like the verb appreciate, comes from the Late Latin verb "appretiare" ("to set a value on"), which itself combines the Latin word for "price" — "pretium" — with the prefix "ad-," meaning "to." M-W.com

apricot-- from the Arabic al barqouq or al birquq from the Latin praecox or praecoquum malum meaning early apple in the sense of early-ripening.

archipelago—a cluster of many islands, originally the Aegean from the Greek arkhi- (great) and pelagos (sea). In Italian it is still called Arcipelago.

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arenaceous--having the appearance or consistency of sand, from arena, Latin for sand.

arenose--sandy; full of sand [L. arenosus, fr. arena sand.]

Aristotle's lantern—five toothed mouth of a sea urchin. Aristotle noted the resemblance between the shape of a sea urchin's mouth and the frame of a lantern. Biologists nicknamed the echinoderm's elaborate five-toothed masticatory apparatus Aristotle's lantern. MW

arithmetic—Arithmetic is the mathematics of addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division. The word is thought by some to come from the Latin ars metrica (measuring art). Although it may seem reasonable, this origin isn't the real one. The word actually came out of Greek, not Latin. The original word was arithmein (to count), which itself comes from arithmos (number). Another word from the same root is logarithm. One might think that the similar-sounding word algorithm (a step by step series of mathematical or logical operations) also comes from arithmos, but actually it is derived from the name of an Arab mathematician, Abu Ja'far Mohammed ibn-Musa al-Khwarizmi, whose works eventually introduced Arabic numerals to the West. The last part of his name means "man from Khwarizm" now Urgench in Uzbekistan. There is a hotel, the Hotel Khorezm Palace, which seems to be named for the other name of the city.

armillary--pertaining to rings, circles, or hoops. From Latin armilla (bracelet, ring), from armus (shoulder). Word of the day.

arrabbiata—angry. In cooking it means the dish contains hot peppers. A common dish in cheap restaurants in Rome is penne all'arrabbiata which is penne with an arrabbiata sauce of garlic, tomatoes, and red chilli cooked in olive oil with chopped parsley sprinkled on top. Other recipes call for onions, celery, carrots or pancetta.

arsenal—The word has a complicated history. It started in Arabic as dar-as-sina, meaning "house of construction" or "house of industry". In the fifteenth century the word was taken over by several Mediterranean nations; both Spanish and Italian borrowed it as 'darsena', a word for a dock. The citizens of Venice acquired it in a different form, losing the first letter and adding 'al' to the end, as the name of their naval dockyard, a substantial base as befitted the leading maritime power in the Mediterranean at the time; to this day it's called the Arzenale.

artichoke—An artichoke is the large, edible flower of Cynara scolymus, a thistle-like plant from the Mediterranean region, and it's also the name of the whole plant. If you've ever eaten the central "heart" of an artichoke, with its dense, hairy covering, you might think the name has something to do with "choking on the heart." Actually, the word comes from the Arabic al-kharshuf (the edible flower of a plant in the thistle family). The word migrated into Old Spanish, as alcarchofa, then into Italian as articiocco. Although the "true" artichoke is an edible thistle flower, similar to the original Arabian plant, the word was first applied in English to a different plant, the Jerusalem artichoke. The latter, a member of the sunflower family, is not from Jerusalem, and its flowers are not edible. The name was modified from the Italian girasole (sunflower).

Asiago--a hard cheese named after a town and region in northern Italy. People in this region speak an isolated Germanic language called Cimbrian. I remember reading about the Cimbrii when we read Caesar’s Gallic Wars in Latin class. There are only a few

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hundred Cimbrii left in this area.

Types of asiago cheese:asiago pressato--fresh, un-aged asiago cheese

dolche (mildly spicy, several months old)fresco (aged two to three months)medio (stronger, aged longer

assiago d’allevo (mature, hard, made from skimmed raw cows’ milk, sold in flat cheese wheels weighing 18 to 31 pounds)

mezzano(four to five months old)stravecchio (between nine months and two years)vecchio (nine months or longer)

Here is a recipe using asiago cheese

Cook some penne or fusilli, cool and drain. Soak sun-dried tomatoes to soften in hot water for 30 minutes (or drain a can of Italian tomatoes), add a little olive oil (corn oil) and minced garlic (garlic powder), 10-ounces of chopped spinach or Swiss chard (16 oz. cooked frozen spinach) and 1/2 to 3/4 cup grated hard Asiago cheese (don’t use the shredded soft Asiago you can buy in the dairy section of the supermarket), toss. Salt & pepper to taste. Optional...19 oz. can cannellini (or garbanzo) beans or other white beans, drained. Cost: about $5.00.

aspersion—originally the action of sprinkling somebody with something, usually water as in one form of Christian baptism, for example. From Latin aspergere", to sprinkle. Our modern idiom "to cast aspersions" seems to have been first used by Henry Fielding in his novel Tom Jones of 1749.epiphany—Christian festival commemorating the coming of the Magi, the first manifestation of Christ to the gentiles. Traditionally January 6th, 12 days after Christmas. From the Greek phainein, to show, a word that is also the source of fancy and fantasy.—Quinion

assail—comes from an Old French verb, "asaillir," which itself comes from the Latin verb "assilire" ("to leap upon"). "Assilire" joins the prefix "ad-" ("to, toward") with the Latin verb "salire," meaning "to leap." When "assail" was first used in the 13th century, it meant "to attack" or literally "to leap upon." By the 15th century, English speakers were using the term to mean "to attack with words or arguments. MW

assay and essay are both words from Old French essai (test; effort), from Late Latin exagium (act of weighing) from the prefix ex- (out) with agere (to drive).

assiduous—marked by careful unremitting attention derives from assidere, to sit beside; as do the words assess and assize—a judicial inquest or an action to be decided at such an inquest.

assuage—lessen the intensity of something that pains or distresses. Scholars assume that word derives from a Vulgar Latin term, assuaviare, itself a composite of the prefix ad-plus the Latin suavis, meaning sweet, pleasant, or agreeable (also the source of the adjective suave).

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asterisk—a small star, reflecting its origin from Late Latin asteriskus, from Greek asteriskos, the diminutive of aster (star).

astrobleme—the remains of a large ancient meteoric impact, a roughly circular scar of crushed and deformed bedrock, from half a mile to 40 miles (0.8 to 64 km) in diameter. The best way to identify one is through the cone of shattered rock that lies beneath it. The most famous is probably the Sudbury Astrobleme in Canada, whose mines supply about half the world's nickel. It was coined from Greek 'astron', a star, plus 'blema', a wound.’—Quinion

atrabilious—gloomy, from Latin 'atra bilis', black bile, a translationof the Greek phrase melas (black) khole (bile). Not many English words come from "atra" meaning black, most use the equivalent "niger." words use this (Incidentally, 'atrabilious' is the only word in English that uses this Latin word for black rather than the better-known 'niger'). Most dictionaries say that 'atrocious' comes from Latin 'atrox', cruel. It takes rather more burrowing to discover that that word originally came from one of the Latin words for black. Similarly, if you delve far enough back into Roman history, 'atrium' refers to the smoke-blackened halls of houses in the days when they had a central fire and no chimney. Quinion

auburn—a reddish brown color almost always referring to a hair color. Strangely the word comes from the Latin word albus or white, which also gave us albino, album and albumen. When it first came into English, as auburnus, it meant blond hair which makes sense. But it was influenced by the Middle English word brun which meant brown, so the meaning shifted to indicate a brown color hair.

august—comes from the Latin word "augustus," meaning "consecrated, venerable," which in turn derives from "augere," a verb meaning "to make grow" or "to increase." The first Roman emperor was given the title "Augustus" to reflect his lofty status. During his reign (in 8 B.C.), the Roman Senate voted to use the title to replace the name of the month "Sextilis" in their calendar to honor their grand leader. English speakers inherited the name of the month of August with the rest of the Julian calendar, but it wasn't until the mid-1600s that "august" came to be used generically in English, more or less as "augustus" was in Latin, to refer to someone with imperial qualities.

babiche—trips of rawhide, sinew, or gut used for sewing, lacing, or fastening or snowshoes webbed with babiche. The word is French Canadian from the Mi’kmaq (Micmac) Algonquian Indian word “papi:č” meaning cord or thread. Pat Shettel.

backwardation--seller's postponement of delivery of stock or shares, with the consent of the buyer, upon payment of a premium to the latter. See Contango. MW

bain marie—a water bath for cooking, from the French for "the bath of Mary" The Mary in this expression was Mary (or Miriam) the jewess alchemist. DBG

ballot--Italian term for "small ball or pebble.." Italian citizens once voted by casting a small pebble or ball into one of several boxes. (Curious Word Origins)

balneal—pertaining to baths or bathing, from the Latin balneum and Greek balaneion both meaning a bath. Some related words are balneology, balneotherapy, bain-marie and bagnio (a brothel). Solvay Pharmaceuticals makes a “perianal cleansing lotion” containing mineral oil and lanolin oil that it named Balneol. There is also a bacterium

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called Mycobacterium balnei that that can cause skin infections from swimming in contaminated pools.

banausic—pejorative, pertaining to common labor, appropriate for a mechanic, from the Greek banos, a forge. DG

bankrupt—comes from Italian banca rotta, a broken bench (not a rotten one as rotta might suggest). Banca was Italian for a money dealer's table and the source of our word bank. Rotta became -rupt. Perhaps a correction of the Italian word back to its Latin origin from "rumpo, rompere, rupi, ruptus."

barbiturates—a class of sedatives and anticonvulsants that includes phenobarbital (Nembutal), sodium pentothal (“truth serum)) and Seconal. They are derivatives of barbituric acid which was first synthesized in 1864 by Adolf von Baeyer. I don’t know if you are interested in this or not, but he was a student of Bunsen and Kekule and succeeded Liebig at Munich. In 1903 it was discovered that barbituric acid derivatives could put dogs to sleep and within months Veronal (barbital) and soon after that, phenobarbitol, were on the market. The word “barbiturate” is said to come partly from its derivation from uric acid and partly from Saint Barbara, the patron saint of artillerists. According to the story von Baeyer and his fellow chemists went to a tavern to celebrate the discovery and joined a group of artlllery men celebrating their patron saint’s day and there came up with the name. Veronal was so called because the scientists who discovered its sedative qualities thought Verona was the most peaceful place on earth.

base 21--a tribe of aborigines was discovered deep in the Amazon rain forest. The tribe had practiced total nudity for centuries, and over the years had developed a base-21 number system.

bas-relief—sculptural relief in which the projection from the surrounding surface is slight as on coins. In French bas means low. During the mid-1600s this term came into English from the French and the synonymous basso-relievo from the Italian bassorilievo.

bate—to reduce in intensity or force. Today, the word almost always appears in the phrase "bated breath": "He told the story with bated breath, almost whispering, so that we had to lean forward to hear him." The word is a shortened form of abate (lessen, decrease, deduct, subside). It came through Middle English abaten, from Old French abattre (to beat down), from Latin ad- (toward, to) plus battuo, batere (to beat). Another word from the same root is batter (to hit repeatedly with violent blows). There is also a less common meaning for bate, also from the Old French batre: to flap wildly or frantically, usually used when describing the behavior of a falcon.

beau geste—a phrase borrowed from French; the literal translation is "beautiful gesture." Also the title of a 1924 novel by Percival C. Wren, featuring three English brothers with the last name Geste. All three join the French Foreign Legion to repair their family honor, and two of them, including the one nicknamed "Beau," die heroically. The novel spawned at least two American films, one starring Gary Cooper. The novel didn't invent the phrase "beau geste," which first appeared in print in 1914, but the publicity surrounding that story most likely contributed to the expression's popularity.

bedizen—from the Anglo-Saxon word diesen meaning a bundle of flax. The bundle was placed on a cleft staff to be spun—a diesen staff whence we get the adjective distaff

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meaning the women’s side of the family. The male equivalent to distaff side is “spear side” or “sword side.” The act of placing the flax on the staff was the bedizening. Hence to bedizen is to decorate, to dress up.

bedlam—The Hospital of St. Mary Bethlehem in London, England, which was used to house the mentally ill. In 1403, the asylum became Britain's first to exclusively serve this purpose. Bedlam is capitalized when used as a noun describing a lunatic asylum. It was also used in the early 16th century to refer to an insane person. Madmen were labeled Tom O'Bedlams. In Shakespeare's King Lear, Edgar disguises himself as a Tom O'Bedlam.

beer--from the Germanic term bier from the Latin bibere, to drink.

beer—Until the 15th century all foamy, fermented beverages were known as ale, and a beer was almost any kind of drink. The original root was Late Latin bibere (to drink). In the 16th century, a distinction arose between beor, which was made with hops for flavoring, and ale, made without hops. Today, that distinction has faded.

belfry—a bell tower, or the part of a tower or steeple where bells are hung. It might seem obvious that the word is related to bells, but actually its origin had nothing to do with them. The original belfries were large wooden structures that were wheeled up to the walls of cities under attack. From the top of the structure, torches, missiles, and other projectiles were hurled into the city. In Old French these movable towers were called berfrei, from an ancient germanic compound root whose two parts mean "to protect" and "a place of safety." The Old North French variant of this was belfrei. The meaning eventually extended to watch towers, which often contained bells. The word moved into English, and the original meaning was replaced because of the obvious-seeming connection between belfries and bells.

believe you me—In English almost all sentences that make a statement use this word order: Subject, verb, object. Imperatives, though, sometimes use the verb, subject, object word order although it sounds archaic: “Come ye jolly men!" "Fare thee well." The subject is generally (always?) you or ye. The phrase "Believe you me" uses this word order, but surprisingly the phrase "Believe you me" only became popular in the 1920's probably because it was the name of a novel by Nina Wilcox Putnam in which the heroine uses a special dialect.

belletrism— act or practice of writing literature that is an end in itself and not practical or purely informative. It derives from the French phrase belles lettres, pronounced bel-letr, meaning fine letters. Used by Denby in speaking about his reasons for writing Great Books : "I longed to commit the unspeakable sin (in academic circles) of Belletrism —the sin of writing the book for the reader's pleasure and my own." LHThompson, Word Wonks

Below: Word wonks October 2, 2006

benign—from the Latin benignus, a combination of bene with gignere, meaning to beget (from which congenital, genius, germ, indigenous, and progenitor).

bespoke--to arrange beforehand, used by the British to mean custom-made.

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Betelgeuse—the star that makes up the upper right shoulder of the constellation Orion. Astronomers expect it to explode as a supernova eventually. This could take millions of years—or it could happen tomorrow. It is an enormous star. It is so much bigger than the sun that if it were in our solar system its surface would be half or three quarters of the way to Jupiter, engulfing Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars. It is 425 light years away, but it is so large that, unlike other stars, it can be seen as a disk, rather than a point of light, by the Hubble space telescope. It is 60,000 times brighter than the sun. In 1987 a supernova exploded in a nearby galaxy and was visible to the naked eye in the southern hemisphere. Previous to that the last supernova visible to the naked eyes was in 1604. That supernova was visible for 18 months and may have been 20,000 light years away. The supernova of 1572 was visible for 16 months and was about 10,000 light years away. Both were brighter than any star in the sky. Imagine how bright Betelgeuse, at least 20 times closer, would be if it went supernova! Of course we wouldn’t know until 425 year after the event.The name is a corruption of the Arabic yad al jauza, which means the “Hand of Orion.”

bevy—Usually, a bevy is composed of living things that are somehow beautiful or pleasing. For example, you might see a bevy of quails or a bevy of beautiful ladies. The ultimate origin of the word is not known, but it goes back at least to the fifteenth century. Spencer used it in his "Shepherd's Calendar," where he referred to a "bevie of ladies bright."

bibelot—(pronounced BIB-lo in this country, but beeb-LO by the French). A small object of curiosity, beauty, or rarity.Sue Dodge, Word Wonks

bibliotaphy—is the practice of hoarding or hiding books

Big Apple—This term for New York City may have first been popularized by John J. Fitz Gerald, a horse-racing writer for the New York Morning Telegraph. He first used the phrase in 1921. The most significant citing is from February 18, 1924: "The Big Apple. The dream of every lad that ever threw a leg over a thoroughbred and the goal of all horsemen. There's only one Big Apple. That's New York." Fitz Gerald said he heard it first on a trip to New Orleans: "Two dusky stable hands were leading a pair of thoroughbreds around the "cooling rings" of adjoining stables at the Fair Grounds in New Orleans and engaging in desultory conversation. 'where y'all going' from here?'' queried one. 'From here we're headed for the Big Apple,' proudly replied the other. 'Well, you'd better fatten up them skinners or all you'll get from the apple is the core,'" was the quick rejoinder." Another source of the name seems to have been the common Vaudeville saying "There are many apples on the tree, but only one 'Big Apple'"—from the Washington City Paper, September 17, 1999, "The Straight Dope" by Cecil Adams.

big girl's blouse—English expression meaning a weak, effeminate man.

bight--bend in a coastline; also the body of water along such a curve (for example, the Bight of Benin in W. Africa); curved part or the middle of a rope (as contrasted with the ends). WAD

bijou—a piece of jewelry. The plural is bijous or bijoux. The word comes from the Breton language a Celtic language related to Welsh, Cornish, Manx, and Irish and

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Scottish Gaelic. It is estimated that 250,000 people in Brittany speak it. In that language bizou means a ring and that in turn is derived from the Breton word for finger, biz.

Bildungsroman— a novel that deals with the formative years of the main character, the combination of two German words: Bildung, meaning education, and Roman, meaning novel.

bilk—Initially, "bilking" wasn't considered cheating — just good strategy for cribbage players. Language historians aren't sure where "bilk" originated, but they have noticed that its earliest uses occur in contexts referring to cribbage. Part of the scoring in cribbage involves each player adding cards from his or her hand to a pile of discards called the "crib." At the end of a hand, the dealer keeps any points in the crib. Strategically then, it is wisest for the dealer's opponent to put non-scoring cards into the crib. In the early days of the game, that strategy for preventing an opponent from scoring was called "balking." Etymologists theorize that "bilk" may have originated as an alteration of that card-gaming "balk.

billabong—an oxbow lake in Australia.

