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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acre (paid)

holt

Holt, a word for a wooded area, a copse, goes back to Old English. Its root is common Germanic, with cognates found in Old Norse, Old Frisian, Old Saxon, Old High German, and others. The word appears in Beowulf when the hero’s men abandon him when faced with the

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close, but no cigar (paid)

thorium

Thorium is a chemical element with atomic number 90 and the symbol Th. It is named after the Norse god Thor + -ium. It is a soft, malleable, silver-colored metal. All the isotopes of thorium are radioactive, but the most stable one, 232Th, has a half-life of over 14 billion years,

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tin (paid)

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beam me up, Scotty (paid)

heaven / seventh heaven

The word heaven can be traced to the Proto-Germanic root *hemina- / *hemna-. That root gives us the Old English heofon, which is cognate with the Old Saxon heƀan, the Old Icelandic himinn, and the Old High German himil, among others. Going further back, the exact connection to Proto-Indo-European is muddy

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holt (paid)

spitting image

The phrase spitting image, used to describe someone who looks very much like another person, particularly a close family member, is a relatively recent coinage based on a much older idea. That original idea has disappeared from our collective consciousness, making the phrase a dead metaphor, one that is no

thallium

Thallium is a chemical element with atomic number 81 and the symbol Tl. It was discovered independently by chemists William Crookes and Claude-Auguste Lamy in 1861, but Crookes was the first to publish and was the one to name the element. The name is from the Greek θαλλός (thallos, green

thorium (paid)

Thorium is a chemical element with atomic number 90 and the symbol Th. It is named after the Norse god Thor + -ium. It is a soft, malleable, silver-colored metal. All the isotopes of thorium are radioactive, but the most stable one, 232Th, has a half-life of over 14 billion years,

heaven / seventh heaven (paid)

The word heaven can be traced to the Proto-Germanic root *hemina- / *hemna-. That root gives us the Old English heofon, which is cognate with the Old Saxon heƀan, the Old Icelandic himinn, and the Old High German himil, among others. Going further back, the exact connection to Proto-Indo-European is muddy

hydro

Moving to another country can be disorienting. But moving to Canada, at least to the anglophone provinces, from the United States is different. To the casual observer, things in Canada seem pretty much the same as in the States. But there are minor cultural differences that can trip one up,

tarot

Tarot is the name of a type of playing card which is often also used for cartomancy (i.e., divination or fortune-telling). There are a wide variety of games that can be played with a tarot deck. Over the centuries, there have been many variations in what tarot decks contain,

spitting image (paid)

The phrase spitting image, used to describe someone who looks very much like another person, particularly a close family member, is a relatively recent coinage based on a much older idea. That original idea has disappeared from our collective consciousness, making the phrase a dead metaphor, one that is no

October surprise

(It's no surprise that this phrase has been popping up in political commentary of late; from the archives, originally published 27 October 2020.) Political columnist and word maven William Safire defined an October surprise as a “last minute disruption before an election; unexpected political stunt, revelation, or diplomatic

strontium

Strontium is a chemical element with atomic number 38 and the symbol Sr. It is a highly reactive, soft, silver-white/yellowish metal. The isotopes found in strontium ores are all stable, but nuclear fission produces radioactive ones, including strontium-90, which has a half-life of 28.9 years. Strontium-90 is a

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thallium (paid)

ass / arse / donkey

An ass is domesticated equine, Equus asinus, otherwise known as a donkey. But an ass, or arse, can also refer to the human buttocks. These are two distinct words that happen to be, at least in American English, pronounced and spelled the same. Both can be traced with confidence to

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hydro (paid)

sanewashing redux

Evidently I posted my piece on sanewashing a bit too hastily and missed an email by Ben Zimmer to the American Dialect Society listserv on earlier uses of the term. Ben has found use of the word dating to 2007. I've updated the piece here. FYI, I frequently

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put out

sanewashing

Sanewashing is the portrayal of a radical or beyond-the-pale political idea as being within the mainstream of political discourse, making an insane idea appear sane. It is formed on the model of greenwashing (making an ecologically untenable idea or practice seem environmentally friendly) and whitewashing. It’s a good example

weird

[I reposted an older version from the archives not too long ago, but Scott Newstok pointed me to more research on Shakespeare's use of weird/weyward, so I've added that.] Weird, as we most often use it today, is an adjective meaning strange, odd, or uncanny.

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