About

Mashed Radish is John Kelly’s effort to get to the bottom of words that are on the top of our minds.

In each post, he uncovers the etymology of a notable word in the present—whether from news, culture, work, everyday life, or sometimes just out of sheer delight or curiosity—to discover new insights or fresh perspectives from its past. With a little whimsy, and a lot of word facts, along the way.

Because every word has a prize inside. Since 2013.

Bio

John Kelly

I have always had this way I can’t help but see the world—and that’s by wondering why we call things what we do.

By wondering why words, whether fancy like pulchritudinous or functional like by, have taken the shape that they have. By marveling that we have all these words, that we have this thing called language, in the first place.

And so began a lifelong fascination with etymology.

After having lived and traveled all around, I have resettled in my hometown, Cincinnati, Ohio, with my wife Olivia, our dog Hugo, and bottomless cups of decaf.

I previously worked as Vice President at Dictionary.com, have appeared across online media, radio, and TV as an expert on words, and have regularly published in such outlets as Slate, Atlas Obscura, Mental Floss, Oxford Dictionaries, Emojipedia, and more.

Prior to my work in words, I served as an educator in various roles, focusing on underserved populations, especially students with disabilities and from low-income backgrounds. 

In 2016, I read the complete works of Shakespeare and wrote about the experience on my other site, Shakespeare Confidential.

Contact

Follow me as @mashedradish.bsky.social on Bluesky. Connect me with on LinkedIn. Email me at mashedradish@gmail.com.

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What is etymology?

Etymology is the study of where words come from and how their form and meaning change over time.

What is the etymology of the word etymology?

Recorded in English since the late 1400s, etymology ultimately derives from a Greek word whose roots are etymos, “true, real,” and logos, “word, reason.”

So, etymology is, literally, “the study of the true meanings of words.” But this is where we need to be careful of what’s called the etymological fallacy.

The etymological fallacy argues that the “true meaning”—read, “correct meaning”—of a word is its original meaning.

Language evolves. The form and meaning of words, due to a range of factors, evolve. That’s what true and real. Etymology is just where words started and where they have gone over time.

Why is it called “Mashed Radish”?

A blog about etymology deserves a good origin all of its own.

Etymology involves breaking down words into their roots. The word for “root” in Latin, to which English owes a great deal of its lexicon, is radix, source of such words as radical—and radish. And “breaking down” a word is a bit like mashing it up, no? Voilà. Mashed Radish.

What is the “m ʃ r ʃ” at the end of posts?

The “m ʃ r ʃ” you find at the end of many posts is an idiosyncratic sign-off that plays on the pronunciation of Mashed Radish.

The long s character you see is called esh, and in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) it represents the sh sound used in Mashed. Radish. In linguistics, that sh sound is officially known as a voiceless palatal fricative.

The esh symbol closely resembles the integral symbol used in calculus—and I like to think that etymologies have a way of bringing together, or integrating, a lot of different, often unrelated things.

As a garnish, when I was young, I had for a little time a speech impediment, struggling to pronounce that very sh and related sounds. Mashed Radish, in name and representation, is a lighthearted allusion to this personal past.

Where do the drawings in each post come from?

Each post, I try my own hand sketching up a quick doodle that corresponds to the etymological topics at hand. If you come across any older posts where the drawings actually look good, those are likely by my brother, Andrew Kelly.

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Selected Bibliography

My bookshelf, print and digital, is always growing. Right now, I am primarily indebted to the following sources. They are incredible go-tos, springboards, cross references, and rabbit holes:

• Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology (Ed. C.T. Onions)
• Oxford English Dictionary
• Online Etymology Dictionary (Ed. Douglas Harper)
• Walter W. Skeat’s An Etymological Dictionary of the English Language
• Ernest Weekely’s An Etymological Dictionary of Modern English
• Joseph E. Shipley’s The Origin of English Words
• Ibid., Dictionary of Word Origins
• Eric Partridge’s A Short Etymological Dictionary of Modern English
• Anatoly Liberman’s An Analytical Dictionary of English Etymology
• Ernest Klein’s A Comprehensive Dictionary of the English Language
• Emmauele Baumgartner and Philippe Menard’s Dictionnaire Étymologique
• John C. Traupman’s The New College Latin & English Dictionary
• Liddell & Scott’s An Intermediate Greek-English Lexicon

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