Tag: French
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How the “sausage” is made
Last post, I took the word bacon, well, “back” to its roots. As long as we’re on the subject of processed meats, just how is the sausage made? Sausage, of course, is seasoned meat stuffed into animal intestines. Delicious, no? The secret ingredient is salt, at least etymologically speaking. Sausage According to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), English…
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Bringing home the “bacon”
Last week, the World Health Organization (WHO) caused many to flinch about flitch when it declared bacon and other processed meats carcinogenic. The actual report, of course, is more complicated than just that – unlike the etymology of bacon, which is fairly straightforward, even if a bit backwards, shall we say. Bacon English has been enjoying bacon since the early 1300s,…
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Home is where the haunt is
For word nerds, the real candy of Halloween is all the great words it gives out: werewolf, jack-o’-lantern, samhainophobia. But, as we so often see on this blog, sometimes it is the less unusual and more everyday word that can be the sweetest treat. Let’s have a look at just such a seasonal one: haunt. Its etymology really hits “home,” we might say. Haunt The word haunt has…
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The secret of *nem-
Last post, we saw that the math in aftermath has nothing to do with numbers. But two other words I’ve recently covered, numb and nimble, may indeed be all about them, if we do some etymological accounting of the Proto-Indo-European (PIE) root, *nem-. *Nem- To review, both numb and nimble derive from an Old English verb, nim, functioning much like today’s take, which supplanted…
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On popes, baseball, & engines
First, my last on pontiff was recently Freshly Pressed by WordPress. Be sure to check it out if you missed it. Now, speaking of the Pope, if you’re in D.C., New York, or Philadelphia this week, you may want to snag some papal swag. Perhaps an “I (mitre) the pope” t-shirt? Seeking a humbler pontificate,…
Mashed Radish 