Bin—the Arabic patronymic has the same meaning as Ben in Hebrew. Said of males it means "of the family of." For women the equivalent is Bint, as in Fatima bint Muhammad. The long form of an Arabic patronymic can go back several generations, yielding a name like Hamad bin Yusuf bin Saleh bin Badr. A characteristic of Semitic languages is that the roots of words consist solely of consonants (most often, especially in Arabic, three). Different vowel sounds can be inserted (though not always shown in writing), and prefixes or suffixes added, to affect the grammatical function of the word or produce different words with related meanings. A standard example in Arabic is the root KTB, which has to do with writing: KATABA means 'he wrote'; YAKTUBU 'he writes'; KITAB 'book'; MAKTABA 'library'. This means that in the Arabic script, IBN is the same word as BIN. The difference we see comes from choices made in transliterating Arabic into English. In fact BEN, another spelling, also occurs in English versions of Arabic names. IBN acknowledges the form in Modern Standard Arabic that adds an initial letter "alif" to the two-letter root BN. This "alif" represents a glottal stop—a sound like the initial sound of both syllables of UH-OH. When saying an Arabic name in normal, continuous speech, that glottal stop is typically elided (passed over), so that IBN sounds like BIN. One news article says, "Since the Arabic alphabet is so fundamentally different from English, many spellings are attempts to capture the sound of the names" (Thomas Hargrove, SCRIPPS HOWARD NEWS SERVICE, September 21, 2001). Hargrove points out that "Arabs living in America are often hesitant to spell a friend's name unless they know for certain what kind of transliteration to English that person has chosen for himself." Many Islamic names are spiritual in nature. For example, the given name (or ISM) ABDULLAH can be translated as 'slave of Allah'. (ABD means 'servant/slave of'.) Other terms that serve to link the ism to what follows include AL 'the' (perhaps followed by the name of a profession), ABU 'father of' (often used to honor one's first-born male child), and MIN 'from' (often used with reference to a sacred place). Word Mavens

biscuit--From the mediaeval French bis + cuit meaning twice cooked.. (Curious Word Origins)

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bissextile year—a leap year in the Julian or Gregorian calendar. When Julius Caesar reformed the calendar in 45 BC, he stipulated that an extra day be added to February every four years. But the Romans didn't add the extra day at the end of the month; they inserted it after the 24th day of the month. They also reckoned days near the end of a month by counting backwards from the first of the following month rather than forward from the beginning of the current one. The day we call February 24 is six days before March 1, so it was known as the sextus, or "sixth day." When Caesar's extra day was added, it became a "second sextus" or bissextus (appending the Latin "bis," meaning "doubled"). English speakers adopted "bissextile" to refer to that extra day, even though its placement in the modern calendar makes that term a misnomer.

bivious—to act in two different ways, or to lead two ways, from the Latin bivium a compound of bi (two) and road (via), in other words, a fork in the road. The word devious also contains the root "via." In Latin deviare, means to away or turn off the road. DBG

bless—redden with blood. A gracious word with a grisly history. Its forefather was Old English bledsian (long e), a word that meant to consecrate with blood, this, of course, from the blood sacrifices of the day. In later English, this word turned into blessen, and the term finally came to mean consecrated. So today when we give you the greeting, "God bless you," we are actually saying, "God bathe you in blood." Pat Shettel's word

blindfold—Since a blindfold is usually a piece of cloth that is placed around the head to prevent vision, you might think that the word describes the folding of the cloth. Although the word's evolution was influenced by "fold," its original root had nothing to do with folding. The Old English verb blindfellian (to strike blind) led to the verb blindfelle (to place a bandage over someone's eyes), which was used through the sixteenth century. The ending -felle is closely related to the modern sense of fell as in "fell a tree" (to chop down or strike down). Through folk etymology (word evolution based on mistaken associations), blindfelle became blindfold, relating the word to the folded cloth. The word blind is from Old English. It's one of a family of words having to do with brightness, shining, flashing or burning. The original meaning of blind had to do with being dazzled. Here are some more bright words from the same family: blue, bleach, bleak, blaze, blemish, blend, blond, blanch, blank, blush, black, fulgent, flagrant, flamboyant, flame.

blizzard—American word first used in 1820's to mean a hit, cannon shot or volley of musket fire. First time used to refer to a snow storm in 1870s in an Iowa newspaper, but by the 1880s it was being used in the U.S. and England to describe severe snow storms.

bloviate—to speak loudly, verbosely, and at great length, without saying much. It's an American word that was used by (and to describe) President Warren Harding, who was known for long, windy speeches.

bluestocking—In mid-18th century England a group of ladies decided to replace evenings of card playing and idle chatter with "conversation parties," inviting illustrious men of letters to discuss literary and intellectual topics with them. One regular guest was scholar- botanist Benjamin Stillingfleet. His hostesses willingly overlooked his cheap blue worsted stockings (a type disdained by the elite) in order to have the benefit of his lively conversation. Those who considered it inappropriate for women to aspire to

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learning derisively called the group the "Blue Stocking Society." The women who were the original bluestockings rose above the attempted put-down and adopted the epithet as a name for members of their society. derisive term originally applied to certain 18th-century women with pronounced literary interests. During the 1750s, Elizabeth Vesey held evening parties, at which the entertainment consisted of conversation on literary subjects. Eminent men of the day were invited to contribute to these conversations. Hannah More, Elizabeth Montagu, and Elizabeth Carter, among others, continued this tradition. Boswell, in his Life of Dr. Johnson, states that these “bluestocking clubs” were so named because of Benjamin Stillingfleet, who attended in unconventional blue worsted stockings rather than the customary black silk stockings. In time the name bluestocking was applied solely to women of pedantic literary tastes.

blunderbuss—a short, wide-mouthed gun used to scatter shots at close range. From Dutch donderbus, from donder (thunder) + bus (gun, tube). The gun wasn't known for its precise shot. Its scattershot effect resulted in its name being altered from donderbus to blunderbuss. Wordsmith

blurb—a promotional statement as found on the dust jackets of books. The word blurb was invented for a meeting of the American Booksellers Association in 1907 by the humorist Gelett Burgess. Burgess is also responsible for the invention of the word bromide to mean a hackneyed phrases in his 1906 book How to be a Bromide. As was usual he had special bookplates http://quinion.com?BB made up to promote his book. Burgess was also responsible for the famous poem that begins, “I never saw a purple cow…” and the later sequel, “Ah, yes I wrote the purple cow.”

bodger—An itinerant chair-leg turner. This term was once common around the furniture-making town of High Wycombe in Buckinghamshire, between London and Oxford (so much so that the local football team, Wycombe Wanderers, is nicknamed 'The Bodgers'). 'Bodgers' were highly skilled itinerant wood-turners, who worked in the beech woods on the chalk hills of the Chilterns. They cut timber and converted it into chair legs by turning it on a pole lathe, an ancient and very simple tool that uses the spring of a bent sapling to help run it. Their equipment was so easy to move and set up that it was easier to go to the timber and work it there than to transport it to a workshop. The completed chair legs were sold to furniture factories to be married with other chair parts made in the workshop. The word only appears at the end of the nineteenth century. There may be a link - through the idea of a itinerant person - with a much older sense of the word, for a travelling merchant or chapman. The _Oxford English Dictionary_ finds examples of this meaning from the eighteenth century, but there's a much earlier one from _Holinshed's Chronicles_ of 1577 (a major source for Shakespeare) in which William Harrison rails against bodgers who bought up supplies of wheat to sell abroad, leaving nothing for local people to make their bread with. But that leaves us with another sense, the more common one (at least in Britain and Australia) of an incompetent mender of things, which Americans may prefer to see spelled 'botcher'. In both spellings this comes from the Middle English 'bocchen', which had a sense of repairing or patching. It could be significant that in medieval times it was a neutral term that had no associations with doing a job badly. It's possible that this old sense of the word survived in dialect or local usage, and evolved into the furniture 'bodger', while its meaning in the standard language changed. Quinian

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bodhisattva--one who approaches a state of enlightenment (bodhi in Sanscrit), but deliberately refrains from entering nirvana in order to liberate others. The other part of the word is from Sanscrit sativa, being. The traditional founder of Buddhism (Prince Sidhartha, later Gautama Buddha who was contemporaneous with the presocratic philosphers) reached enlightenment under a giant ficus tree (hence, Ficus religiosa http://natureproducts.net/Forest_Products/Ficus/Ficus%20religiosa.jpg ) known as the bodhi tree, bo tree, sacred fig, peepul tree. The tree is a symbol of Buddhism throughout Asia. The Buddha is a popular theme in oriental art, but figures of the Buddha are usually referred to as bodhisattvas suggesting some ambiguity as to the identity of the person represented.

body spam—unsolicited physical contact. Hug from Aunt Zelda at Thanksgiving. "Dude, Aunt Zelda totally just body spammed me!" Urban Dictionary [daily@urbandictionary.com]

bombast—Bombast is grandiose, inflated pomposity in speech or writing: "The professor's lecture was an exercise in self-glorifying bombast." There is also the adjective, bombastic. One story about the word is that it derived from the name of Phillippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, who was also known as Paracelsus, an alchemist and physician in the sixteenth century. However, its real origins are much older. Bombast may seem related to bombs and blasting, but actually it is closer in meaning to stuffing and padding. Its ultimate root is the Latin bombyx (silk), which evolved into to Late Latin bombax (cotton), and more recently the Old French bombace (cotton stuffing). There is a related word, bombazine (a kind of silk or cotton fabric). Here are some colorful words with the same meaning as bombast: rant, fustian, claptrap, rodomontade. All of these words refer to expressions which are inflated, overblown, and out of proportion to their content. I looked it up in Cassell’s and it seems more related to bombus—a deep hollow noise, a boom. Cassell’s cites Lucretius and Catullus from the Greek or bombax—an interjection of astonishment, is it possible? Citing Pliny.

boondoggle—it has come to mean a pork-barrel, make work project, but originally it is reported to be was used since pioneer days to describe small objects such as lanyards made of string, leather, etc. The first usage as a derogatory political term pops up in several places in 1935.

booty—from Middle Low German buite, exchange or distribution. Quinion

boreal—in or from the north. A more specific sense of the word relates to the northern, coniferous forests of the world. Example: "The boreal forests of Canada extend all the way to the edge of the tundra." The Roman god of the north wind, Boreas, is the source of this word. His name in turn was derived from the Greek boreios (coming from the north). The opposite of boreal is austral, from the Latin auster (south). The Romans had a legend about the "Hyperboreoi," a race of people who were from "above the north," beyond the reach of Boreas. They lived in a land of perpetual sunshine. From their name, we have hyperborean, describing anything relating to the extreme north, especially people indigenous to these areas, such as Eskimos. We also have the aurora borealis (northern lights) which shimmer in the arctic sky, and their opposite, the aurora australis.

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bosh—nonsense. From Turkish bos (empty). The term was popularized in English by its use in the novels of James J. Morier (1780-1849).] M-W

bosky—BAH-skee—marked by an abundant growth of woods, bushes, or thickets "Bosk," "busk," "bush" — in Middle English, these were all variant spellings of a word meaning "shrub." "Bush" is still familiar to the modern ear, and "busk" can still be heard in a few places in the dialects of northern Britain. "Bosk" too survived in English dialects, although it disappeared from the written language, and in the 16th century it provided the root for the woodsy adjective "bosky." "Bosky" caught on, and its wider popularity seems to have resurrected its parental form; by 1814 "bosk" had reappeared in writing (this time with the meaning "a small wooded area"), apparently created anew as a shortening of "bosky."

bougie—aspiring to be a higher class than one is from bourgeois (urbandictionary.com). When my friend Miya wears a blazer or Lucy gets a massage I call them bougie cause we're unemployed college students.

boustrophedon (emphasis on "phe"). The first definition was "turning like oxen in plowing". That seemed appropriate. The second definition was the fun one: "An ancient mode of writing alternate lies in opposite directions; one line from left to right and the next from right to left.

bower—a shady, leafy recess, like a little garden nook with green foliage all around. It can also be a woman's private chamber in a medieval castle or a rustic country cottage. All three senses of this word came from the same root, Middle English bour (dwelling), from Old English bur, from the ancient Germanic root buram (dweller; farmer). Also from that root was Old English gebur (dwellers), source of neighbor, and Middle Dutch gheboer (peasant), source of boor. Much more recently, we have bowery, which originally named a sleazy district in New York City and now can refer to any rough, dangerous part of town. It's from New York's Bowery Street, which once led to the bouwerij (farm) of Peter Stuyvesant.

brain—the organ we think we think with.

brassiere--an undergarment worn by women to support their breasts. From the Latin brachium, arm, used in the sense of support as in “brace” or “embrace.” Brassiere seems as though it should be a direct translation from the French, but in France a brassière is a baby’s undershirt and what we call a bra is a soutien-gorge, a breast support. In 1889, Herminie Cadolle opened a lingerie shop, Chaussée d'Antin, and sold a two-piece undergarment she had invented, the bien-être (the wellbeing), which consisted of a corset and an upper support for the breasts with shoulder straps. By 1905 the upper garment was being sold separately as a soutien-gorge. Herminie sold her soutien-gorge to Mata Hari among other notables and was the first to use cloth with rubber thread. A book by Wallace Reyburn in 1971 called Bust-Up: The Uplifting Tale of Otto Titzling and the Development of the Bra was a hoax story about the history of the bra. Michael Quinion has tracked down the earliest references to the brassière in American newspapers from about 1907. At that time it was the usual name for a bust corset. Quinion says, “For example, this appeared in the Syracuse, New York Evening Herald in March 1893: ‘Still of course the short waisted gowns mean short waisted corsets and those ladies who wish to be in the real absolute fashion are adopting for evening wear the six inch straight

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boned band or brassiere which Sarah Bernhardt made a necessity with her directoire gowns.’” The abbreviation bra came along in the mid-1930s.

bricolage (bree-koh-LAHZH)—something constructed by using whatever materials happen to be available, a piecing together. From the French bricole, "trifle; small job" or bricoler "to putter about." Not something planned from the start.

bromine--takes its name from the Greek "bromos," meaning "stench." Apparently bromine smells awful and probably doesn't get to hang out with the cool elements like neptunium and europium. Word Detective

brouhaha—uproar. From the French word spelled the same way; it's found in French from the sixteenth century on, but it only arrived in English at the end of the nineteenth century. It seems to have been used in French drama as a noise made by the devil, who cried 'brou, ha, ha!'. There is a theory, put forward by Walther von Wartberg, that it comes from the Hebrew 'barukh habba', "welcome" - literally "blessed be the one who comes" - a phrase that appears several times in the Book of Psalms and which is used in Synagogue prayers and as a greeting at Jewish weddings and other public occasions. You might think that this is just another case of folk wisdom guessing on the basis of slight resemblance, but there is evidence to suggest it may be correct. There's a similar word in the Arezzo dialect of Italian, 'barruccaba', that is without doubt borrowed from the Hebrew, and phrases in several other languages suggest that other Hebrew expressions were similarly borrowed.

brummagem—If something is brummagem then it is a cheap and showy imitation, lacking real value. The word is usually applied to phony jewelry or shiny metallic items. Example: "Those glittery earrings of glass and tinfoil are nothing but worthless brummagem." This slang word is an alteration of the name of Birmingham, England, and is also pronounced the same way that some locals pronounce the city's name. The Romans called the place bremenium. This word has a dark, little known history. In the sixteenth century, Great Britain took part in a thriving slave trade, in which cheap, poorly made trinkets were traded for slaves in Africa. Birmingham was a center for the production of this gaudy garbage or "Brummagem ware," which included shiny jewelry, mirrors, beads and knives.

brusque—ungraciously short and abrupt from the Latin term for a shrub called butcher’s broom from which brooms were made, hence scratchy, sharp like the plant. In Italian "brusco”is used to describe a tart wine, in French, a “vin brusque."

