Dave Wilton

Dave has a PhD in medieval English literature from the University of Toronto and has been publishing Wordorigins.org since 1997.

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meitnerium

Meitnerium is a synthetic chemical element with atomic number 109 and the symbol Mt. It is extremely radioactive, with a half-life measured in seconds. It was first created in 1982 at the Center for Heavy Ion Research in Darmstadt, Germany. It is named for physicist Lise Meitner, the physicist who

D-Day / H-Hour

D-Day is the name for 6 June 1944, when Allied troops landed on the coast of German-occupied France during World War II. It was the largest seaborne invasion in history, with over 150,000 American, British, and Canadian troops landing in Normandy, including 23,000 airborne paratroopers, and involving almost

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literally (paid)

separation of church and state

It is often said that the US Constitution erected a wall of separation between church and state. But these words do not appear in the text of the Constitution. Instead, the phrase comes from an 1802 letter by Thomas Jefferson to the Baptist Association of Danbury, Connecticut. The association had

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dickens (paid)

bootylicious / babelicious

Bootylicious is an adjective meaning sexually attractive. It is formed from booty + -alicious, which is derived from delicious. Use of the combining form -alicious to form new words dates to the late nineteenth century and marks the quality of the first element of the compound as being appetizing or attractive.

platinum

Platinum is a chemical element with atomic number 78 and the symbol Pt. It is a silvery-white, unreactive, dense, malleable, and ductile semimetal. It is a precious metal, at times being more expensive than gold, and is often used in jewelry. Its most common application, however, is in catalytic converters

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booty / booty call

Booty is actually two different words, one meaning plunder or loot and the other referring to sex. Booty, referring to plunder or loot, of is uncertain origin. It was borrowed from some European language, but there are any number of potential candidates. It’s cognate with the modern German Beute,

Shoddy Scholarship by Those Who Should Know Better

Last week the website Medievalists.net published a listicle titled, 12 Expressions that We Got from the Middle Ages. Unfortunately, only four of the twelve are actually medieval phrases, and two others, while modern formulations, come from metaphors that are rooted in medieval thought. The other six either predate the

berserk / berserker

Today, to be or to go berserk means to be frenzied or crazed, and the term carries a connotation of violence. The word comes from the Icelandic berserkr, meaning a powerful Norse warrior who displayed a wild and uncontrolled fury on the battlefield. In other words, a stereotypical Viking, or

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phosphorus

Phosphorus comes into English from classical Latin, where Phosphorus is a name for the planet Venus. The name comes ultimately from the Greek; the roots are φως- (phos-, light) + -φόρος (-phoros, bringer). So phosphorus is the light-bringer, and the element is named for its luminescent properties. (Lucifer also literally means

basket case

It is not uncommon for a grisly or shocking term to lose its impact over the years, to meliorate. Such is the situation with basket case. As the term is commonly used today, a basket case is someone who is under physical or, more usually, mental distress to the point

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booty / booty call (paid)

hard-nosed

To be hard-nosed is to be stubborn, unsentimental, uncompromising. The phrase is an Americanism, dating to the early twentieth century, but why hard-nosed? The answer comes from rifle ammunition. In the late nineteenth century, the introduction of cordite and nitrocellulose gunpowder, in addition to be being “smokeless,” created higher muzzle

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palladium

Palladium is actually two words, with distinct, albeit related, etymological paths and meanings. The older use of the word comes from Greek myth, the newer one is the name of element 46. The original sense of palladium (often capitalized) was the name of a statue of the goddess Athena in

dollars to doughnuts

The phrase (I’ll bet) dollars to doughnuts is an Americanism dating to the late nineteenth century, referring to the stakes of an imagined wager on a sure thing. While due to inflation, today one would be hard pressed to find a doughnut for less than a dollar, when the

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