Tag: Greek

• Trimming back the etymological “mustache”

  All eyes on John Bolton…’s mustache. The former US ambassador to the UN is now Donald Trump’s third National Security Advisor. Political observers are quick to comment on Bolton’s hawkish foreign policy—and quip on his bristly whiskers.

  John Kelly

  March 23, 2018

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• Etymology, with an “eagle” eye

  Maybe in some parallel universe it wasn’t the Philadelphia Eagles who won Super Bowl LII. No, not the New England Patriots but the Philadelphia Ernes. For erne was the usual word for “eagle” in Old English, and in my hypothetical Twilight Zone, French and Latin didn’t sack Anglo-Saxon like so many blitzing linebackers.

  John Kelly

  February 6, 2018

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• An etymological stroke of “genius”

  Over the weekend, President Trump took to Twitter to defend his sanity and intelligence: Now that Russian collusion, after one year of intense study, has proven to be a total hoax on the American public, the Democrats and their lapdogs, the Fake News Mainstream Media, are taking out the old Ronald Reagan playbook and screaming…

  John Kelly

  January 9, 2018

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• An etymological “epiphany”

  You know those 12 Days of Christmas we’re always partridge-in-a-pear-treeing about? They end on January 5th, or Twelfth Night, when many celebrants end their yuletide festivities by taking down the decorations. As its name suggests, Twelfth Night is the 12th night after Christmas and the eve of the Feast of the Epiphany, which many Christians…

  John Kelly

  January 5, 2018

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• From wedges to windfalls: the origin of “coin”

  In one of my recent Weekly Word Watches for the Oxford Dictionaries blog, I highlighted bitcoin, the cryptocurrency whose valuation continues to skyrocket. As I explain in the article, the bit in bitcoin – a coinage attributed to its mysterious creator(s) Satoshi Nakamoto in 2008 – was shortened from binary digit in 1948. Binary digits…

  John Kelly

  December 8, 2017

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