Category: Feature

• A country, a hat, a palindrome – “Panama”!

  What do rum and capybaras have in common? Why, the origin of “Panama.”

  John Kelly

  March 8, 2017

  Feature

• From telegraphs to Twitter: a short history of “wiretapping”

  One of the earliest recorded instances of wiretapping involves an anecdote about how Confederate general John Hunt Morgan bet a Union soldier two cigars if he could spell the word Lebanon. In a series of shocking tweets this weekend, President Trump, providing absolutely zero evidence, said President Obama wiretapped his phones during the 2016 campaign.…

  John Kelly

  March 7, 2017

  Feature

• From infantrymen to innovators: the etymology of “pioneer”

  The original pioneers were “foot soldiers” who cleared the way for the rest of the army. This past Monday, US Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos described historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs) as “real pioneers when it comes to school choice.” Her statement came under immediate fire, though, as HBCUs were formed due to a  profound…

  John Kelly

  March 3, 2017

  Feature

• Pens, penance, and pancakes: the origin of shrove

  Shrove, as in Shrove Tuesday, and the related word shrift, as in short shrift, ultimately derive from the Latin scrībere, “to write.” For Francophones and many speakers of American English, today is Mardi Gras, “Fat Tuesday,” a day of gorging and gamboling before the solemn and abstemious Christian season of Lent. But a lot of other Anglophones will…

  John Kelly

  February 28, 2017

  Feature

• If you’re a language lover, you should be obsessed with “Pokémon”

  Days after its release, Nintendo’s Pokémon Go, a free mobile augmented reality app, has become nothing short of a worldwide phenomenon. The game maps its cute, battling Pokémon characters onto the real world, which is already causing a host of real-world disruptions. But gamers, technophiles, and Pokémon fanatics aren’t the only ones who should be…

  John Kelly

  July 12, 2016

  Feature