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buckaroo--a cowboy, corruption of Sp. vaquero, a cow herder

buckeroo— cowman or cowboy from the Spanish vaquero.

bucolic from the Greek word "boukolos," meaning "cowherd." MW

bucolic--from the Greek boukolos, meaning herdsman, from bous, meaning ox. (Curious Word Origins)

bulimia--From the Greek bous meaning ox and limos, meaning hunger, presumably because one with bulimia has the appetite of an ox. (Curious Word Origins)

bulwark--a protective embankment. From the Old Dutch or German bole plank or tree trunk and werc work. DBG

bungalow During the course of England's 200 year occupation of India, the English language adopted many Hindi words. In Indian the word 'bangla' is a one-story house, most often with a roofed porch. The word 'bangla' literally means "from Bengal", which the English managed to anglicize into bungalow

bungalow—a small, single-story home with a low, gently sloping roof from the Hindi meaning bangla meaning “of Bengal,” or “in the Bengali style. It was introduced into English during the British occupation of India and dates at least to 1676.

buvette nf (=local) refreshment room, refreshment stall

bylaws--a body of customs or regulations, as of a village, manor, religious organization, or sect. The “by” comes from Old Norse meaning a town or landed estate. Many place names in the region where Viking invaders settled in England contain “by”, such as Whitby. Today we use the word bylaw to mean “a law or rule governing the internal affairs of an organization.” Pat Herbert

cabal—derives from "cabbala," the Medieval Latin name for the Cabala, a traditional system of esoteric Jewish mysticism. The Latin word itself traces to "qabbalah," a Hebrew word that means "received."

cabotage—coastlines were once so important to the French that they came up with a verb to name the act of sailing along a coast: "caboter." That verb gave rise to the French noun "cabotage," which named trade or transport along a coast. In the 16th century, the French legally limited their lucrative coastal trade, declaring that only French ships could trade in French ports. They called the right to conduct such trading "cabotage" too. Other nations soon embraced both the concept of trade restrictions and the French name for trading rights, and expanded the idea to inland trade as well. Later, English speakers also applied "cabotage" to the rights that allowed domestic airlines to travel within national boundaries but that prevented foreign carriers from doing so.

cab--shortening of cabriolet, a light, horse-drawn carriage and ultimately from Latin capreolus, wild goat because the carriages had springy suspensions. (etymonline.com)

cacozelia--stylistic affectation of diction, such as throwing in foreign words to appear learned from the Greek . Use of this word in a sentence is an example of it.

cadre—a group of competent people who work together, usually at the center of a larger organization. A cadre can also be a framework, and this sense is most closely related to

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the word's origin. Just as a cadre of people can support and stabilize an organization, so a connected group of squares can support a framework. The root is the Latin quadrum (square), which entered Italian as quadro, then migrated to French, where it took on the current meaning. More "square" words from Latin quadrum: squad: a small group of workers; a team square: four-sided regular polygon quadrant: circular arc of 90 degrees; one quarter of a circle quarrel: crossbow bolt; square hammer; diamond shaped window pane quarry: open pit where stone is cut (often in rectangular blocks)

caliginous—dark, from Latin caliginosus, dark. Duh.

callow—inexperienced or unsophisticated from a Middle English and Old English word ("calu") that meant "bald." By the 17th century, though, "callow" had come to mean "without feathers" and was applied to young birds not yet ready for flight. The term was also used for those who hadn't yet spread their wings in a figurative sense. "Callow" continues to mean today.M-W.com

caltrop—a metal device with four sharp spikes arranged so that when it lands on the ground, one of the spikes always points straight up. There are several different kinds of plants called caltrop, all of which have fruits with sharp, projecting spikes. The metal caltrops are nasty little military weapons, strewn behind fleeing troops to interfere with pursuing horses or vehicles. The spiny-fruited plants are almost equally nasty, including a star thistle and the water caltrop, a water chestnut. The military device was named after the plants. The word comes from Middle English calketrappe, from Medieval Latin calcatrippa (thistle; any plant that "catches the feet"). That word was a compound of calcare (to tread on) and trappa (trap), a word of Ancient Germanic origin that was also the root of Modern English trap.

calumny— uttering false charges to damage another's reputation. From the Latin calumnia, meaning false accusation.

calx—oxide, the residue that is left after a metal or mineral is heated to a high temperature in the presence of oxygen. Wikipedia says that, “According to the Phlogiston theory, the calx is the true elemental substance, having lost its phlogiston in the process of combustion.” From the Latin calx meaning stone, from which we get calcium, calculation (since it was first done with little stones) and calculus (both branch of mathematics and the stony substances on teeth and elsewhere in the body.

cancer—many tumors looked like crabs to the ancient Greek physicians so they called them karkinoma (Greek for crab, karkinos, plus tumor, -oma). The resemblance might have been the extensions of invasive tumors or the blood vessels going to or from them looked like the legs of a crab. The Latin word for crab, cancer, was used by Pliny (23-79 A.D.) in his scientific treatise, National History, to mean a tumor.

candidate—clad in white. When a Roman politician went campaigning, he took care that his toga was immaculately white so that he could make the best impression possible. The Latin word candidatus first simply meant "a person dressed in white" but later it took on the meaning that our word candidate has, a seeker after office. The root of candidatus can be recognized in our word incandescent which means "white and glowing" and in candid, for a candid person, in the figurative sense in white and pure, and therefore frank and honest. Pat Shettel's word. But note: albus means flat white and candidus means

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shiny white in Latin. Incandescent means glowing with heat from candeo L. to be of a shining white, to glow, to glitter. Related words are candle, candid, incandescent.

canter—the pace of a horse between a trot and a gallop. It is an abbreviation of Canterbury. Phrases such as Canterbury gallop, Canterbury pace, and Canterbury trot described the easy gait which pilgrims going to the shrine of Thomas a Becket at Canterbury on horse used. The first recorded instance of one of these phrases, Canterbury pace, is found in a work published before 1636. However, in a work written in 1631, there is a shortened form, the noun Canterbury, and later in 1673, the verb Canterbury. This verb, or perhaps the noun, was further shortened, giving us the verb canter, first recorded in 1706, and the noun canter, first recorded in 1755.

canvasback duck—this species of duck was named for a lower grade of 17th century doublet made out of expensive material in the front, but cheap canvas in the back. The doublet covered a man from his neck to his waist. The male canvasback duck has a white back with dark tail feathers so it looks like he is wearing a doublet.

caparison—an ornamental covering or harness for a horse; figuratively rich clothing First used in English in the 1500s from the Middle French "caparacon" from the Latin "capa", "cape." Early caparisons were likely used to display the heraldic colors of a horseman, and in some cases may also have functioned as protective covering for the horse. In British India, elephants, not horses, were decked out with caparisons — as both animals still are in parades and circuses everywhere. Shakespeare had Richard III command, "Come, bustle, bustle; caparison my horse." M-W.com

capon—castrated rooster(see poularde and pullet).

cappuccino—from the Capuchin order of friars, established after 1525, played an important role in bringing Catholicism back to Reformation Europe. Its Italian name came from the long pointed cowl, or cappuccino, derived from cappuccio “hood,” that was worn as part of the order’s habit. The French version of cappuccino was capuchin (now capuchin) from which came English Capuchin. The name of this pious order was later used as the name (first recorded in English in 1785) for a type of monkey with a tuft of black cowl-like hair http://www.millhouse.nl/graphics/capuchin.jpg . In Italian cappuccino when on to develop another sense, “espresso coffee mixed or topped with steamed milk or cream,” so called because the color of the coffee resembled the color or the habit of a Capuchin friar. The first use of cappuccino in English for this meaning is recorded in 1948. Sarah Casseday [advantageswc@erols.com]

captious—designed to sieze control of an argument by introducing critical comments designed to entrap the attention and lead it in chosen directions from Latin capere (to take or sieze).

captious—designed to sieze control of an argument by introducing critical comments designed to entrap the attention and lead it in chosen directions from Latin capere (to take or sieze).

carotid—pertaining to the pair of arteries that supply blood to the head and neck. From Greek karotides, drowsy, from karoun to stupefy; akin to Greek kara head. According to Rufus of Ephesus they were so names because, when they were pressed upon, people became stupefied and speechless. Brock, A.J. (1929). Greek Medicine. Being Extracts

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Illustrative of Medical Writers from Hippocrates to Galen. London & Toronto: J. M. Dent & Sons/ New York: E. P. Dutton.

carouse—To carouse is to engage in boisterous, drunken revelry: "We drank round after round of that excellent brew, and caroused until daybreak." The word looks like it might be related to "arouse" or "carousel," but actually it comes from a much different source. In German, when a mug of beer is completely empty, it is "gar aus," and there is the expression "trinken gar aus" (to drink until the mug is empty). The contraction "Garaus" was used in much the same way that we might say "Bottoms up."When the expression first entered English, it was only used as an adverb: "Those poor sots drank carouse and made utter fools of themselves." Later the word became a verb, and it also became possible to have a carousal (rowdy drinking session)

carte blanche—can also signify a hand of cards containing no king, queen, or jack.

casbah—center of a formerly walled city, from Arabic dialect qasbah meaning fortress. DBG

casino—A casino in Italian is a simple little casa (house). Italian casa was itself derived from Latin casa (cottage, hut, hovel).

catabolism—breakdown of complex molecules in life processes

catachresis—use of the wrong word for the context, or use of a forced and especially paradoxical figure of speech. Comes by way of Latin from the Greek word "katachresis," which means "misuse." from kata, against, and chresis, use. MW

catacomb—a series of underground burial vaults. The word catacomb comes from Greek kata kumbas, "near the low place" and originally it meant a certain burial district in Rome. It can refer to any network of caves, grottos, or subterranean place that is used for the burial of the dead, or it can refer to a specific underground burial place.Pat Herbert; Wikipedia

catadromous—If you are a fish, and you live in fresh water, but you swim to the ocean to breed, then you are catadromous. This is the reverse of the most well-known salt-and freshwater fish, the salmon, who swims into fresh water to breed. European eels are catadromous. The word incorporates the idea of reversal. The first part, cata-is a prefix meaning down, or in reverse. It comes from the Greek kata (down, in reverse). The suffix -dromous is also Greek, from dromos (the act of running). So a catadromous fish runs in reverse. The opposite of catadromous is anadromous, using the ana-prefix, from Greek ana (up). Anadromous fishes swim from the ocean into rivers or streams to breed. Other up and down word pairs:

catafalque—platform on which the body of a ruler or other public person lies in state for viewing prior to burial. A movable structure of wood sometimes richly decorated, erected temporarily at funeral ceremonies in a church to receive the coffin or effigy of the deceased; also an open hearse or funeral car. Italian catafalco, from (assumed) Vulgar Latin catafalicum scaffold, from Greek cata and Latin fala siege tower. Pat Herbert; 1911 edition of the Encyclopedia Britannica; Merriam-Webster's Online Dictionary, 10th Edition.

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cataglottism—French kiss, from the Greek cata—down and glottis—tongue or throat. DBG

cataract—a waterfall in which the water pours straight down or an imperfection in the lens of the eye. A waterfall where the water falls from rock to rock is a “cascade." Both form of cataract are from the Greek kataraktes, a plunging down. Originally applied to floodgates and portcullises. Misunderstanding the phrase “cataracts of Heaven" which, when opened, would loose torrents of rain led to the use of it for waterfalls. The use for the eye disorder arose from the conception that it was like looking through the bars of a portcullis as other descriptions of the disorder at that time were "a web in the eye" and even a "portcullis." Word Detective

cation—positively charged atom

cavil—to raise trivial, frivolous objections, to find fault unnecessarily, from Latin cavillari, to jest.

cenotaph—monument erected, usually in a prominent public place, to the memory of one or more persons buried somewhere else. Pat Herbert

cerebral—English borrowed the root "cerebrum," meaning "brain," direct from Latin, but the adjective "cerebral" took a slightly more circuitous route into our language, reaching English by way of the French "cerebral" (in French, the word has accents on the first and second "e"). Although "cerebrum" has been used in our language as a name for the brain since the early 1600s (the more specific scientific sense referring just to the large upper part of the brain developed later), "cerebral" didn't appear in print in English until 1816. Other brainy descendants of "cerebrum" in English include "cerebellum" (a technical label for part of the brain) and "cerebrate," which arrived in English in 1915 with the meaning "to use the mind, think." MW

cerveza (Spanish)--Beer from Ceres, the Roman goddess of the harvest.

cete—group of badgers; from Latin coetus (a coming together)

chaise longue—French , meaning "long chair," what Americans call a chaise lounge, a classic example of change in a foreign word to make it more congruent with English.Quinion

chandoo—An extract or preparation of opium, used in China and India for smoking. “At this establishment he mostly took his pipe of “chandu” and brief chat with the keeper of the house, for, although not popular, and very silent, he liked sometime sto be in the presence of his compatriots.” The term is probably obsolete as the quote is from Limehouse Nights by Thomas Burke, a collection of romantic tales of London’s sordid Chinatown in the Limehouse district in 1917.

chapel—from the Late Latin "cappa," meaning cloak.There was a shrine created to hold the sacred cloak of St. Martin of Tours. In Medieval Latin, this shrine was called "cappella" (from a diminutive of "cappa" meaning "short cloak or cape"), after the relic it contained. Later, the meaning of "cappella" broadened to include any building which housed a sacred relic, and eventually to a place of worship. Old French picked up the term as "chapele," which in turn passed into English as "chapel" in the 13th century. MW A movable shrine containing the cappa, or cloak, of St. Martin was first called a

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cappella; hence a sanctuary that is not called a church. One story about his life while he was in the military tells how he cut his cloak in half and gave one of the halves to a beggar. That night, the beggar appeared to him in a dream as Christ wrapped in half of Martin's cloak. There is a famous picture by El Greco, St. Martin with the beggar. The city of Tours clamored for his ordination as their bishop, and reluctantly, he accepted the post. As an officer at Amiens he shared his military cloak with a beggar, and, the following night, he saw our Lord wearing the halved cloak. In consequence he was baptized but remained reluctantly in the army. Two years later barbarians invaded Gaul. Martin asked leave of his commander, probably Constantius, to resign his commission. 'I am a soldier of Christ, it is not lawful for me to serve.' Charged with cowardice, he offered to stand unarmed in the forefront of battle. The barbarians, however, surrendered without a fight. Martin was then permitted to leave the army (probably in 339). 8 November 397 at Candes, Tours, France of natural causes; by his request, he was buried in the Cemetery of the Poor on 11 November 397; his relics rested in the basilica of Tours, a scene of pilgrimages and miracles, until 1562 when the catheral and relics were destroyed by militant Protestants; some small fragments on his tomb were found during construction excavation in 1860. The curate of a chapel is a chapelain. Because chapels rarely have organs, singing in a chapel is "a capella" whence we get that phrase. [See cappuccino]

chap—fellow, or man. short for chapman, an old word for a merchant, itself from the Old English ceap, meaning trade. By 1577 chap meant buyer or customer, and by the 1700s it had its present meaning. It is unrelated to the usage in chapped lips which is related to the old German kappen, meaning to chop or cut. Morris Word Detective

chaps—leather overalls open at the back worn to protect riders from thorns. It comes from the Mexican Spanish chaparajos or chaparejos meaning leather pants.

charlatan—a quack. In medieval times, people claiming medical skills they did not have roamed throughout Italy, selling "medicine" that was often completely without worth. Many of these pretenders reputedly came from a village called Cerreto, and as a result, cerretano, meaning inhabitant of Cerreto became an epithet for a quack physician. In addition, these frauds used a practiced patter used to attract customers, rather like the chatter of a circus barker. The Italian word for "to chatter" is ciarlare, and chattering was so associated with the cerretano that the spelling of the word shifted to ciarlatano. That word was in turn borrowed into French as charlatan and hence into English, where it was in use by the early 17th century.

cheap This word has long been used in an derogatory manner to describe lessor-quality merchandise. However, its origin is considerably less seamy. It comes from the Old English word 'ceap', pronounced "keep", which simply meant "to sell" or "barter". In London the early 1800s, a major marketplace where people bartered for goods was called 'Cheapside'. Because the locals went there to barter for low prices, they often referred to the practice as "going to the Cheap". Over time, the word 'ceap' gradually took on the new spelling and pronunciation of the present "cheap"

cheap—inexpensive. It comes from the latin caupo, cauponis meaning shopkeeper. It entered English as ceap meaning trade. It was used in the phrase “good chepe” to mean

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bargain. The “good” was eventually dropped. The name Chapman comes from the same root and means trader.

Cheyenne--French Canadian rendering of the Lakota Sioux word sahiyela which is what the Sioux called the Cheyenne. The French Canadians were the first Europeans to give the sahiyela a name, and it stuck. Shahiyela, or Shaiyena, comes from Sioux (Dakota) shaia, which means `to speak red, or unintelligibly.' Pat Herbert

chin-chin—polite and ceremonious speech or light conversation; chitchat or a greeting or farewell or toast, as in drinking to someone's health. Late 18th century from Chinese qing qing

chivvy or chivy—to vex or harass with petty attacks. Variant of chevy, a hunt or hunting cry, from Chevy Chase, title of a ballad about a border skirmish, from Cheviot Chase, a large unenclosed hunting tract in the Cheviot Hills. Now you know that Chevy Chase didn't begin in Maryland or on Saturday Night Live. The Cheviot Hills (I knew you would ask) are a range 56 km long on the border between Scotland and England. The highest point is The Cheviot (2,676 ft). http://www.contemplator.com/folk5/chevych.html and http://www.xrefer.com/entry/369063

chockablock—started out as a nautical term. A block is a metal or wooden case with one or more pulleys inside. Sometimes, two or more blocks are used (as part of a rope and pulley system called a "block and tackle") to provide a mechanical advantage — as, for example, when hoisting a sail on a traditional sailing ship. When the rope is pulled as far as it will go, the blocks are tight together and are said to be "chockablock." Non-nautical types associated the "chock" in "chockablock" with "chock-full," which goes back to Middle English "chokkefull," meaning "full to the limit" (a figurative use of "full to choking"). We thus gave "chockablock" the additional meaning "filled up." "Chockablock" can also be an adverb meaning "close together" or "completely" (the latter comes partly from the notion that the "chock" in "chock-full" means "completely"), as in "motorbikes lined up chockablock" or the seemingly redundant "chockablock full.

chthonian (kthone-ian) or chthonic (sometimes capitalized) from Chthon, Earth; living underground or pertaining to gods or spirits of the underworld, especially those of the Greeks. The characteristics of Chthonic worship are propitiatory and magical rites, featuring euphemistic names of the deities, which are supposed to have been primarily ghosts. More generally, it refers to matters dark, primitive, mysterious, and infernal. Among other words that can be traced to these related terms are "autochthon," "camomile," "chameleon," "exhume," "germander," "humiliate," and "bridegroom."

chucks--Chuck Taylor basketball sneakers from Converse (slangcity.com).

clamant—The word has two slightly different meanings: (1) noisy, blatant, or clamorous, and (2) demanding urgent attention. The word derives from the Latin word clamare, to shout or cry out, and is therefore related to such words as claim, exclaim, and proclaim. I came across this word in an old prayer book, A Diary of Private Prayer by John Baillie, in this quote: "The needs of my body will be clamant, but it is for the needs of my soul that I must care most." It is, of course, a homophone with claimant, i.e., one who makes a claim.A

