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on shakespeare, surfers, & slang
“Gnar-gnar.” Forget you, grammar scolds. It’s an utterance like “gnar-gnar”–which I heard my fiancée’s sister pull out of her ever playful idiolect for gnarly (that’s a compliment, Britt)–that makes me love language. Because, in all its clipped and reduplicative glory, “gnar-gnar” spans an invisible bridge between Shakespeare and surfers. And because it also gives me occasion Read more.
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hostage
Fast Mash Hostage comes into English from the French in the 13th century, when it meant handing over a person to another party as a pledge to fulfill an undertaking It might come from Latin’s obses (hostage, pledge, security, guarantee), literally someone “sitting before” an enemy Or it might be from Latin’s hospes, a word Read more.
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breakfast, lunch, & dinner
Fast Mash Appearing in the 15th-century, beakfast joins break and fast, with the latter indeed related to its adjective form Lunch is less clear; lunch is shortened from luncheon, which may be an extension of lunch, possibly from lump (compare bump and bunch); luncheon may have been formed on analogy to words like truncheon In the Read more.
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plumb
Fast Mash Plumb derives from Latin, plumbum, which meant “lead,” possibly from an ancient Iberian language, reflecting the source of lead for Romans and Greeks In construction, a plumb is a string fixed with a weight, often made out of lead, and was used as a reference for vertical lines; thus, out of plumb, among other expressions Nautically, Read more.
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knot & league
Fast Mash Attested in 1633, a knot measures the speed of ships at one nautical mile per hour, based on the number of knots on the log-line running out of the back of a ship, usually in a time period of half a minute Knot comes from Old English cnotta, itself originating in the Proto-Germanic *knutt-; knit is related Read more.
Mashed Radish 