fiscal / procurator-fiscal One of my favorite TV shows is Shetland, a police procedural set, obviously, on the Shetland Islands. One of the words that keeps popping up is fiscal. The detectives talk of referring matters to the “fiscal” or someone has to fly to Aberdeen to meet with the "fiscal office.
star-spangled We all know that Francis Scott Key wrote the Star-Spangled Banner in 1814 after watching the British bombardment of Fort McHenry in Baltimore harbor: O say does that star-spangled banner yet wave O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave? But most of us don’
don't look a gift horse in the mouth The proverb don't look a gift horse in the mouth dates back to antiquity. The phrase’s underlying metaphor is that a horse’s age can be judged by examining its teeth, and it is rude to question something that is freely given. There are calques of the
loo Loo, the British word for a lavatory or toilet is one of those words that has generated endless speculation and myth about its origin. It is almost certainly from the French lieu, meaning place, a euphemism if there ever was one. The English loo doesn’t make an unambiguous appearance
baseball When examining the origins of a word one must be careful to distinguish between the word and the thing itself. The origin of the word is often quite different from the origin of the thing that it represents. Such is the case with baseball. In this case the word is
I asked ChatGPT… TL;DR: ChatGPT’s Research AI is fundamentally flawed. It misleads and hallucinates, only scratches the surface of what information is available, and ends up creating more work for the researcher than if they had just started from scratch on their own. I set out to test ChatGPT’s Research
firework We all know fireworks as a pyrotechnic display, shown as part of a celebration or special event. But the term has its origin in military use of combustibles and explosives during the Tudor period. The earliest use of the term that I’m aware of is from a 1528 document,
waive / waif / wave / waver Waive, waif, wave, and waver all appear to be related, and while they may share a common Proto-Germanic root in *webna- / *wepna-, their etymological histories are quite different. The verb to waive, comes from the Anglo-Norman legal verb weyver, meaning to dismiss a legal obligation. English use dates to the
patient zero The term patient zero is an epidemiological term for the person who transmits an infection into a population that had been free of it. The term arose during the initial stages of the AIDS pandemic as a misinterpretation of the label Patient O—a capital letter O, not a zero—
cavalier A cavalier is literally a mounted soldier, especially a gentleman. When the word is capitalized, it can refer to a supporter of King Charles I in the English Civil War. And it is an adjective meaning carefree, disdainful, or dismissive, presumably because that is an attitude evinced by such genteel
Juneteenth (An entry from the archives at Wordorigins.org, dated 30 June 2022) Juneteenth is celebrated on 19 June and is, obviously, a blend or portmanteau of June + nineteen. It commemorates the date in 1865 when Major General Gordon Granger of the Union army freed the slaves in Galveston, Texas. Lincoln’
by hook or by crook The phrase by hook or by crook means by any means, fair or foul. Its origin, however, is not known. Over the years it has accumulated a number of alleged etymologies, most of which can be readily dismissed as implausible, if not downright impossible. There is one, however, that seems
curmudgeon A curmudgeon is an ill-tempered person, usually used in reference to an old man. The origin of curmudgeon is not known for certain, although etymologist Anatoly Liberman provides a reasonable explanation. What we do know for certain is that the earliest known use of the word can be found in