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clew—as a noun, a ball or skein of yarn, string, cord or thread; as a verb, to coil cord up into a ball.

climacteric—a major turning point or critical stage; menopause b : a period in the life of a male corresponding to female menopause and usually occurring with less well-defined physiological and psychological changes; the marked and sudden rise in the respiratory rate of fruit just prior to full ripening. from the Greek word "klimaktēr," meaning "critical point" or, literally, "rung of a ladder." English speakers have long used "climacteric" for those inevitable big moments encountered on the metaphorical ladder of life. The major climacterics in a person's life were once thought to happen in years denoted by multiples of 7 or 9 or only in the odd multiples of 7 (7, 21, 35, etc.). The grand (or great) climacteric was held to occur in the 63rd (7 x 9) or the 81st (9 x 9) year of life. Today, "climacteric" can refer to a physical event, male or female menopause, occurring between the ages of 45 and 55, but the general "turning point" sense is not usually tied to a specific age. MW

clinquant—glittering with gold or silver; a false and showy glitter, from the obsolete French verb 'clinquer' which meant to clink or tinkle, probably taken from Dutch 'klinken', to clink or ring, which is where we get 'clink' from. It was applied to the ringing noise that gold pieces make when they clink together in one's purse. By an obvious enough association, it came to refer to the glittering appearance of polished gold as well as the noise it makes, particularly in the phrase 'or clinquant' for gold leaf. English borrowed the idea of something glittering, and it was in that sense that Shakespeare used it in _Henry VIII_: "To-day the French, / All clinquant, all in gold, like heathen gods, / Shone down the English".

clitic—in grammar, an unstressed word which is always attached to a following or preceding word in writing or speech. A clitic is either an enclitic, where it is accompanies preceding word or a proclitic, when it is attached to the following word. An example of an enclitic is the final “’s” used in the possessive, “Bill’s wallet.”

clock—from the Latin "clocca," which meant "bell." Clocca was not used by the Romans but was introduced into medieval European Latin by the Irish monks from the Celtic word “clog.” The term is found in Adamnan in his life of St. Columbkill written c. 685. The word "cloak" comes from the fact that a cloak is bell-shaped. A “cloche” is a bell shaped woman’s hat. In German a “Glocken” is a bell or a clock.

cloy—Ultimately from L. clavus, an nail (from whence the spice clove), by way of F. enclauer and Eng. accloy, to spike a gun. Hence stuffed so full as to lose value.

cocinero--chuckwagon cook on a ranch or a trail drive. They received extra pay and were relieved from guard duty and other work on a round-up. Also called a coosie or (behind his back) bean burner, belly cheater, dough wrangler, and biscuit shooter.

cockamamie—ridiculous. Historians believe it's a close relative of "decal". The origin of both "cockamamie" and "decal" is the French "décalcomanie", which was created in the early 1860s to refer to the craze for decorating objects with transfers (it combines "décalquer", to transport a tracing, with "manie", a mania or craze). The craze, and the word, soon transferred to Britain - it's recorded in the magazine The Queen on 27 February 1864: "There are few employments for leisure hours which for the past eighteen

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months have proved either so fashionable or fascinating as decalcomanie". It reached the United States around 1869 and - to judge from the number of newspaper references in that year - became as wildly popular as it had earlier in France and Britain. The word was quickly Anglicised as "decalcomania" and in the 1950s it became abbreviated to "decal". The link between "decalcomania" and "cockamamie" isn't proved, but the evidence suggests strongly that children in New York City in the 1930s (or perhaps a decade earlier) converted the one into the other. There was a fashion for self-decoration at that period, using coloured transfers given away with candy and chewing gum. Shelly Winters wrote of "cockamamie" in The New York Times in 1956 that "This word, translated from the Brooklynese, is the authorized pronunciation of decalcomania. Anyone there who calls a cockamamie a decalcomania is stared at." Quite how the word changed sense to mean something incredible is least clear of all. An early sense was of something inferior or second-rate, which presumably referred to the poor quality of the cheap transfers. It might have been influenced by words such as "cock-and-bull" or "poppycock". Anyone who adopted the craze for sticking transfers on oneself may have been regarded by adults or more serious-minded youngsters as silly - certainly the first sense was of a person who was ridiculous or crazy; the current sense came along a few years later

codswallop—This mainly British colloquial expression is recorded only from the 1960s, but is certainly older. Its origin is uncertain. Some argue it may be from 'cods', a nineteenth-century term for the testicles. It is also suggested that 'wallop' may be connected with the dialect term meaning to chatter or scold (not with the word meaning a heavy blow). One explanation has it that it refers to the late Hiram Codd, who - despite his archetypally American first name - was British, born in Bury St Edmunds in Suffolk in 1838. He spent his life working in the soft drinks business. In the 1870s, he designed and patented a method of sealing a glass bottle by means of a ball in its neck, which the pressure of the gas in the fizzy drink forced against a rubber washer. Making the bottle was a technical challenge, since the ball necessarily had to be larger than the diameter of the neck. It was only in 1876, when he teamed up with a Yorkshire glass blower named Ben Rylands, that the answer was found. The Codd bottle was an immediate success; surviving examples are now highly collectable. You opened them by pushing the ball into the neck, and openers in the shape of short, thin cylinders were supplied for the purpose. One unexpected problem was that children smashed the bottles to use the glass balls as marbles. The suggestion is that drinkers who preferred their tipple to have alcohol in it were dismissive of Mr Codd's soft drinks. As beer was often called 'wallop', they referred sneeringly to the fizzy drink as 'Codd's wallop', and the resulting word later spread its meaning to refer to anything considered to be rubbish. This story reeks of the anecdotal and fanciful approach to word history that has been called folk etymology. As one writer has put it, it seems rather too neat an explanation to be true. But nobody's come up with anything better.

coeval—from the same period in time. From the Latin aevum, age or lifetime, it is parallel to medieval and primeval and root of the word aevum (-ev-) can be seen in the word longevity.

cognate—see enate.

coin—A coin is a small piece of metal, usually flat and round, that is authorized by a government to be used as money. It can also be the cornerstone of a building, and as a

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verb, to coin can be to stamp out coins from a metal sheet or to invent a new word or phrase. In Latin, a cuneus was a wedge, and from that word came the name of the wedge-shaped script called cuneiform. The word passed into Old French as coing, and the meaning broadened to include various wedge-shaped objects, including the corner stone of a building. One of the wedge-shaped objects was the die that was used to stamp out money. Eventually, the pieces of money themselves became known as coins.

collage--form of art where various disparate objects are assembled together from kolla (glue). The words protocol and collagen have the same parentage. MW

colonel—The small, elite regiment at the head of an army was once known in Italian as the "compagna colonella" (little column company). This expression described the shape of a group of marching soldiers, like a long, straight column on its side. The commander of such a group was the colonella. When the word migrated to French, it changed to coronel, which is the form that originally entered English. The word's pronunciation then became tighter, losing the second vowel. More recently, a more authentically Italian spelling was adopted, but the word is still pronounced KER-nul.

colporteur-- peddler of religious books from French colporteur (peddler), from col (neck) + porter (to carry), from Latin portare, from the idea of a peddler carrying his wares in a bag hung around his neck. Ultimately from Indo-European root per- (to lead, pass over) that gave us other words such as support, comport, petroleum, sport, passport, Swedish fartlek (a training technique), Norwegian fjord (bay), and Sanskrit parvat (mountain).

colubrine—pertaining to snakes from the Latin colubra, snake. The word cobra is from the same Latin word, but entered English through Portuguese. MW

combini--convenience store (Japanese). The Japanese language has no “v” sound and so they usually use “b” instead and the Japanese like to shorten things so for example word processor is wopuro and personal computer is pasocom.

comet—Comets are frozen ice-balls, tens of kilometers across, that swing through the inner solar system from the cold depths of space. While they are here they can put on a spectacular show, with huge tails of gas and dust fanning out across the sky. Although in past centuries comets were thought to be powerful, mysterious harbingers of difficult times, they got their name from their resemblance to something human and ordinary: streaming hair. The Greek kome means "hair of the head," and the Greeks called comets "aster kometes" (star with long hair). The first recorded use was by Aristotle. Later the phrase contracted to kometes. It passed through Latin as cometa, then through Old French into English. There is also the coma, which is the roughly spherical, fuzzy halo that surrounds the head of the comet. That word also comes from the Greek kome, but the other meaning of coma (deep sleep) comes down through a different lineage. concinnate (accent on the first syllable) is a transitive verb meaning to arrange or blend together skillfully, as parts or elements, or to put together in a harmonious, precisely appropriate and elegant manner. So a person could concinnate a house, or a dinner, or a drink, or for that matter, a love affair or a marriage. The possibilities are endless. One could even concinnate a life. Concinnity (accent on the second syllable), the noun form, means a close harmony of tone as well as logic among the elements of a discourse. Concinnous, the adjective, means something characterized by concinnity, something elegant, harmonious, or stylistically congruous.

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companion--from Latin cum, with, and panis, bread.

complain" and "plaintiff" are probably distantly related. "Complain" is thought to derive ultimately from "plangere," a Latin word meaning "to strike, beat one's breast, or lament." "Plangere" is an ancestor of "plaintiff" too. "Plaintiff" comes most immediately from the Middle English "plaintif," itself a Middle French borrowing; in Middle French, "plaintif" functioned both as a noun and as an adjective meaning "lamenting, complaining." That "plaintif" in turn comes from the Middle French "plaint," meaning "a lamentation." (The English words "plaintive" and "plaint" are also descendents of these Middle French terms.) And "plaint" comes from the Latin "planctus," past participle of "plangere." Logically enough, "plaintiff" applies to the one who does the complaining in a legal case.

complain—to protest, as if to strike one's breast

compunction—remorse or regret from the Latin noun compunctio, which in turn evolved from the verb compungere, meaning to prick or to sting.

concrete—The word comes through Old French concret, from Latin concrescere (grow together; harden). That's from com- (together) and crescere (grow). Crescere also gave us crescent (the moon's shape when it is growing), increase, and accrue.

condign—deserved, appropriate. "Let the punishment fit the crime," they say, so I borrowed my roommate's crossword puzzle dictionary without asking as condign retaliation for her always stealing the crossword puzzles from my newspaper. In his 1755 Dictionary of the English Language, lexicographer Samuel Johnson noted that "condign" "is always used of something deserved by crimes." How did a word that once meant "punishment"? "Condign" (which traces to the Latin "com-," meaning "thoroughly," and "dignus," meaning "worthy") was apparently so condemned in the 1500s by the phraseology of the Tudor Acts of Parliament: "Former statutes...for lacke of condigne punishment be littell feared or regarded."

connive—It may not seem like a troublesome term, but it was to Wilson Follett, a usage critic who lamented that the word "was undone during the Second World War, when restless spirits felt the need of a new synonym for plotting, bribing, spying, conspiring, engineering a coup, preparing a secret attack." Follett thought "connive" should only mean "to wink at" or "to pretend ignorance." Those senses are closer to the Latin ancestor of the word ("connive" comes from the Latin "connivere," which means "to close the eyes" and which is descended from "-nivere," a form akin to the Latin verb "nictare," meaning "to wink"). But many native English speakers disagreed and the "conspire" sense is now the word's most widely used meaning.

contango-- postponement of payment by the buyer of stock on the payment of a premium to the seller. See Backwardation. MW

contumacious—disobedient, rebellious from Latin adjective contumax meaning rebellious or, in the good sense, firm, and ultimately from tumēre to swell especially with pride.

cookie--small flat sweet cake (`biscuit' is the British term) from the Dutch "koekje," meaning "little cake," a diminutive of "koek" (cake). According to The Word Detective By Evan Morris, “the term “cookie" first appeared in American English in the early 18th

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century, when the Dutch colonial presence in the New World was still a fairly recent memory.”

coprolalia—“ ‘I’ve always said that 15 percent of the people with Tourette’s have coprolalia, but 100 percent of jazz musicians have it,’ (Jazzman Michael) Wolff jokes. ‘So, I definitely swear, but not because of Tourette’s.’ ” Weekley

cop—to seize or catch, from Latin capere. The term cop for policeman and the word capture come from the same source.

coquetier—perhaps the origin of the word cocktail. In Saratoga Trunk (Edna Ferber, 1941), there's this exchange between the protagonist Clio Dulaine, who was born in New Orleans, and a minor character, Sophie Bellop:"Will you have a coquetier, Mrs. Bellop?"What's that?""That is a little drink to hearten and steady one.... Aunt Belle said it was brought to New Orleans from Santa Domingo by Peychaud, the apothecary. Bitters, and a dash of cognac, with a twist of lemon peel. He mixed it in an egg-shaped cup. That's why it's called a coquetier. Lovely."

coriaceous —leathery or with a tough, leathery texture. Example: "The old man squinted out to sea, and a frown creased his coriaceous forehead." Nowadays, this word is seldom used in ordinary speech, but a web search reveals hundreds of pages where the word is used as a technical term describing plant leaves, fungi, or other natural phenomena. Like many such technical terms, it's from Latin. The root is corium (leather), which also gave us these words: cuirass—armor to protect the chest, currier—one who prepares tanned hides for use, excoriate—tear or scrape off the skin; strongly censure or denounce

corollary—a proposition inferred immediately from a proved proposition with little or no additional proof. From the Latin noun "corollarium," which can be translated as "a garland given as a reward." "Corollarium" comes from the Latin "corolla," meaning "small crown or garland," and a garland or small crown was apparently sometimes given to actors in addition to their pay. It makes sense, then, that another sense of "corollarium" is "gratuity." Later, "corollarium" developed the philosophical sense of a supplementary proposition that follows directly from something that has been proved. In a sense, a "corollary" is a "bonus" that follows from the proof of something else. From that sense of "corollary" came the broader modern sense, "something that naturally follows or accompanies."

coruscant—glittering, shiny. Also the name of the planet-city in "Star Wars: Episode 1. The verb form is coruscate and the noun is coruscation based on the Latin coruscare (to flash).

corybantic—the big name in goddesses in Phrygia (Asia Minor) in the fifth century B.C. was Cybele (also called Cybebe or Agdistis), the "Great Mother of the Gods." According to Oriental and Greco- Roman mythology, she was the mother of it all — gods, humans, animals, plants, nature itself. The Corybants were Cybele's mythical attendants, and they worshipped her with an unrestrained frenzy of wildly emotional processions, rites, and dances. "Corybantic," the adjective based on the name of Cybele's attendants, can be used to describe anything characterized by a similar unrestrained abandon. MW

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cossical—pertaining to algebra; as, cossic numbers, or the cossic art. Cosa is Latin for a 'thing' which was used for the unknown in early algebra. Algebraists were called cossists and algebra was known as the cossic art for many years.

cozen—to deceive, win over, or induce to do something by artful coaxing and wheedling or shrewd trickery. Linguists have theorized that "cozen" traces to the Italian noun "cozzone," which means "horse trader." Horse-trading was associated with knavery, so it's reasonable that a word for horse traders would become associated with deception and fraud.

cranky—I recently watched a very interesting history of the automobile on television. The narrator said that the word cranky came from the frustration early car drivers developed trying to crank-start their cars. But when I went to the dictionary to check this nice trivium—much to my horror and alarm——it was wrong. The word crank was being used 1n the 1800's in the sense we use it today. Boy, did that make me cranky.

creosote—a resinous liquid that is often used to preserve railroad ties, telephone poles, and other wooden objects exposed to weather. It's made by heating wood or coal tar and distilling the vapors that are produced. After it was discovered in the 1830s, the most common use for creosote was as an antiseptic. The German kreosot was coined to describe the smelly liquid. It's a compound: the first part is derived from the Greek kreas (flesh), and the second is from Greek soter (savior, preserver). Other words from kreas include pancreas, and its Indo-European root also gave us crude, cruel, and raw.

crepuscular—pertaining to the twilight, from Latin, crepusculum, twilight. In biology, animals such as mosquitos and deer that are most active at dawn and dusk.

crepuscular—term used to describe animals that are active at sunset and sunrise, from the Latin term for the evening twilight crepusculum a diminutive formation of "creper," dark. The mornng twilight was "diluculum."

crimson—see vermilion

crocodile—The original Greek krocodilos was a small lizard that lived in stone walls. The name is a compound of kroke (pebble, stone) and drilos (worm), so the lizard was literally a "stone worm." When the Greeks saw the much larger "water lizards" that swam in Egypt's Nile River, they gave them the same name.

crony—A crony is someone whom you have known for a while, a friend of long standing. He or she is someone you expect to know for a good while longer: "Frank Sinatra and his cronies became known as the Rat Pack." The first known written record of the word is from 1665, in the diary of Samuel Pepys, where it was spelled "chrony." This spelling reflects the word's probable origin, as Cambridge University slang derived from the Greek word khronios (long-lasting), a derivative of khronos (time).

curfew--From the French couvrir feu, literally, cover [the] fire." (Curious Word Origins)

curriculum—a course of study, the word gained acceptance at the University of Glasgow appearing in print as an English word in 1824. Even more recent (dating from 1902) is curriculum vitae (a résumé) the plural of which is curricula vitae (not curricula vitarum).—Quinion

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cut and run—to make a hasty departure in an emergency. This phrase comes from an accepted military tactic and dates from the 1700’s. It refers to cutting the anchor cable on a ship and getting underweigh.

