slut / slut-shaming In today’s parlance, slut is a derogatory term for a woman who freely exercises her sexual agency. The word dates to the early fifteenth century and is of unknown origin. There are similar words in other Germanic languages, but their relationship to each other is unclear. It is often
blaster Sometimes you find an antedating that is much earlier than you expected. Such is the case with blaster, the science fiction word for a ray gun. The Oxford English Dictionary dates the science fiction use of blaster to 1950, with a first citation from an Isaac Asimov story, and I
banjax A friend of mine, who wasrenovating a bathroom in her house, posted the following in a social media post: The real skylight is one floor above in the bathroom we’re renovating. A water leak during demolition banjaxed my entire kitchen ceiling. To which another friend replied: Outstanding use of
pita Pita is a type of flat, hollow, unleavened bread, often filled with meat or other ingredients, that is associated with Middle Eastern or Balkan cuisine. Its use in English was relatively uncommon before the 1980s, but examples can be found from the 1930s. It was borrowed into English from several
Luddite The word Luddite presents an interesting case. It’s a word that was used for over a century, albeit rather rarely, to refer to a specific historical series of events. Then, in the late 1940s, use of the word exploded, but with a shift in its original meaning. The word
dog The short answer is that we don’t know for sure where the word dog comes from. Canis may be familiarus, but its name is something of a mystery. The word docga does go back to Old English, but it appears only four times in the extant corpus of pre-Conquest
grotesque To present-day English speakers, grotesque is probably most familiar as an adjective meaning incongruous, absurd, or having distorted and ugly features. But it can also be a noun meaning a style of decorative art with distorted or caricatured human or animal forms and a piece of work in that style.
conclave In present-day parlance, a conclave is a gathering of a group of people, especially one held in private, and particularly that of the cardinals of the Roman Catholic Church for the purpose of selecting a new pope. The English word comes from either, or both, the French conclave and the
chauvinism Today we usually associate chauvinism with sexism, the belief that men are superior to women, but this is a relatively recent development in the word’s history. The original sense of the word was jingoism or superpatriotism, the blind, bellicose, and unswerving belief that one’s country is always in
callow Callow is a word that dates back to the beginnings of the English language, but it has shifted in meaning significantly over the past eleven-hundred years. Today it means inexperienced or naive, and it often appears in the phrase callow youth. But way back when it was associated with aging,
Great Depression I am always interested in the question of when various historical events acquire their names. For instance, when did people realize the global economic downturn that started with the Wall Street crash of October 1929 was great. And when did it become The Great Depression, an event with no peer?
awesome / awful When I typed awesome into the search box* on urbandictionary.com, the first definition that popped up, authored by someone who goes by the apt screenname of Spleenvent, is: Something Americans use to describe everything. [* = Your results may vary. This is what I got when I searched for the word
Easter / Easter bunny / pasch / paschal (This is a repost from the archives. It was originally posted on 24 March 2024.) Easter is the name for the Christian celebration of Jesus’s resurrection. The name is an old one, going back to Old English. The root is Germanic and, unsurprisingly, is related to the cardinal direction
