Tag: Ireland
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A blizzard of wintry word origins
English’s core vocabulary for winter weather has largely been frozen—or as we used to say, “froren”—in place.
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10 words with surprising Irish roots
From bother and trousers to slogan and slew, the English language has Irish etymology galore. We’re all Irish on St. Patrick’s Day, as we like to say, but so too are many of our words – and not just the more obvious ones like leprechaun or shamrock. There are many other everyday words whose Irish origins…
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Behind the etymological mask of “clown”
The creepy crown craze – involving people dressed up as evil clowns frightening, threatening, and sometimes even attacking others – has spread from South Carolina all across the globe. But what about this word clown: Where did it spread from? Clown The word clown hasn’t been terrorizing the English language for as long as we…
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Potato, batata
You say potato, etymologists say batata. It’s National Potato Day in Ireland, so let’s dig up the roots of the beloved spud. Potato English cultivates its potato from the Spanish patata, a variant form of batata. But the batata is actually the sweet potato (Ipomoea batatas), completely unrelated to what we commonly refer to as…
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“Tory”: How the conquest of Ireland named the UK Conservative Party
With Michael Gove throwing in his hat and Boris Johnson throwing in his towel, the post-Brexit scramble for Tory – or Conservative – leadership was thrown into confusion this week in the UK. This chaos is fitting, if we look to history of Tory, a word embroiled in many conflicts of its own. A Tory story …
Mashed Radish 