Tag: French
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debt
English spelling can be a mess. Take the word debt, making its own mess in Greece as we’ve seen, which features a b we write but don’t say. Whence the b? Debt As it appears in the English of the late 14th century, debt is recorded as dete. No b, for the word comes to English from the Old French dette. No b, as…
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bunting
Forget fireworks: Nothing says “Fourth of July” like bunting. Gazebos and porches, ready your railings for some…cloths for sifting flour? Bunting The OED first cites bunting in 1742 in a naval context, naming the worsted cloth used to make flags. Now, bunting can name an individual flag and flags more generally. I tend to associate bunting with the semi-circular flags displayed…
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robe
Last week, the US Supreme Court issued a landmark decision, declaring a right to same-sex marriage all across the Union. Court analysts have been going beneath the robes of the justices, especially Justice Kennedy in the case of Obergefell v. Hodges, to deepen our understanding of the man and mind behind the opinion. Let’s go beneath the word robe for an etymological ruling. Robe Robes…
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In *bheidh- we trust
It’s beyond words, the massacre of nine Black church members by a white gunman in Charleston, S.C. last week. Beyond words, the forgiveness the victims’ families and community showed the shooter. Words fail to express the tragedy of their deaths, the terror of that racist violence. They fail to express, too, the unshakeable resolve of the Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church. But perhaps…
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escape
The two convicts who escaped from prison in New York almost two weeks ago still elude the grasp of authorities – quite true, too, if we look to the etymology of escape. Escape If we look to its earliest form, ascape, English captured escape from the French as early as 1250. The Old French verb eschaper comes from the late Latin…
Mashed Radish 