Category: Feature

• United Airlines might learn a thing or two from the origin of “accommodate”

  United Airlines is under fire after guards violently dragged a passenger from a flight the airline overbooked on Monday. Its CEO, Oscar Munoz, only made matters worse when he apologized for “having to re-accommodate these customers.” United is clearly making up its own, all-too-self-accommodating definition of accommodate. So, let’s help them out: The history and…

  John Kelly

  April 11, 2017

  Feature

• Pepsi, Gibraltar, and other names in the news

  From soda ads to ancient military strongholds, this week featured many newsworthy names.  Let’s have a look at a few—and, as always, their origins.

  John Kelly

  April 7, 2017

  Feature

• The many folds of “complicit”

  After Ivanka Trump told CBS that “I don’t know what it means to be complicit,” Merriam-Webster helped her out with its definition: “Helping to commit a crime or do wrong in some way.” The dictionary, whose lexicographical sick burns have been lighting up Twitter, observed that complicit also trended back in March, used by Saturday…

  John Kelly

  April 5, 2017

  Feature

• “Showdowns” and “filibusters”: on the etymological floor of the US Senate

  There is a partisan showdown in the US Senate. Democrats have the votes to filibuster the nomination of Neil Gorsuch for the Supreme Court, preventing the cloture needed to take up his vote. Will Republican Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, as he seems poised to do, use the nuclear option? Senate politics doesn’t just brim with conflict—it’s…

  John Kelly

  April 4, 2017

  Feature

• “Delirious”: literary hoax, ancient metaphor

  Around April Fool’s Day in 1708, Jonathan Swift, ever mischievous, set out to humiliate one, John Partridge, a noted English astrologer and almanac-maker. Under the pseudonym Isaac Bickerstaff, Esq., Swift published “Predictions for the Year 1708,” which foretold Partridge would die of a “raging fever” on March 29 that year. To deepen the prank, Swift…

  John Kelly

  March 31, 2017

  Feature