Cynar--an Italian liquor or digestiv made from an infusion of artichoke. Developed in 1949.

cynic and skeptic Although it is a common practice to use the words 'cynic' and 'skeptic' interchangeably, they are actually two different 16th century words with very similar etymological origins. The Cynics were a group of philosophers founded around 400 BC by Antisthenes in ancient Greece. They held the belief that self-control was the highest virtue. Under one of the groups later leaders, Diogenes, they came to view with contempt the weaknesses of others, and this, according to popular belief, earned them their nickname, cynics, which comes from Greek kunikos `dog-like,' supposedly because of their `dog-like' sneers. Kunikos comes from Greek kuon `dog' (related to English hound). A less interesting but more likely explanation is that the group was named after the Kunosarge, which was where Antisthenes taught, and that the word was later influenced by kuon. Cynic entered English in the 16th century, acquired via Latin cynicus. As for skeptic, the Skeptics were also a group of Greek philosophers, their leader being Pyrrho of Elis. The word skeptic comes from Greek skeptikos `look about, consider, observe.' It is descended from the base *skep-, which was related to *skop-, source of English scope, and *skep- may be a reversed version of *spek-, from which English gets spectator, speculate, etc. Greek skeptikos was applied to Pyrrho's school of philosophy that stressed the detailed examination of a proposition, using doubt, before accepting the proposition. The word entered English in the 16th century, via Latin scepticus and French sceptique, bringing with it a wider meaning of `initial doubt.'

daedal—cleverly designed, from the Greek daidalos, cunning worker. Is this the same as Daidalos (or L. Daedalus), the mortal who designed wings for himself and his son Icarus?..The Greeks had a penchant for personifying things, so many Greek words that end in –os are both a god, goddess or hero and a thing. Such as:

Atropos—relentlessChaos—voidKronos—timeEos—dawnHypnos—sleepPhobos—fearThanatos—death

daisy--From day's eye.

dallies--turns of the rope around the saddle horn. corruption of the Spanish dar la vuelta, roughly “to give it a turn.”

date—fruit takes its name from the Greek dactylos, meaning finger or toe. Date in the calendar sense comes from the customary beginning of letters written by citizens of Rome, “data Roma,” or “given at Rome” followed by the day and month.

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dead ringer--A ringer was originally a counterfeit gold coin. One could tell the fake by dropping it on a hard surface. If it rang like a bell, it was fake. Later, in horse racing, a ringer was a horse of a high class (high skill) that was secretly substituted for a similar-looking horse in a lower class race. The ringer could then be bet on by those who knew of the substitution.

deasil—something that rotates clockwise is moving deasil, the direction of the sun's path around the sky in the northern hemisphere. This rare word is the opposite of widdershins, a more common word that means counterclockwise. Both words are derived from Gaelic. Deasil is related to the Latin dexter (right, rightward), while widdershins is a compound of Old High German widar (back, again) and sinnes (in the direction of). The Latin dexter carried a sense of goodness and skillfulness, which is preserved in Modern English dextrous. In the Wicca tradition of witchcraft, which still uses both of the old rotation words, deasil movement is thought to be good and positive, while widdershins movement invokes dark, negative qualities.

debonair--French for "of good air."

demagogue—When the ancient Greeks used "demagogos" they meant someone good — a leader who used outstanding oratorical skills to further the interests of the common people. Mid-17th-centurywriters such as Thomas Hobbes and John Dryden and, later, Jonathan Swift employed the English word that way. But the word — from "demos," meaning "people" and "agein," which means to lead eventually came to suggest unethical leading astray of popular opinion. MW

deme—a stable population of interbreeding organisms of one species

demosthe--common people; the populace

demotic—relating to the common people; ancient Egyptian writing

derelict—left behind. The Latin verb relinquere is the root of our derelict and also the root of relinquish and relic.

derive--from Latin derivare to lead or draw off (a stream of water) from its source, from phrase de rivo (de, from, and rivus, stream)

desiccate—dehydrate. In Latin "siccus" means "dry," whereas "hydr-" is the Latin stem meaning "water." How is it that "desiccate" is "de-" plus "dry" and "dehydrate" is "de-" plus "water," and yet the two are synonyms? The answer is in the multiple identities of the prefix "de-." It may look like the same prefix, but the "de-" in "desiccate" means "completely, thoroughly," as in "despoil" (to spoil utterly) or "denude" (to strip completely bare). The "de-" in "dehydrate" means "remove," the same as it does in "defoliate" (to strip of leaves) or in "deice" (to remove ice).

desultory—jumping from one thing to another. The Latin word desultorius, the parent of "desultory," literally means "of a circus rider who leaps from horse to horse. From de-, down, and saltare, to jump. dialog—a conversation between two or more people is a dialog (also spelled dialogue), and so is a musical form where two or more voices exchange passages. It may seem that the word falls naturally into the prefix di- and the suffix -alog, implying that a dialog is a conversation between only two parties, from the meaning of the Greek prefix di- (two). From this misunderstanding Sir Thomas More

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coined the word trialogue (a conversation between three people). The correct division is dia- and -log. The prefix is Greek for through or across, and a dialog is "communication across," from one person to another. The word derives from the Greek dialogos (conversation), from dia- plus legein (to speak). Here are some more across and through words: dialect: a regional variety of language (across the region!) dialectic: a way of discovering the truth through logical conversation diameter: the greatest distance across a circle

deuce coupe—1932 Ford that has been modified to be faster and more powerful. Back in 1963, the Beach Boys sang, “She'll do a hundred and forty in the top end floored, She's my little deuce coupe.” Ten years later, director George Lucas renewed interest in the car by featuring a bright yellow deuce coupe the movie American Graffiti. But that’s not the only “deuce” car to get publicity. “In my deuce and a quarter feelin' funky funky fine,” sang Prince in 1993, praising the Buick Electra 225, a big boat of a car made in the 60s and 70s. (Slangcity.com)

diagonal—a line across a polygon, from one vertex to another

diaphanous— something with such a fine texture that one can see through it, derived from the Greek phanein (to show). With the prefix dia- (through), the word literally translates as "through showing" or transparent. The same root can combine with different prefixes. With epi- (over, above, forth) we get epiphany—an intuitive or divinely received insight. With theo- (god) we get theophany—manifestation of a god to a human being. Also from phainein are fancy, phenomenon, sycophant, emphasis, phase and phantom.

diaphanous—transparent (can be seen through)

diaschisis—A sudden functional disorder caused by a focal disturbance of the brain.in which healthy areas connected to the damaged area show a temporary loss of function.

diener--a laboratory helper especially in a medical school, German for servant.

diffident—arose from a combination of "fidere" and the prefix "dis-," meaning "the absence of," and it has been used to refer to individuals lacking in self-trust since the 15th century.

dilettante" is an Italian word, derived from "dilettare," meaning "to delight." In the 18th century, a dilettante was simply a person who delighted in the arts. Later, the term came to refer to someone who cultivates an art as a pastime without pursuing it professionally — that is, an amateur. From this meaning developed the somewhat negative meaning that the word carries today, indicating a person who dabbles in an art or subject but is not truly devoted to it. M-W.com

dinner—ultimately comes (by way of French) from the Late Latin disjunare, to break one's hunger. Originally the biggest meal of the day was what we now call breakfast.

diploma—simply a folded piece of paper to the Greeks. The root was the verb diploun (to fold), which came from diplous (double), source of English double. In Latin, a diploma was a letter of introduction, presumably folded. By the time the word entered English, it referred to any official document.

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dirge—a funeral song, comes from Latin antiphon to the Office of the Dead, beginning, "Derige, Domine, Deus meus, in conspectu Tuo viam meum,"Guide my life, Lord, my God, into your vision. Requium comes from the introit of the same mass, "Requiem aetermum dona eis, Domine," "Give them eternal rest, Lord." DBG

dirigible—a self-propelled lighter-than-air craft that has elevators and rudders to direct its forward motion. This category includes blimps, which are inflated like balloons and supported by internal gas pressure, and zeppelins, which are rigid, supported by struts and hoops. Both kinds of dirigibles contain gases that provide buoyancy. Today, most dirigibles contain helium. Dirigibles are distinguished from non-propelled balloons in that they can be steered and propelled in a chosen direction. The word is based on the Latin dirigere (to direct) with the -ible suffix, which is a variant of -able (capable, susceptible, or worthy).

discalced—without shoes. Used to describe members of certain religious orders. DBG

distaff—see bedizen

dollar—The dollar is the unit of currency used in the United States. The same name is used for the currency in more than thirty other countries, including Canada, Australia, and Hong Kong. Where did the dollar get its name? The word's immediate ancestor is the Low German thaler, which was the name of a large silver coin used in the sixteenth century. These coins were minted by Count Schlick of Bohemia, who mined the metal in a valley called Joachimsthal (The Dale of Joachim), in the Erzgebirge Mountains of Czechoslovakia, known today as Jachymov. (Who is this Joachim? He is also known as Joseph, the biblical husband of Mary.) The coins at first were known as Joachimsthalers, but the name was later shortened to thaler. By about 1700, the spelling had settled to dollar. The US decided to call its currency "the dollar" in 1785.

dorsal—comes from the Latin "dorsum" meaning back. We also get dossier, French, for a bundle of documents labeled on the back and endorse, to write on the back of. MW

dreidel—4-sided toy marked with Hebrew letters and spun like a top in a game of chance from the German drehen, turn, twist, rotate, whirl. See also teetotum.

drove—a herd or flock being driven to a new location.

dundrearies—long, flowing sideburns worn with a clean-shaven chin, similar to the shorter cut known as "mutton chops" or "burnsides." They were popular in England in the mid-1800's, where they were also known as "Picadilly weepers" or "Newgate knockers." The word is always plural, and it's often capitalized, since it originated as a proper name. The name for this particular style of facial hair was introduced in a play, "Our American Cousin" by Tom Taylor, featuring a bumbling but good-natured character named Lord Dundreary, who sported the long, flowing sideburns. That play is perhaps best known as the one being watched by Abraham Lincoln when he was assassinated.

dungeon—The history of this word traces from the top of the castle to the bottom. From the Latin root dominus (master), came Vulgar Latin domnio (lord's tower), the most elevated part of the castle. By the 14th century, in Old French a donjon could be the whole castle, but it could also be the keep (a secure structure that was often below the castle) as well as a prison cell in the keep. Today, the dungeon is usually in the deepest part of the castle, far below the lord's tower. Here are more "masterful" words: domain:

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controlled territory; area of activity or interest dominion: control or exercise of control; demesne: manorial land retained by a lord; don: male title (Spanish); crime family leader; danger: exposure to harm or risk; power to harm (obsolete)

dust—to hurt. "He waz being smart, so I stepped up and dusted him." "I tried a kickflip nosegrind on the handrail and got dusted hardcore." Urban Dictionary [daily@urbandictionary.com].

Dutch treat—In the seventeenth century, the Dutch and British were enemies. Both wanted maritime superiority for economic reasons, especially control of the sea routes from the rich spice islands of the East Indies. The two countries fought three wars at sea between the years 1652 and 1674. At the lowest point of the struggle, in May 1667, the Dutch sailed up the Medway, sank a lot of ships, and blockaded the Thames. The stereotype of the Dutchman among the English at this period was somebody stolid, miserly, and bad-tempered. Examples of perjorative phrases from the time of the Dutch wars include 'Dutch reckoning', a bill that is presented without any details, and which only gets bigger if you question it, and a 'Dutch widow', a prostitute. In the same spirit, but recorded later, are 'Dutch auction', one in which the prices go down instead of up; 'Dutch courage', temporary bravery induced by alcohol; 'Dutch metal', an alloy of copper and zinc used as a substitute for gold foil; 'Dutch comfort' or 'Dutch consolation', in which somebody might say "thank God it is no worse!"; 'Dutch concert', in which each musician plays a different tune; 'Dutch uncle', someone who criticises or rebukes you with the frankness of a relative; and 'Dutch treat', one in which those invited pay for themselves (this last one first appeared only in the twentieth century, but it continues the associations). —Quinion

eagre—(pronounced like “eager”) a wave of high tide flowing up a river from the sea. One theory of the origin of the word is that it comes from Oegir, a Scandinavian sea god. That may make sense as the most well-known eagre is on the River Trent in the east of England in the area settled by the Vikings, the danelaw.

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edacious—eating, especially ravenous eating. Although it is still used generally as a synonym of "voracious," it is even today most likely to be used in contexts referring to time. That's how Scottish essayist and historian Thomas Carlyle used it when he referred to events "swallowed in the depths of edacious time." "Tempus edax rurum." That wise Latin line by the Roman poet Ovid translates as "Time, the devourer of all things." The word is a derivative of the Latin verb "edere," meaning "to eat."

eggplant—A vegetable from eastern and southern Asia introduced by the Arabs into Spain. The English name describes the fruits of the small variety which are the shape and size of goose eggs and may be the same color as well. It is also known as the aubergine

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from the Arabic al-badinjan. In the south it is still sometimes called a Guinea squash reflecting its introduction to Southern cooks from African cuisine.

einkorn, emmer and spelt—three species of hulled wheat (Triticum dimonococcum, Triticum dicoccon and Triticum aestivum spelta). They are called hulled, because the husks are hard to get off. Free-threshing forms have been developed to use today. Einkorn is diploid, emmer is tetraploid and spelt is hexaploid. Emmer is a hybrid of an einkorn relative and wild goat grass Aegilops squarrosa. It probably developed in the Caucasus region between the Black and Caspian Seas where this wild grass grows naturally. Einkorn and emmer still grow wild today in southeastern Turkey and northern Syria. Durum wheat is a free threshing form of emmer. Spelt is a hybrid of emmer and another einkorn relative. Modern bread wheat is a free threshing form of spelt. In Italian all three species are referred to as faro, from the Latin, far, faris—wheat or grain. From this root we get the word farina—meal or flour and the word farrago, which in English means a mixture, but in Latin meant mixed fodder for cattle. In Latin triticum also meant wheat.

Two, four, six chromosomes it is feltHave einkorn, emmer and speltHulled wheats are they allBut free-threshing’s the callFrom those the husks simply melt

Emmer gives us durumBread wheat comes from speltFind einkorn and emmerIn Turkish wheat belt

“Far” in old RomeMeant simply grainFarrago, was fodderNot a mixture it’s plain

elan, eclat—(pronounced a-lon and a-clot, but silent 't' )—Elan is vigorous spirit or enthusiasm. Eclat is brilliant or conspicuous success. "Mark Twain called Congress our only native criminal class, but neither party can take credit for making it so. . . . On the whole, our congressional professors of scandal do it with no elan—and very little eclat." LHThompson, Word Wonks

eleemosynary—That which is eleemosynary is charitable, has to do with charity, or is supported by charity. Example: "Doctor Benson regularly contributed to the Pediatric Foundation and other eleemosynary organizations." This word first appeared in English in the 1600s, derived from Medieval Latin eleemosynarius (compassion, mercy), ultimately from Greek eleemosune (pity, alms). Along the way, the Vulgar Latin alimosina (alms) split off and led to words in other languages with the same meaning, including French aumone, Italian limosina, German almosen, and Dutch aalmoes. Old English received the word as aelmesse, which became shortened to alms by the 1800s. xThere is also almoner (medical social worker), which developed from aumoner

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(administrator of alms) in the 1800s. Originally, the aumoner was someone who worked at the aumonry (place of alms giving), receiving donations and distributing them to those in need.

elision— a speech form that lacks a sound, for example, it’s instead of it is, or the omission of an unstressed vowel or syllable in a verse to achieve a uniform metrical pattern.

embonpoint—plumpness of person, used to describe people of “heavy, but not necessarily unattractive, girth,” from Middle French en bon point—in good condition. Here are some elegant 19th century uses of the word from Merriam Webster:

…a form decidedly inclined to embonpoint…— Charlotte Brontë, Shirley

…an embonpoint that was just sufficient to distinguish her from most of her companions…

— James Fenimore Cooper, Home as Found…as erect in her comely embonpoint as a statue of Ceres…

— George Eliot, Adam Bede

embusque, with accent aigu over the last e. So the word would be pronounced am-bus-kay. According to J. N. Hook, this is a noun from a French verb meaning to shirk. An embusque would be a person who tries to get out of military service by legal or quasi-legal means. It is seldom used in English.

eminent traces to the Latin term eminere, which means to stand out.

emmer (see einkorn)

empyreal—to the heaven, believed to contain pure light or fire, from Medieval Latin empyreus, from Greek empyrios (fiery), from pur (fire).Other words derived from the same root are fire, pyre, pyrosis (heartburn), and pyromania.

enate (also enatic)—someone related on the mother's side. From Latin enatus, past participle of enasci from ex- (out) and nasci (to be born). See agnate, the term for someone related on the father's side. Cognate is the generic term meaning having a common ancestor. Wordsmith

encaustic--painting with pigment mixed with beeswax and fixed with heat after its application [from Greek enkaustikos, from enkaiein to burn in, from en- and kaiein to burn]. Sarah

enclave—from the French meaning to enclose, but ultimately from the Latin clavis, meaning key. Clavis is also the root of clavicle and clef, the word for the music symbol. MW

encomium— enthusiastic praise. From en, meaning in, and komos, meaning celebration. The original encomiums were eulogies or panegyrics, often ones prepared in honor of a victor in the Olympics.

engagé—committed to or supportive of a cause. The term became particularly fashionable in the wake of World War II, when French writers, artists and intellectuals felt it was increasingly important for them to take a stand on political or social issues and represent their attitudes in their art. By 1946, English speakers had adopted the word.

