Tag: metathesis

• Workplace Word Origins: resilience, company, focus, thrilled, code

  

  What do professional announcements have to do with boogers?

  John Kelly

  July 11, 2025

  Workplace Word Origins

• “Drone”: where etymology meets entomology

  

  There is a lot of noise about mystery drones buzzing overhead. It turns out there is a lot of noise buzzing behind the word “drone,” too.

  John Kelly

  December 22, 2024

  Feature

• Why do we say “second” and not “twoth”?

  Thanks in large part to the impassioned activism of the #NeverAgain movement, the news hasn’t moved on from the mass shooting in Parkland, Florida, as it has too often in recent massacres in the US. The pressure is staying on gun control, keeping the Second Amendment to the US Constitution in the hot seat. The…

  John Kelly

  February 28, 2018

  Feature

• Taking “taxes” to the etymological task (repost)

  With House Republicans unveiling sweeping tax cuts in a bill this week, I figured it was a good time to repost this piece on the etymology of tax from 2014. Over three years later, I still find it incredible that tax comes from the same Latin root that gives us task, taste, and taxi.

  John Kelly

  November 3, 2017

  Feature, Repost

• Digging up “dirt”

  Donald Trump Jr. stepped in some, er, dirt this week when the New York Times revealed he knowingly met with a Russian lawyer who promised dirt on Hillary Clinton as part of the Kremlin’s effort to help Trump. Where does the word dirt come from, and when did it start referring to “compromising information”? As…

  John Kelly

  July 11, 2017

  Feature