The Anglo-Saxons were beautiful poets, proud warriors, and incurable horn-dogs. — At some point between 1072, when the Bishop Leofric bequeathed “a large English book about a bunch of stuff, written in verse”¹ to the Exeter Cathedral Library, and the 19th century, when we all started to think that Anglo-Saxon-core was actually very retro chic, somebody decided that the single most…

Really drives home how differently people did metaphors in the Middle Ages. — Most words have a pretty interesting backstory when you look into them, but a lot of them grew up in a fairly recognizable way — going to word school, getting a word job, maybe settling down with another word and having little word children. But some words did things the…

Some perfectly normal-seeming words that are actually two other words standing on top of each other in a trench coat. — Because there is no justice in the world, “portmanteau” does not quite qualify as a portmanteau (it’s just a garden variety compound), even though it is made up of two words. Borrowed into English in the mid-1500s, it was formed from the French words porte (carry) and manteau (cloak), and…

On the marvelous achievement of 8 consecutive buffalos, and other equally wonderful stupidities. — As far as I can tell, the American bison has never bothered to majestically roam the plains of Buffalo, New York — probably because there’s not enough grass — which means that the idea of Buffalo buffalo, like “Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo,” will never be more…

When the snafu goes fubar and suddenly you have a tuifu on your hands … — A February 1944 issue of Newsweek magazine has a brief gloss on “The State of the Language” that poses more questions than it gives answers: Recent additions to the ever-changing lexicon of the armed services: Fubar: Fouled up beyond all recognition. Janfu: Joint army-navy foul-up. Jaafu: Joint Anglo-American foul-up. “Fubar”…

You’ll never look at pumpernickel the same way again. — Halloween is still more than 100 days away, so it’s troublingly early to be turning up the spookiness dial (yes, we have a spookiness dial), but there’s no law I’m aware of that says you can’t talk about goblinwords™ in the summer if you feel the urge, and so here…

A cautionary tale for prospective parents who just can’t quit the “Fly-Fornication” page in the Baby Names book — The puritans had a lot of great ideas — putting a belt on your hat, trendy bowl cuts, going to America, etc. — but they also had some pretty bad ones, like predestination and how to name children. In regards to this latter failing, the definitive text is a little…

The demon Titivillus exalts, as Clippy screams into the void. — There’s a brief passage in a 15th century treatise called “Myroure of Oure Ladye” in which an abbot is confronted by a foul, misshapen demon named Titivillus. When the abbot summons up enough courage to ask this guy what his deal is, Titivillus gamely replies: I am a poure dyuel…

Absolutely staggered to learn that the opposite of Anonymous is … Onymous. — The metaphor I want to use here is, like, when that one person at work you were certain was single shows up at the Holiday party with their wife of 15 years. Or maybe more fun is when you learn that a famous book (say, Paradise Lost, Huckleberry Finn, or…