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ennead—a group of nine. Ancient Egyptians organized their gods into groups of nine; their principal group of gods (headed by sun god Re-Atum) is called the "Great Ennead of Heliopolis." The "Ennead" English speakers use in that name traces to "ennea," which is the Greek word for "nine." When "ennead" is used generally, it often refers to groups of ancient gods or to one of the "Enneads," six sets of nine treaties by Greek philosopher Plotinus that were collected and organized by his third-century disciple, Porphyry.

ephemeros—lasting a day, from the epi, meaning after or over and hemera meaning day.

epidemic, endemic, pandemic--strictly speaking, only people can suffer an epidemic (the word means "in or among people"). An outbreak of disease among animals is epizootic. It is also worth noting that epidemic refers only to outbreaks. When a disease or other problem is of long standing, it is endemic. Pandemic (meaning "all the people") is often vaguely defined in dictionaries. Strictly, it indicates only an unusually high level of infection. By this definition you could have a pandemic in a single locality. In practice, however, the word is usually reserved for outbreaks that are global or nearly so. Pat Shettel

epithalamion (or epithalamium)--poem or song in honor of a bride and bridegroom.[From Greek epi-(upon) + thalamus (bridal chamber).] A prothalamion is poem or song to celebrate a future marriage. The word was coined by the poet Edmund Spenser (1552-1599). AWAD

epithalmium—a nuptial song or poem in praise of the bride and bridegroom, and praying for their prosperity

epitome—figuratively, an ideal example of something, but the original meaning is an abstract of a larger work. The Oxford English Dictionary reports its first use in 1569 to mean a summary, "A little treatise, after the manner of an epitome, and short rehearsal of all things that are examined more diligently in the aforesaid book." It comes from the Greek epitemnein, meaning "to cut short," from epi- and temnein, which means "to cut. Other words which use the same root are atom (something so small that it cannot be cut into further pieces) and microtome (a device for cutting very small slices of tissue). DBG

Erb's point or the punctum nervosum--is a site at the lateral root of the brachial plexus located 2–3 cm above the clavicle. It is named for Wilhelm Heinrich Erb. Erb's point is formed by the union of the C5 and C6 nerve roots, which later diverge. At the nerve trunk, branches of suprascapular nerves and the nerve to the subclavius also merge. Afterwords, the merged nerve divides into the anterior and posterior division of C5 and C6. Injury to Erb's point is commonly sustained at birth or from a fall onto the shoulder. Symptoms include paralysis of the biceps, brachialis, and coracobrachialis (through the musculocutaneous nerve); the brachioradialis (through the radial nerve); and the deltoid (through the axillary nerve). The effect is called "Erb's palsy". Typically, an affected person's arm hangs at the side with the hand rotated medially, like a porter waiting for a tip; hence the colloquial name "porter's tip hand.”

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eremite—a hermit, one who withdraws from society and lives as a recluse, especially if that person withdraws for religious or spiritual reasons. Such a person is eremitic and is behaving eremitically. Both eremite and hermit derive from the same root, Late Latin eremita (hermit), from Greek eremia (desert), which in turn came from eremos (solitary). Notice how the word's meaning evolved from aloneness to the desert (where one is often alone), then back to aloneness. More words from the same root: eremic relating to deserts or sandy areas eremophilia love of solitude eremophobia fear of being alone

ersatz—replacement. It comes from the German word ersetzen, which means to replace or substitute. It came into widespread use in English as a result of contact with the German army during World War I. The Germans used it in such phrases as ersatzbattalion (replacement battalion). It came to be applied to substitute products used to replace those that were hard to get because of the war—oleomargarine for butter, for instance. It was even more widely used during the rationing of the Second World War.

escape--Latin ex, out of, and cappa, cape.

esculent—edible, from Latin "esculentus", from "esca", food, which derives from "esse", to eat. Related words from Latin include comestible, edacious, edible, and obese. Quinion

esculent—edible, from the Latin for food edo, edere, edi, esum and esca—food. The same root as comestible (also meaning edible), edacious (voracious, but see above), escarole and obese (ob/edo).

esplanade—a level place. We borrowed the word from Middle French, but its ancestry traces back through Italian to the Latin verb "explanare." That verb literally means "to make level" and it is also the source of the English verb "explain."

espresso—coffee brewed by forcing steam through finely ground darkly roasted coffee beans, short for "caffe espresso," which is Italian for "pressed out coffee." MW

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estoppel--a bar preventing one from making an allegation or a denial that contradicts what one has previously stated as the truth.

euergetism (you UR get ism) noun. This is a scholarly term which denotes an informal social contract between the ancient Roman wealthy and socially prestigious classes, and the masses, the gist of which is that the upper classes provide the rest of society with games, entertainment, and from time to time, necessities of daily life. It is used specifically by scholars of ancient European history, especially of Roman history.

exaltation: larks; from Latin exaltare, from ex- (up) and altus (high)

exceptionalism—an assertion of special exemption to general principles. Especially used int the phrase, “American exceptionalism", a concept which implies that the United States of America is unique and better than other countries in some way. Among the varied sources cited for this uniqueness are its unusual historical development, cultural isolation, opportunities presented to immigrants, constitutional balance of public and private interests, etc. The phrase is thought to have originated by Alexis de Tocqueville in his famous book Democracy in America. Adherents to this view may hold a chauvinistic and jingoistic, America-centered view of the world.

excerebrose—brainless

excoriate—comes from the Latin verb "excoriare," which meant "to strip off the hide." "Excoriare" was itself formed from a pairing of the Latin prefix "ex-," meaning "out," and "corium," meaning "skin" or "hide" or "leather." "Corium" has several other descendants in English. One is "cuirass," a name for a piece of armor that covers the body from neck to waist (or something, such as bony plates covering an animal, that resembles such armor). Another is "corium" itself, which is sometimes used as a synonym of "dermis" (the inner layer of human skin).

excoriate—to scrape off the skin or figuratively to censure, from the Latin corium, skin also used in English as a synonym for dermis. A related words is cuirass a piece of body armor.

exiguous is so expansive sounding that you might expect it to mean "extensive" instead of "meager." It derives from the Latin "exiguus," which had the same basic meaning as the modern English term. "Exiguus," in turn, derives from the Latin verb "exigere," which is variously translated as "to demand," "to drive out," or "to weigh or measure." The idea of weighing or measuring so precisely as to be parsimonious or petty gave "exiguous" its present sense of inadequacy. "Exigere" is the parent term underlying other English words including "exact" and "exigent."

eyas—an unfledged bird; specifically : a nestling hawk. This word is a mistake. In the 15th century, Middle English speakers made an incorrect assumption about the word "neias," which comes from the Middle French "niais" ("fresh from the nest"). "A neias" sounded like "an eias" to their ears, so the word lost that initial "n," eventually becoming "eyas." (There are other words in English that were created in this same fashion; for example, "an apron" used to be "a napron.")—M-W.com

facetious—from the Middle French word "facetieux," which traces to the Latin word "facetia," meaning "jest." MW

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factitious—produced by humans rather than by natural forces or a second meaning is produced by special effort, sham, feigned. The word ultimately comes from the Latin "facere," to do or make. A closer relative is the Latin adjective "facticius," made by art, thus artificial. DSM III adopted the term “chronic factitious disorder,” 1980. DBG

farrago—usually means a confused mixture. Its first recorded appearance is in the middle of the seventeenth century in John Row's Historie of the Kirk of Scotland: "A strange miscellanie, farrago, and hotch-potch of Poperie, Arminianisme, and what not". It comes from the Latin word farrago, a mixed fodder for animals. The word was used even in Roman times in the figurative sense of a mixture or medley. The Latin word far referred to spelt, a grain, Triticum spelta, that is like wheat, but is actually a separate species. We also get the word farina from this source. Spelt was one of the original seven grains mentioned in the Bible. It is grown today for its high fiber content, but is difficult to harvest because the grain grows on taller and weaker stalks than wheat so that it is more likely to fall over in the field. The words barley and barn come from the same root. DBG

fat lady sings—This is one of the few phrases of which we know the exact origin. First, the original and full phrase is: "The opera ain't over until the fat lady sings." The phrase was first used in column by sportswriter Dan Cook in 1976. Cook's column, which appeared in the San Antonio News-Express, was about the San Antonio Spurs, a professional basketball team. Cook, who also worked as a broadcaster for KENS-TV in San Antonio, repeated the phrase in April 1978 when the Spurs were down three games to one in the playoffs against the Washington Bullets. It turned out that Cook was right, the fat lady had not yet sung for the Spurs, but she was waiting in the wings. The Spurs won the next game but lost game six and the series. Dick Motta, the Bullets' coach heard Cook's broadcast and used the phrase himself to caution against overconfidence in the Bullets upcoming series with the Philadelphia 76ers. Motta was widely quoted and the phrase entered the sporting vernacular.—Jay Nelson

favonian—pertaining to the west wind : mild. Ancient Greek and Roman traditions personified the four winds — Favonius (or Zephyr), Notus (or Auster), Boreas (or Aquilo), and Eurus — had distinct personalities. Favonius, the west wind, was considered warm and gentle. Its Latin name, which is the basis for the English adjective "favonian," derives from roots that are akin to Latin "fovere," meaning "to warm." In Greco-Roman tradition, it was Boreas, the north wind, who was the rude and blustery type. Notus and Eurus represented the south and east winds, respectively. http://www.thanasis.com/winds.htm

featherie and guttie—In 1618 the feather golf ball or 'Featherie' was introduced. This was a handcrafted ball made with goose feathers tightly packed into a horse or cow hide sphere. The feathers and leather were fashioned into a ball while wet. As the assembly dried out the leather shrank and the feathers expanded to create a hardened ball. The ball was then finished off by painting it and punched with the ball-makers mark. Quality varied according to the skill of the craftsman. Unfortunately, the handcrafted nature of the balls meant that they were priced beyond the pockets of the masses, sometimes more expensive than a club. Notable ball-makers of the 1600s were Andrew Dickson, Leith and Henry Mills, St Andrews. The introduction of the Gutta Percha ball or 'Guttie' in 1848 by Rev Adam Paterson of St. Andrews and the spread of the railways directly

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contributed to the expansion of golf. The Guttie ball was made from the rubber like sap of the Gutta tree found in the tropics. When heated the rubber could easily be fashioned into a sphere and used as a golf ball. Not only could the ball be relatively cheaply produced, it could also be easily repaired by re-heating and then re-shaping. Initially Gutties had a smooth surface which meant that they didn't travel as far as the Featheries."

feckless—effectless, or having no effect. The original root was the Scottish feck, a contraction of effect and the source of the modern English efficacy. The original root was Latin efficere (to accomplish).

feo (Spanish)--ugly from the Latin foedus, disgusting.

festination—haste, from L. festinare, to hurry, as used in the Latin phrase, “festina lente,” “make haste slowly.”

fete—a party from the Latin root festus from which we also get festive, festoon (to decorate for a party), Spanish fiesta, and festival. A fete is a festival that often includes a feast, a word from the same root.

feuilleton—entertainment section of a newspaper or novel printed in such a section. From French, feuillet, a sheet of paper, related to the English word foil. Pronunciation: fie-yu-toñ http://www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/audio.pl?feuill01.wav=feuilleton

fiat is first seen in English in the early 1600s. It is taken directly from the Latin fiat for "let it be done." Fiat is a conjugation of the Latin verb fieri (to be done).

fid—1) A square bar used as a support for a top mast. 2) A large tapering pin used to open the strands of a rope before splicing. My brother-in-law asked me to buy him a fid since we live in an area where watermen and boaters live and the hardware stores carry their needs. I asked him what one looks like and he said he had no idea but that a project he was starting on called for a fid. So I went to the hardware store and asked for a fid. The clerk, in turn, asked me, "What size?" "Medium," says I, figuring if you don't know what you are buying, medium is a safe place to start.

finis—the end, from the Latin word finis which means the border or limit and figuratively the end as in "finis coronat opus," "the end crowns the work"

flea market—the English term first appeared in 1922 as a direct translation from the French marché aux puces.

fling—to hurl something away

flock—group of animals, especially sheep or birds; from Old English "floc"

florilegium—a collection of writings; a portfolio of flower pictures. This Latin word is from 'flor-', a flower, and 'legere', to gather or collect. In that language it didn't refer literally to flowers, but to little flowers of composition, choice poems or epigrams by various authors (it's the exact Latin equivalent of the Greek 'anthology', which derives from 'anthos', a flower, and '-logia', a collection). However, 'florilegium' first appeared in the English language in 1711 in a sense nearer the literal one: describing a collection of flower illustrations. This continued a usage that had begun a century earlier in the Latin titles of books by European illustrators like Emanuel Sweert and Jean Theodore de Bry. Though the word was soon after taken back by scholars to refer to collections of writings,

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this sense may still sometimes be found, for example in the title of a 1996 book _A Hawaiian Florilegium_, subtitled "Botanical Portraits from Paradise". Now another early collection, created by Alexander Marshal, has been published after being hidden away for years in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle, and this book, too, has 'florilegium' in its title.

flotsam, jetsam, and lagan— legal terms from the 16th and 17th century. (The earliest evidence of "flotsam" dates from circa 1607.) The three words were used to establish claims of ownership to the three types of sea-borne, vessel-originated goods they named. Flotsam was anything from a shipwreck. (The word comes from Old French "floter" — "to float.") Jetsam and lagan were items thrown overboard to lighten a ship. Lagan was distinguished from jetsam by having a buoy attached so the goods could be found if they sank. In the 19th century when "flotsam" and "jetsam" took on extended meanings, they became synonyms, but they are still very often paired.MW

flour--Both "flour" and "flower" come from the French "fleur." Prior to 1830 the product made by finely grinding grains was spelled "flower," but that spelling was dropped to avoid confusion. It was so-called because it was considered the finest flower of the grain. One meaning of "flower" is the finest part or product of anything.tempura is actually from Portuguese tempêro "seasoning" and, ultimately, comes from the Latin temperare "to divide or proportion duly, to mingle in due proportion, to combine properly".

fluorescence (1852) comes from the word fluorspar, fluorite (CaF2) or flow-stone, which was added to other materials as a flux to lower their melting points (1794). Fluor- is from L. fluere, to flow; -spar from OE. spaeren, gypsum. Fluorite fluoresces blue under ultraviolet light (see http://www.mjt.nu/fluorite.htm for an illustration). The element fluorine (F) was named after the mineral (1813) and fluorine was first isolated by Moissan in 1886. Fluorescence is the visible glow that comes from illumination of a substance with radiation of another wavelength. Because energy must be conserved the re-emission is at a longer wavelength (redder) and less energetic. Some laundry detergent additive flouresce turning ultraviolet light into visible light and making clothes "whiter than white." When the source of illumination is removed fluroescence stops. Some substances, however, continue to glow. This is called phosphorescence. Chemiluminescence describes processes in which chemical reactions result in light. Triboluminescence is the creation of light through the motion of one surface against another.Atoms can absorb photons. When they do so, the energy is used to raise an electron to a higher energy state. Fluorescence occurs when the electron immediately ( within about 10-8 s)drops back to an intermediate energy level and emits a photon of a different (lower) wavelength. When it returns to the original state it radiates an additional photon. Spectrometers can be used to identify substances from their fluorescent properties. Fluorescent light bulbs work by a two stage process. Electrons flowing from anode to cathode hit atoms of gas in the tube and cause them to emit photons at ultraviolet wavelengths. These photons in turn strike a fluorescent coating on the inside of the tube which emits photons in the visible range. Phosphorescence occurs because the electron was raised to a state that was somewhat stable (metastable). The electron can remain in this state for seconds or hours before falling back and emitting a photon. The luminous hands and numerals of watch faces provide an example of phosphorescence. The atoms

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absorb photons when exposed to light and re-emit them in the dark. Watch out, Pat Stettel tells me to beware the difference between florescent and fluorescent: The first means in flower, the second radiating light.

fluorine—the name of the element fluorine comes from the mineral fluorite. Fluorite was called fluorspar or flow-stone and added to other materials as a flux to lower their melting points (1794). The word fluorspar comes from the Latin. fluere, to flow and the Old English-spar from spaeren, gypsum, because it helped other materials to flow. The element fluorine (F) was named after the mineral (1813?) and fluorine was first isolated by Moissan in 1886. The -ine was used, I guess, to keep it in line with the other halogens: bromine, etc. The word fluorescence arose later (1852) after the characteristic of fluorite to fluoresce blue under ultraviolet light (see http://www.mjt.nu/fluorite.htm for an illustration). DBG

fomites--any inanimate object, such as a book, money, carpet, etc. that can ransmit germs from one person to another. From Latin fomites, plural of fomes (touchwood, tinder), from fovere (to warm). MW

footpad—a highwayman who robs on foot or simply one who robs a pedestrian.

foray—a raid for plunder, from the Middle English "forrayen," and ultimately from the Middle French word "forre," meaning "fodder." It's related to the word "forage," which usually means "to search for provisions."

fore—the golf warning came out of British military terminology. When troops were lined up for battle, the ranks would fire in sequence. When a line behind was to shoot, the commander would yell out "'ware before!."

fourth estate—May 28 1789, Louis XVI summoned to Versailles a full meeting of the 'Estates General'. The First Estate consisted of three hundred nobles. The Second Estate, three hundred clergy. The Third Estate, six hundred commoners. Some years latter, after the French Revolution, Edmund Burke, looking up at the Press Gallery of the House of Commons, said, "Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, and they are more important than them all".

foxglove—This European perennial with its white and purple flowers received its name because the tubular blossoms look like the empty finger of a glove, although no one knows why the :fox" was added to it. The dried leaves, ground into powder, give us the drug digitalis which is used for heart diseases. And digitalis takes us back to the finger again, for digitalis is a Latin word that comes from digitus, "finger."

fraught—from the Middle Dutch or Middle Low German noun "vracht," which meant "load."

fresco—In Italian, fresco means fresh, like the plaster to which the paint is applied. If the plaster is on the dry side when it is painted, then the method is called "fresco secco" (dry fresco). If the plaster is brand new and still quite wet, then it's "buon fresco" (true fresco).

frisson—a brief moment of emotional excitement, a shudder, a thrill. It comes from the French word for shiver. Frisson traces to the Old French fricon (spelled with a cedilla and pronounced with a soft c), which In turn derives from frictio, Latin for friction. The

