Tag: politics

• Keeping the US Government open, etymology edition

  After some last-minute budget negotiations on Thursday, it looks like the US Congress will avert a shutdown and fund the government—at least until they come up to the next brink. Let’s negotiate the origins of these words in a Friday etymological news roundup: 

  John Kelly

  April 28, 2017

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• The origin of “hundred” doesn’t exactly equal “100”

  Donald Trump is coming up on his first one hundred days in office, a conventional measure of the initial success of a new president going back to FDR. But with a thwarted agenda, palace intrigue, and some self-inflicted wounds, Trump is pushing back against the meaningfulness of this traditional 100-day benchmark. What’s a hundred days,…

  John Kelly

  April 25, 2017

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• The “arm” bone’s connected to the…”armada” bone?

  Remember that “armada” of warships Trump said was being sent towards the Korean peninsula as a warning to North Korea? It turns out it was actually headed in the opposite direction. Oops. Outside of history class and the rhetoric of war, we don’t hear the word armada too often, but the word is related to…

  John Kelly

  April 19, 2017

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• The root of “jungle”: It’s a desert out there?

  Today in Georgia’s 6th congressional district, a closely watched “jungle primary” is taking place to fill the seat left by Republican Tom Price, who is now the Secretary of Health and Human Services. In a jungle primary, a more colorful name for a blanket primary, all candidates seeking an office run against each other at…

  John Kelly

  April 18, 2017

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• The chaos of “gas”

  We’ve been sick with the word gas lately. First, Syrian President Bashar al-Assad horrifically attacked, not for the first time, his own people with chemical weapons, likely sarin gas. Then, he “fake-newsed” the horrific act by calling it a fabrication. Meanwhile, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer—bizarrely, perversely—told reporters Hitler never gassed his people like…

  John Kelly

  April 14, 2017

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