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Vaccines and Buckaroo
For some reason unknown to me vaccines have been much in the news of late. It's all the fault of a fellow called Edward Jenner (1749-1823) who had the eccentric idea of preventing smallpox in humans...
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Violins and Fiddlesticks
I have, in my solitude, taken up playing the violin. Fiddling while Rome does not burn. I have long suspected that the only thing I truly grasp is nonsense, now it is fiddlesticks.Violin is the...
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Omega and Big Charlie
Tall?Sometimes an etymology is so obvious that I can't believe that I've never noticed it, and I marvel at my own duncedom.The Greek letter omega, as in alpha and omega, was just the big O, the...
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The Meaning of Pasta
The Italian for a butterfly is a farfalla, and so the pasta that looks like a butterfly is called farfalle. One can think of this as beautiful, or one can think of a plate heaped high with dead...
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Apple M[a]cIntosh
The original logoThere's a website where you can buy an Apple Macintosh for 40p. Well, in fact, you can buy three for £1.20. That amounts to the same thing. Also, it's not really an Apple Macintosh,...
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Shires, Counties, Counts and Sheriffs
The nomenclature of England is a foggy thing, cunningly designed to confuse foreigners, who will wonder, in their simple foreign way, why they're consuming a Devonshire cream tea in Devon, why an...
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The Etymological Week
The week is a curious thing: the division of our lives into a revolving, unfinishing cycles of seven days. Especially as seven days bears no relation to anything at all. Some people, rather foolishly,...
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Flying Saucers, Pelicans, Prisons and Albatrosses
Today is, of course, the 74th anniversary of the Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting. The event is celebrated by lexicographers everywhere because it gave the English language two new terms: flying saucer and...
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