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association of the word and shivering came about because frictio (which derives from the Latin fricare, meaning "to rub") was once mistakenly taken to be a derivative of frigere, which means "to be cold."

frisson—A frisson is a brief moment of thrilling excitement, like a quick, emotional shudder. Example: "Jerry felt a sudden frisson of terror when the snorting bull turned to face him." This word came into English through Old French, from fricon (shiver), which is pronounced the same as our English word. There's a connection with coldness, which is often the reason for shivers, and that connection had an influence on the evolution of the word. But the connection is a result of a lexical error. The Old French fricon came from Latin frictio (friction). Normally, friction is associated with heat, not cold. But it was once thought that the root of frictio was Latin frigere (to be cold). Actually, the root was fricare (to rub). Through the false association of frictio and coldness, Old French fricon came to mean "shiver," and our word frisson arose with its current meaning.

fritillary—either a kind of lily, or it is a butterfly. Both are quite showy, with orange, yellow, or brown checked or spotted patterns on the flowers or the wings, respectively. There are about a dozen kinds of fritillary butterflies in the US and Europe, in the family Nymphalidae. There are also several species of fritillary lilies. They are not called fritillaries because they flit about, or because they fritter away their lives in idle showiness. The name refers to the colorful patterns. The original word was the Latin fritillus (a dice box). Roman dice boxes often had checked patterns on them. The great spangled fritillary, a large butterfly from the US: http://www.marietta.edu/~biol/butter/grtspan.html The gulf fritillary, a beautiful butterfly found in Florida: http://www.butterflywings.com/s-gulffrit.html Article on wildflowers, with a picture of a scarlet fritillary lily: http://www.so-oregon.com/gardening/islands/garden.html Article about woodland flowers, including the unusual snakeshead fritillary: http://www.klis.com/fundy/ecg/Smtreasr.htm

frog-march—to forcibly restrain and remove someone. When "frog-march" first appeared as slang around 1871, it meant to carry a prisoner (or a drunk being ejected from a bar) face down, with each of four husky men holding an arm or leg. The term comes from the resemblance the recipient of the procedure bears to a frog with its limbs splayed out. Morris Word Detective

frog—The connection between the French and frogs dates back to antiquity when the coat of arms of Paris displayed three toads springing, or "salient" in heraldic terminology, a position signifying valor. During the time of the Roman Empire, the name for Paris was Lutetia which translates as "mud-land" and explains why frogs and toads were a common part of the landscape. The association of the French, especially the Parisians, with frogs, was used by the French themselves. During the Revolution, a common query was '"What do the frogs [i.e., people of Paris] say?'" A related epithet is to call a French person a crapaud, the French word for toad. It sounds much worse in English than in French. As an insult, it originally referred to any sort of obnoxious person, with the first citation from the OED dating to about 1330. As time went on, the Dutch and the Jesuits became the targets. Then during the incessant wars between the French and English during the 18th and early 19th centuries, it came to refer specifically to the French and has done so ever since.

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froschmäusekrieg—a silly dispute, literally German for “war of the frogs and mice.” The term comes from a Greek parody of Homer’s Iliad, an epic about the Trojan war. In Greek the story is called Batrachomyomachia (Gr. βάτραχος, frog, μῦς, mouse, and, μάχη, battle) by an anonymous poet probably written in Hellenic times. Here is a synopsis of the story from Wikipedia: A mouse drinking water from a lake meets the Frog King, who invites him to his house. As the Frog King swims across the lake, the Mouse seated on his back, they are confronted by a frightening water-snake. The Frog dives, forgetting about the Mouse, who drowns. Another Mouse witnesses the scene from the bank of the lake, and runs to tell everyone about it. The Mice arm themselves for battle to avenge the Frog King's treachery, and send a herald to the Frogs with a declaration of war. The Frogs blame their King, who altogether denies the incident. In the meantime, Zeus, seeing the brewing war, proposes that the gods take sides, and specifically that Athena help the Mice. Athena refuses, saying that mice have done her a lot of mischief. Eventually the gods decide to watch rather than get involved. A battle ensues and the Mice prevail. Zeus summons a force of crabs to prevent complete destruction of the Frogs. Powerless against the armoured crabs, the Mice retreat, and the one-day war ends at sundown.

functus officio—a thing performed. An official whose term has expired or who has fulfilled his duties. Also a term used by federal bureaucrats on their way to go fishing on a weekeday just shortly before calling in sick.

fundie--a religious fundamentalist (derogatory) (slangcity.com).

funicular—relating to rope. As a noun, a cable railway on a hill from the Latin funiculus (thin rope), diminutive of funis (rope).

furbelow—unnecessary trimmings or decorations; from the Provencal farbella (fringe), from Italian faldella (little pleat). That's the diminutive of falda (flap, loose end), which is from an ancient Germanic root that also gave us fold, as well as the -fold suffix (twofold, threefold, etc).

gaffer—To Americans, a gaffer is a lighting technician on a movie or TV set. To someone from England, a gaffer is an old man, a rustic (a simple country person), or a boss, foreman, or supervisor. The American meaning emerged from the British meanings. The word originally appeared in the late 1500s, when it was a respectful title for an old man. It was a combined contraction of grandfather and godfather that evolved together with gammer, a similar word for an old woman that was derived from grandmother and godmother. When gaffer began to be applied to the oldest man in a work crew, it shifted to the sense of the foreman or boss. Americans extended the word to apply to any professional workers with seniority, and the movie industry narrowed the focus to just those on the lighting crew, while other American usages disappeared.

gaggle—group of geese, from Middle English gagelen (to cackle)

galleywest--into a state of unconsciousness, confusion, or disarray (usually used in the phrase to knock galley-west). Origin: 1870–75, Americanism; alter. of Brit. dial. collywest

galore—In English adjectives usually come before the nouns they modify, but galore, which means "in great abundance," is an exception: "at the fair, there were stilt-walkers and jugglers galore." This construction is called "postpositive" placement of an adjective. Another example of this is the placement of "martial" in the expression "court martial." Galore is from Irish Gaelic "go leor," a compound of the adverb particle and leor (enough), so it could be translated as "enoughly." Leor is from Old Irish loar, which was

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an alteration of roar (enough), from ro-wero (very true). That old root, wero, came from an even more ancient root that gave us the truthful words veracious, verism, verity, verify, very, and veracity. From the same root, but by a different path, came warlock (male witch, sorcerer, wizard, or demon), from Old English waerloga (oath breaker), from waer (pledge) and loga (liar).

gamboge—a reddish yellow color or a gum resin obtained from the sap of trees of the genus Garcinia, used as a yellow pigment and as a cathartic. From New Latin gambogium, variant of cambugium, after Cambodia where, among other places in southeast Asia, this tree is found. A spice is made from the tree as well.M-W

gamut--Once upon a time, back in the 11th century, a Benedictine monk and musical theorist named Guido d'Arezzo devised the "hexachord" system, a six-note scale for reading music. The forerunner of our familiar ascending eight-note "do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, ti, do" scale, d'Arezzo's system ran "ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la" (taken from the first letters of the lines of an eighth-century Latin hymn to Saint John (“Ut quent laxis”, may be found on page 1504 of the Liber Usualis):

Ut queant laxis Resonare fibris Mira gestorum Famuli tuorum, Solve polluti Labii reatum, Sancte Iohannes."

”O Saint John, free their lips from unchaste things, so your servants can resound your wonderful acts.” Is my shoddy translation. DBG

garble—developed from the Latin word "cribellum," meaning "sieve" (a device for separating things). How did a word that meant "sieve" develop into one that refers to distorting a sound or meaning? The transition from "cribellum" to "garble" happened slowly as the word passed from one language to another. "Cribellum" was adapted to form "cribellare," a verb meaning "to sift." Arabic speakers borrowed "cribellare" as "gharbala," which also meant "to sift." The Arabic word passed into Italian as "garbellare" with the same meaning. Later, English speakers started using the word to mean "to sift impurities from" and "to distort," and they changed the spelling once again, forming "garble."

gargoyle—fantastic, often grotesque figures perched on corners and down spouts of old buildings, especially in Europe. Their purpose, when not merely decorative, is to funnel rainwater away from the building, usually through a spout that emerges from the figure's mouth. It's no coincidence that the word, when spoken, sounds like the liquid sounds made by gargoyles when they are spouting. The ultimate roots, the ancient garg- and gurg-, were onomatopoetic words: they sounded like the throat sounds they named. From those roots came the Latin gurgulio (gullet) and gurges (whirlpool), and then Old French gargouille (throat, waterspout), which led to gargoyle. gargouiller, in French, means gargle. So our two English words gargle and gargoyle have an identical source.

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From the same roots, we also have gurgle, gargle, giggle, gullet, gully, gulp, and regurgitate.

gargoyle—gruesome water spouts, especially those on medieval cathedrals. "According to myth, in the 7th century a dragon, named Gargouille—literally "throat," rose from the waters of the Seine River in France. Unlike the typical dragons of mythology, this one did not breathe fire, but rather was a water dragon. The monster proceeded to lay waste to the countryside around Paris by drowning it. St. Romain, the Archbishop of Rouen, accompanied only by a condemned prisoner, set out to stop the beast. Upon confronting the monster, the good saint formed a cross with his two index fingers, taming Gargouille. The dragon was led back to Paris, where it was slain and burned. The head, however, was saved and mounted on a building." MW The word seems to be derived ultimately from the Latin gurges, -itis, m. a whirlpool, eddy, abyss.

garrulous—using or containing many and usually too many words from the Latin verb garrire, which means to chatter or to babble.

gazebo—a small building with a scenic view. The word appeared without precedent in 1752 in a book catering to the then-current fad for chinoiserie in art, New Designs for Chinese Temples by William and John Halfpenny. The chinoiserie décor of the time often displayed oriental scenes with prominent bamboo pleasure pavilions set in fanciful mountainous landscapes with oriental bridges, mandarins carrying flower parasols, etc. The author(s) probably coined the word from “gaze” and the Latin future tense ending “-ebo.” It may have been patterned after the word "lavabo," literally “I will wash,” a basin used in church for ritual washing of the hands. Strictly speaking, only structures with a good view are gazebos.

gengo system—Japanese system of naming years according to eras. In the year 645, the Japanese adopted the Chinese system clustering years into eras. Under the new system, 645 A.D. became the first year of the Taika era or Taika 1. Taika (appropriately) means Great Change. The Gregorian system of numbering years from the birth of Christ can't be used in official Japanese legal documents because it is religiously derived. The system for changing eras has varied over the years, but now they change with the ascent of a new emperor. 2006 is Heisei 18 because the emperor Akihito ascended to the throne eighteen years ago. Heisei means Achieving Peace. Gengo years run from January 1 to Decembe 31 just as ours do. That means that the year an emperor dies has two gengo numbers, one from the era prior to his death and one from the era beginning with his death. So 1989 was both Showa 64 and Heisei 1. After death the Japanese emperor is known by his gengo era name, so after Hirohito died he became the “Showa emperor.”

genuine-- genu, knee. In ancient Rome, a father legally claimed his newborn child by sitting in front of his family and placing his child on his knee. (Curious Word Origins)

gibbous— convex at both edges, as the moon when more than half full, from Latin gibbus, meaning hump. It subsequently found its way into Middle French as "gibbeux," before being adapted into Middle English in the 14th century as "gibbous." In the field of botany, "gibbous" is sometimes used to describe the shape of certain flowers (such as snapdragons). The term is most often identified, however, with the study of astronomy. In fact, if you run across the word "gibbous," chances are you'll find the word "moon"

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somewhere nearby. A gibbous moon is one that is more than a half-moon but less than full.

Ginza—a fashionable shopping area in Tokyo. The area was named after a nearby mint or ginza銀座 from gin, silver 銀, and za, place where people gather 座.

gist—the essence or central truth of something. Its origin is in 17th century Anglo-French legal jargon as "cest action gist," which meant "this action lies" (the Old French "gist" being a form of the verb "gesir," to rest or lie). There was a bit of a misunderstanding of French going on, and "gist," which literally meant "lies or rests," was imported as if it were a noun meaning "the central point," and by 1711 English lawyers were speaking of "the very gist of the action." By 1823 "gist" had percolated out into non-legal usage in its current meaning. Word Detective

give the cold shoulder—The erroneous explanation of this expression is that if you were served 'cold shoulder' meat in a medieval castle, it was a sign that you were not welcome there. The first recorded use of the phrase is in a novel by Sir Walter Scott, _The Antiquary_, in 1816: "The Countess's dislike didna gang farther at first than just showing o' the cauld shouther". (If you find the Scots dialect to be hard going, you may prefer this, from another of his works, _St Ronan's Well_ of 1824: "I must tip him the cold shoulder, or he will be pestering me eternally".) Within a decade or two of that date it was being seen all over the place in Britain - it appears in works by Charlotte and Emily Brontë, Charles Dickens, Anthony Trollope and John Galsworthy, among other authors. The first reference I can find in American works is in a book of 1844; later it became at least as common as in Britain and can be found, for example, in works by Louisa May Alcott and Mark Twain. The sudden popularity of the phrase from the 1820s on, and the total absence of it in literature before Sir Walter Scott used it, suggests strongly that he either invented it or he popularised a saying that beforehand had been uncommon. As he takes the trouble to define it in the glossary to The Antiquary, it is very likely that it was an existing Scots expression that he happened to find useful (though it isn't in the _Concise Scots Dictionary_). It's difficult nowadays, when Scott's novels are by no means commonly read, to remember how popular and successful he was and the influence his writing had. It is entirely possible that those two uses I've quoted were enough to establish 'cold shoulder' in the public mind. The phrase never referred to meat. It is much more probable that the cold shoulder was always a direct reference to that dismissive jerk of one side of the upper body to indicate a studied rejection or indifference. Scott's use of "tip the cold shoulder" and "show the cold shoulder" suggest this is so. The Oxford English Dictionary points out that there were many puns created around the phrase in the nineteenth century. One of these was 'cold shoulder of mutton', but the move is undoubtedly from the shorter phrase to the longer, not the other way about. But the existence of that version gave unwarranted support to people thinking it had something to do with offhand and perfunctory hospitality. Quinion

gizzard--thick-walled muscular pouch in many birds and reptiles for grinding food. Birds require grit of some kind in their gizzards to grind hard food. Chicken farmers supply it to their birds in the form of ground oyster shells or some such product. Grit, when added to the diet of a chicken, can increase the digestion of seeds and grains by ten percent. The gizzard contracts two or three times a minute with a grinding action, which can be

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heard with a stethoscope when coarse seed and grit are present. Some tropical fruit eating birds lack a noticeable gizzard. The contracting power of the gizzard is remarkable. Glass objects can be pulverized and even lead items flattened by a force equal to a vice exerting 437 pounds of pressure per square inch. Birds can eat whole acorns crushing them in the gizzard. Turkey gizzards can crush a pecan within an hour, and the stone-like hickory nuts are shattered in 30 hours. A turkey was found to grind 12 steel needles to mush in the gizzard within 36 hours.

glaucoma—an eye condition caused by increased intra-ocular pressure. The word comes from a color that is hard to describe--glaucous. Glaucous is variously described as pale yellow-green, silvery green, blue, bluish white, light bluish-gray and gray. In untreated, advanced cases of glaucoma the eye is said to turn to the color, glaucous. In Greek glaukous meant gleaming and gray. Another interpretation of the color glaucous is that it refers to things that have a powdery or waxy or frosted appearance, but that seems unlikely for a degenerate eye.

glitch—malfunction, mistake; from the German glitschen meaning to slip. DBG

gnomon—The gnomon of a sundial is the part that sticks up and casts a shadow, showing what time it is. More generally, a gnomon is any kind of pointer that indicates a value by casting a shadow. Another kind of gnomon is the shape left behind by removing a parallelogram (diamond) from a larger parallelogram with which it shares a corner. The two meanings are related because the shape of a sundial gnomon is often like a diamond with a smaller diamond taken out. The word comes through Latin, from the Greek gignoskein (to know). That root gave us many "knowing" words, including these: gnosis: intuitive knowing of esoteric truths agnostic: one who claims not to know agnosia: inability to interpret sensory inputs (inability to know) diagnosis: identification, interpretation, or description

goetta—a breakfast food made of sausage and pin head or steel cut oats. The word comes from the German word götte, groat. First made as a winter breakfast food around Hamburg, Germany, in the 1800s. As Germans immigrated to the greater Cincinnati, Ohio area, goetta became popular there. The word grits has the same Germanic origin.

goetta—a kind of sausage patty made from ground pork cooked with oatmeal served in the Cincinnati area. Goetta is known in Germany as Grützewurst. Grütze are groats, hulled kernels of grain. The type of oatmeal recommended for goetta is called steel-cut or pinhead oatmeal, as opposed to the rolled oatmeal with which most of us are more familiar. Whole groats can be cooked, but it takes a long time, so oat groats are usually made into meal either by grinding them into smaller pieces (steel-cut or pinhead) or rolled out flat.

goffer—to crimp or pleat

gonfalon—flag, but only if it is suspended from a horizontal bar rather than a vertical mast. Most gonfalons are seen at the heads of religious or military processions. Sometimes a gonfalon's cross-shaped support is held by a person called a gonfalonier. The first gonfalons were displayed in medieval Italy as part of religious observances. The Italian word was gonfalone, from the Germanic compound gund-fanon (battle flag). The first part of that came from gundjo (war, battle), which also was the source of English gun by way of Old Norse gunnr (war). Behind all of these words was the ancient

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root gwhen (to kill; strike). The same root also led to other words related to war, destruction, or threat. These include bane, German Bahn (road; originally, a road forcefully hacked through the woods), defend, fence, and offend.

