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corned
While you might not find many Irish people eating it, many Americans will be plating up corned beef and cabbage to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day today. The particular reasons for this are complicated and fascinating, as Shaylyn Esposito explained in 2013 on Smithsonian.com. Traditions vary with time, space, and circumstance, of course–and so do words, as is… Read more.
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mushing
March is well underway, and for many folks across the United States, the snow is finally melting, though turning into a dirty, sloppy mush as it goes. Up in Alaska, the Iditarod is also underway, but with its own kind of mush–and march, as we’ll see in the origin of this term for traveling through the… Read more.
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Background checks: everyday words with legal origins
I have a new post up on the OxfordWords blog, “Background checks: everyday words with legal origins.” From nude to innuendo, a great number of common words have a surprisingly legal record. Here’s my bit on mayhem: Dating back to the 15th century, mayhem historically denoted a criminal offense. As the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) defines it, mayhem was ‘the infliction of physical injury on a person, so… Read more.
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jumbo
Last week, the Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus announced that it is finally retiring its elephant act. Perhaps the circus’s most famous elephant was Jumbo, whom Barnum bought from the London Zoo in 1882 with much hullabaloo. Jumbo’s legendary size lives on in the legacy of his name. Jumbo cigars fill our mouths and… Read more.
Mashed Radish 