Goody Two Shoes—someone who is scrupulously moral and well behaved and makes no bones about it. The phrase did not acquire its pejorative sense until the 1930's when it was misconstrued to suggest that she was proud of her morality, her goodness. The phrase comes from a children's story by Oliver Goldsmith published in 1765 "The History of Little Goody Two Shoes," Goody was a poor girl who only owned one shoe. Finally she got a second shoe and ran around pointing it out to everyone shouting, "Two shoes, two shoes!" Goody was a term of address for a married woman, not the head of a household, so not entitled to be called "Mistress." DBG

gossamer—Anything that is light, delicate, and flimsy can be described as gossamer, and gossamer is also any fabric or material that has those properties. The oldest sense of the word describes thin, filmy spiderwebs drifting in the air. The most common theory relates to the time of year when delicate spiderwebs are most likely to be seen: the warm, dry spells of mid-autumn, in Europe. That time of year is also when goose is most likely to be cooked. For that reason, it was known in Middle English as gosesomer (goose summer), and in German as Gaensemonat (goose month). It's not difficult to imagine that someone might have described the filmy spiderwebs of autumn as "gosesomer webs."

gossip—rumor of an intimate nature. In Old English sibb occurs as a noun meaning 'kinship' and as an adjective meaning 'related by blood or kinship'. A modern descendant of sibb is sibling, 'one of two or more persons who have the same parents'. By the eleventh century a compound had been formed from the noun sibb prefixed by god, the ancestor of Modern English god. A godsibb, therefore, was a person spiritually related to another, specifically by being a sponsor at baptism. Today we would call such a person a godmother or godfather, using god in the same way. By the fourteenth century the d had begun to disappear in both pronunciation and spelling, and godsibb developed into gossib and then gossip, the form which is used today. The meaning, too, had begun to change, and the sense of gossip as a close friend or comrade developed alongside the sense of a godparent. Chaucer's Wife of Bath tells her fellow-pilgrims on the road to Canterbury of having once gone walking with a lover and "my gossib dame Alys." From there it was only a short step to the gossip of today, a person no longer necessarily friend, relative, or sponsor, but someone filled with irresistible tidbits of rumor. WW

Gotterdammerung—a collapse (as of a society or regime) marked by catastrophic violence and disorder. Norse mythology specified that the destruction of the world would be preceded by a cataclysmic final battle between the good and evil gods, resulting in the heroic deaths of all the "good guys." The German word for this earth-shattering last battle was "Gotterdammerung." Literally, "gotterdammerung" means "twilight of the gods" ("Gotter" is the plural of "Gott," "god," and "Dammerung" means "twilight"). Figuratively, the term is extended to situations of world-altering destruction marked by extreme chaos and violence. In the 19th century, the German composer Richard Wagner brought attention to the word "Gotterdammerung" when he chose it as the title of the last opera of his cycle _Der Ring des Nibelungen_, and by the early 20th century, the word had entered English.

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Grand Guignol (grahn-gheen-YAWL)—dramatic entertainment featuring the gruesome or horrible. In the 19th century, gory plays dealing with murder and mayhem were popular in Paris. These plays were performed mainly at the Theatre du Grand http://travel.roughguides.com/content/1937. The name "Grand Guignol" apparently springs from an 18th-century puppet theater in France that was frequently violent and featured a main character a hand puppet named Guignol. http://www.clic.net/~marionet/documentation/histoire/guignol.htmlf. Polichinelle as both string-puppet and glove-puppet flourished in France despite the jealous opposition of the live theatre and, as in England, played not only to the ordinary citizens but to the aristocracy as well. He lampooned everything and everybody with impunity, assuming the licence of a court jester, and his insolence and wit, to say nothing of his amorous proclivities, endeared him to the French people. The eighteenth century was the golden age of puppets but as the nineteenth century approached the great popularity of Polichinelle began to decline and a usurper arrived on the scene in the character of Guignol, a character, who today has virtually replaced Polichinelle as the hero of the French puppet theatre, though the two of them do still appear together. One Laurent Mourguet, a puppeteer of Lyon using Polichinelle as the star of his show, used to try out his new attractions on his neighbour, an old silk-weaver, before putting them before the public. One of the weavers expressions , "C'est guignolant" which he used when the puppet's antics took his fancy, Mourguet gave to one of his characters, a puppet modelled on the silk-weaver himself, though with a young almost boyish face, and in the inexplicable way in which certain phrases or expressions become catch-phrases of the general public "C'est guignolant" established the character who became known as Guignol as a result and who quickly became the principal character in a new series of puppet plays. This puppet, jolly and happy, freed from the limitations of speech imposed upon Polichinelle through the traditional use of the sifflet pratique, gathered around himself a set of characters just as Punch did, although they were conceived by Mourguet and did not evolve in the same way as the Punch play characters. Guignol has a wife, Madelon and a drunken friend Grafron who replaced Polichinelle as his partner and who contrives always to lead him astray, and a variety of other well-defined types as friends and enemies. There is none of the fire and swashbuckling pride of Polichinelle in Guignol yet he conquered France and his name has become synonymous with glove-puppet shows generally. guigne [gi] (nf)(fam): avoir la ~ to be jinxed.

grange—A Middle English term from Latin granum, grain. At first it meant a granary, later came to be used for a group of farm buildings. In the U.S. it was (and is) used individually and collectively to describe the local lodges of the Order of Patron’s of Husbandry. The Grange was founded in 1867 and modeled after the Masonic order. It was established as a means of helping southern farmers cope with the hardships left by the civil war and to assist new farmers who were flocking to the West (now our midwest). In the 1870’s its membership briefly blossomed as the Grange helped local farmers organize to prevent exploitation by railroads and middlemen. The grange led efforts to establish rural free delivery of mail (1896), parcel post (1912) and a progressive federal income tax (1913). DBG

gravity—the attractive force that exists between any two particles of matter. It holds the planet Earth together, and keeps us from flying off into space. Our English word originated in the French gravite (heavy), which came from the Latin gravitas, from gravis

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(heavy). Gravity is one of a large family of words that originated from the idea of heaviness. The oldest root is the prehistoric Indo-European gru-, which branched into many languages and forms. One lineage produced the Greek barus (heavy) which is the root of baritone (a deep, heavy voice) and barium (a heavy element). Another led to the Sanskrit gurus (heavy, dignified), which was the root of guru (spiritual teacher). Still another path led to the Latin brutus (heavy, cumbersome, stupid) which evolved into the English brute (insensitive, savage, or cruel beast). One more lineage led to the English gravid (pregnant, as in "heavy with child").

Gresham's law--bad money drives good money out of circulation. The law was coined by economist Henry Dunning Macleod in 1858 and named after Sir Thomas Gresham (1519-1579), financier and founder of the Royal Exchange in London. Gresham, a financial adviser to Queen Elizabeth I, wrote to her "good and bad coin cannot circulate together." Gresham's law says that when both are required to be accepted as legal tender, inferior money remains in circulation while the good money tends to be hoarded or exported. Examples of bad money are counterfeit notes, coins that have their edges scraped off to siphon precious metal, or two legal tenders where one is intrinsically superior (e.g. a gold coin vs. a paper note of the same face value). In general, the law applies to situations outside the financial world as well: for example, bad politicians drive out good ones. Gresham was not the first to formulate the law. It is also sometimes called the Copernicus-Gresham's Law, after Nicolaus Copernicus, the Polish astronomer, who wrote 'Monetae cudendae ratio' in 1526. The relation between the good and the bad money was also described by Nicolas Oresmes (14th cent.) and even Aristophanes. We've seen Gresham's law at work in the US in the last 40 years when the US Mint switched from silver-based coins to laminated copper and copper-nickel coins. I was in the Coin Telephone development group at AT&T Bell Laboratories when this change was made and saw first hand the close cooperation between the coin vending machine industry and the Mint to be sure that the change in material would not let coins be confused as slugs when used in machines. It didn't take many years before almost all the silver-based coins were removed from circulation. Some are probably in your bottom drawer right now. A derivative law is Gresham's law of television which states that "Pure drivel drives ordinary drivel off the screen." One theory is that standardized testing acts in the same way as counterfeit money in that it displaces so-called authentic learning like writing or analytical thinking. When diplomas based on a minimum-proficiency standards become the currency of employment or college-entry it displaces the value of the other indices of education. Since encountering the principle, I have noticed it has corollaries, such as Gresham's law of buffets and potlucks. When someone (okay, me) who would normally content himself with a salad finds himself in front of a buffet filled with rich meats and casseroles, the bad food displaces the healthful on my plate. I think the same law operates in consumption of entertainment, where the salacious crowds out the uplifting. Word of the Day

gringo—usually disparagingly, to refer to a (usually English-speaking) foreigner in Latin America or Spain. More broadly it refers, again usually disparagingly, to any non-Hispanic person. The word comes from Mexican Spanish, where it refers to a foreign language or a foreigner. It is an alteration of Spanish Griego 'a Greek; a stranger'. This is paralleled semantically by other uses of Greek referring to foreignness or strangeness, as in Shakespeare's "It's Greek to me." The Spanish word ultimately derives from Latin

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Graecus 'Greek'. Gringo does not come from a popular song. A persistent legend has it that gringo comes from the chorus of Green grow the lilacs, a popular song from 1846. Supposedly, so many Americans would sing this song that Mexican soldiers, encountering them in the wars of that time, referred to the Americans as "Green grows," which became "gringos." As with most legends of this sort, there is no basis for this one. Gringo is first recorded in the late 1840s, at a time when there really was increased contact between Mexicans and Americans. The female form, gringa, is occasionally heard.

grotesque—fanciful, bizarre. During the Italian Renaissance, Romans of culture took a great interest in their country's past and began excavating ancient buildings. During their excavations, they uncovered chambers (known in Italian as "grotte," in reference to their cavelike appearance) decorated with artwork depicting fantastic combinations of human and animal forms interwoven with strange fruits and flowers. The Italian word "grottesca" became the name for this unique art style, and by 1561 it had mutated into the English noun "grotesque." The adjective form of "grotesque" was first used in the early 17th century to describe the decorative art but is now used to describe anything fanciful or bizarre. MW

grundyism--excessive or affected modesty, from Mrs. Grundy, prudish character in Thomas Morton's 1798 play "Speed the Plow," play and playwright otherwise now forgotten, but the line "What would Mrs. Grundy say?" became proverbial. The earliest surviving written record of the word is from 1836. I first ran across a reference to Mrs. Grundy in Ruby M. Ayres’ 1928 novel Broken, but since then have seen it several times in novels from the early 1900’s. The definition is from the Online Etymological Dictionary.

guinea pig—a rodent (Cavia porcellus) in the genus Cavia hence also a cavy. Originally called Guiana pigs by sailors who purchased them on the island of Dutch Guiana (now called Surinam), off the coast of South America. First domesticated 9000-6000 years ago by the ancient Incas of Peru, who used them for food, as personal pets, and for religious sacrifices. Their natural range originally extended up and down the Andes mountain chain, along South America's west coast. Guinea pigs are social herbivores (plant eaters), adapted to roughly the same ecological niche as rabbits. Their gnawing front teeth (incisors) are self-sharpening and continue to grow throughout the animal's life.

gulosity--gluttony; greediness from Late Latin gulositas, from Latin gulosus (gluttonous), from gula (gullet, gluttony).

ha-ha (both syllables accented)—Derived from an exclamation of surprise, a ha-ha is a low feature of the landscape, such as a ditch or an old sunken fence or wall, that is not visible until one is close upon it: "Just as we were about to turn back, we came upon the ewe mired in a deep ha-ha." I think I encountered the word most recently in one of P. G. Woodhouse's "Jeeves" books. Ha-has seem to be primarily phenomena of the British Isles; their existence assumes land inhabited for centuries, especially sodden land that is likely to sink. A country walk in America, even on a long-abandonned farm, is unlikely to present a ha-ha experience because the fields were once willfully flattened into uniformity.

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haiku—a three line verse of seventeen syllables - five in the first line, seven in the second and five in the last - is called a haiku. Now considered high art, haiku were originally light and comical and were written as verses of longer poems. The name is a contraction of haikai no renga "jesting linked-verse".

halcyon—Alkyone, the daughter of the god of the winds, became so distraught when she learned that her husband had been killed in a shipwreck that she threw herself into the sea and was changed into a kingfisher. As a result, ancient Greeks called such birds "alkyon" or "halkyon." The legend also says that such birds built floating nests on the sea, where they so charmed the wind god that he created a period of unusual calm that lasted until the birds' eggs hatched. This legend prompted people to use "halcyon" to describe both a species of kingfisher and a period of peace.

haliography—a description of the sea from the Greek graphein (to write). The prefix halio- is a modification of halo-, a prefix from the Greek hals (salt, sea).

hallmark—mark placed on silver and gold products to assure the purity of the metal composition. Precious metals are mixed (alloyed) with other metals to harden them. Copper added to silver hardens it, but does not change the color, so it is hard to tell if such a base metal has been added. In 1327, Edward III gave a charter to the Worshipful Company of Goldsmiths authorizing them to assay the silver content of goods. If the piece contained at least 92.5% silver a mark was stamped indicating it had "passed at assay.” At first this testing was done at Goldsmiths Hall, hence the work “hallmark.”

hallow--derived from "halig," the Old English word for "holy" (which became, in fact, our modern word "holy" Word detective

handsel—a small gift or token. According to an old custom in the British Isles, the first Monday of the new year is Handsel Monday, a day to give a small gift or good luck charm to children or to those who have served you well. As long ago as the year 1200, English speakers were using the ancestor of "handsel" for any good luck charm, especially one given at the start of some new situation or condition. By the 1500s, traders were using "handsel" for the first cash they took in in the morning — to them, an omen of good things to follow. Nowadays, it's likely to be used for the first use or experience of something, especially when such a use gives a taste of things to come.

haversack--bag similar to a knapsack but worn over one shoulder. From the German, Hafer, oats. Literally an "oat sack" because it was first used by field workers in broadcasting small seed such as oats. M-W and Wonks

hebdomadal (accent on second syllable)—From the noun "hebdomad" (origin, Greek "hebdomas," seven) a collection of seven things; in Gnosticism, the seven half-hostile eternal beings (associated with the seven planetary deities — the sun, moon, and five known planets) who created the world and who mediate between the world and the supreme being which together they form. "Hebdomadal" thus refers to an event that either lasts for seven days or occurs at seven-day intervals. (Laureen Martin)

heckle—to taunt. As a verb it comes from the Scottish word hekelen meaning to comb flax fibers. As a noun, a heckle is a flax comb.

heebie-jeebies—condition of extreme nervousness or restlessness. The word was coined by Billy De Beck (1890-1942) who wrote the comic strips Barney Google and Snuffy

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Smith. De Beck was assisted by cartoonist Fred Lasswell who took over the strip after De Beck’s death in 1942. Heebie-jeebie first appeared in Barney Google on 26 October 1923 spelled “heeby-jeeby.” De Beck also introduced other words and phrases such as hotsy-totsy, horsefeathers, bodacious, time's a-wastin and sweet mama. Barney Google was created in 1919 and wandered the country with his racehorse, Spark Plug, raising cane and creating havoc during the 1920’s. In 1934, Barney inherited a relative's estate in Hootin' Holler, North Carolina where he met his cousin, Snuffy Smith, and Snuffy's wife, Loweezy.

helicopter—A helicopter is a flying machine with a propeller that spins in a horizontal plane, lifting the aircraft vertically. A second rotor usually spins vertically to stabilize the machine, keeping it from spinning around. Popular usage tends to split the word into heli-and -copter, so that we shorten it as copter (or even chopper, a probable reference to the sound of the machine in flight). In fact, the word arose from helico-and -pter. Helico-comes from the Greek helix, which is sometimes translated as spiral, but more correctly is a curve traced around a cylinder in three-dimensional space. This is the curve traced by the tips of the main rotor blades. The second part, -pter, is from Greek pteron (wing), which also gives us ornithopter (bird-winged aircraft) which is an aircraft with wings that flap like a bird's wings.

hello became common usage as a greeting only with the invention of the telephone. The original word was "halloa" or "hey" and was used as a call for help or to get attention or as an expression of surprise as, for example, when meeting someone unexpectedly. Then the telephone was invented in the late 1800s and people were faced with the problem of greeting others whom they could not categorize socially because they couldn't see them. So the PTB (powers that be) came up with "hello" as a socially neutral greeting. It even became part of some mildly risque social ridicule. When telephones were becoming common among the wealthy, some of the businessmen began to call the local "Central" for wake up calls. Thus, the young ladies who manned the switchboards became known as "Hello Girls" and of course, from time to time, it went beyond "hello". It seemed the gentlemen were sometimes intrigued by the seductive anonymous voices who awakened them each morning and wanted to see if the girls matched the voices. So our common and useful greeting of HELLO has not always been so prosaic.

helpmate—one who is a companion and helper; especially : wife "Helpmate" entered English around 1715 as a variant of "helpmeet," which itself resulted from a misunderstanding of a verse in the King James Bible. Genesis 2:18 reads "And the Lord God said, It is not good that man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him." In this verse, "meet" means "fit" or "suitable," and "help meet" simply means "a help who is well-suited to him." But because "help meet" was a rather archaic phrasing, and the passage refers to the creation of Eve, the two words were eventually combined into a single word usually meaning "wife." The additional shift from "helpmeet" to "helpmate" was accomplished by folk etymology, a process in which unusual words are transformed to look or sound like other more familiar words.

henotheism—the worship of one god without denying the existence of other gods, comes to us from the German word Henotheismus, which in turn is derived from the Greek hen- (one) plus theos (god). Someone who engages in henotheism worships one god as supreme over all others. Max Müller, a respected 19th-century scholar, is credited with

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promoting the word henotheism as a counterpart to polytheism (belief in or worship of more than one god) and monotheism (the doctrine or belief that there is but one God). Müller also offered the related word kathenotheism for the worship of several gods successively.