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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peg / pegging (NSFW)

sulfur

Sulfur is a chemical element with atomic number 16 and the symbol S. It is a yellow, crystalline solid at room temperature. By mass, it is the tenth most abundant element in the universe and the fifth most abundant on earth. It has been known since antiquity but only recognized

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tantalum (paid)

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trek / Trekkie / Trekker (paid)

troop / troops / trooper

A troop is a unit of people, most often soldiers, especially a unit of cavalry, but it is also used for other groups of people collected in bands, such as entertainers (in which case it is usually spelled troupe). It is also used for a group of animals, especially apes

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nova / supernova (paid)

nepotism / nepo baby

Nepo baby is slang for a child of a famous person who achieves professional success based on who their parents are. The term is from nepo[tism] + baby, and nepotism is from the Latin nepos (nephew) + -ism. The word nepotism begins to appear in English in 1669 with the publication

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sulfur (paid)

rubidium

Rubidium is a chemical element with atomic number 37 and the symbol Rb. It is a soft, ductile, whitish-gray alkali metal. Rubidium had few applications until the 1920s, but since then the element has had wide variety of uses, from giving fireworks a purple color to a component of atomic

hot dog

Hot dog has two primary meanings, that of a sausage and that of a person who is superior or expert, especially boastfully so. Both started as American slang in the 1890s, with one, the sausage, eventually moving into standard English. But despite these similarities, the two senses are etymologically unrelated.

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troop / troops / trooper (paid)

bit / two bits

Two bits, in American speech, literally means twenty-five cents, but it is also used more generally to refer to a small valuation or as an adjective meaning cheap or insignificant. How it came to mean these things is wrapped up in the history of money in North America. Bit itself

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nepotism / nepo baby (paid)

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rubidium (paid)

roentgenium

Roentgenium is a synthetic chemical element with atomic number 111 and the symbol Rg. All isotopes of the element are highly radioactive, with half-lives measured in seconds or minutes. Only a handful of roentgenium atoms have ever been created. It has no applications outside of pure research. It was first

supermoon

(See also: blue moon) Every three or four months we are treated to a spate of news stories about how this month’s full Moon will be a supermoon. And in the summer and fall of 2024, we’ll get four supermoons in a row. But for the casual observer

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hot dog (paid)

across the pond / over the ditch

The Pond is a jocular and understated way of referring to the Atlantic Ocean, often in the phrase across the pond. By reducing the tempestuous ocean to placid pond, it makes the ocean manageable and domestic, recognizing the cultural differences between Britain and America and Canada, while at the same

Thanks and a Favor

I want to thank you again for subscribing to the Wordorigins.org email list. But I would also like you do me a favor and consider upgrading to becoming a paid subscriber. I’ve been running the website for over twenty-five years. In the past, ad revenues have covered my

Uncle Sam

The United States government is often referred to as Uncle Sam, who is rendered pictorially as a white-haired, goateed man wearing a suit and top hat that are adorned with the stars and stripes. Perhaps the most famous image of Uncle Sam is James Montgomery Flagg’s WWI recruiting poster,

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bit / two bits (paid)

swiftboat

To swiftboat a politician is to dishonestly call their former military service into question, to falsely accuse them of exaggerating or even lying about their combat experiences. The term arose in the context of the 2004 U.S. presidential campaign, in which Democratic candidate John Kerry was a Vietnam veteran,

rhodium

Rhodium is a hard, silvery-white metallic chemical element with atomic number 45 and the symbol Rh. Rhodium is quite rare, chiefly found as a component of platinum and nickel ores. It has a number of applications, including as a catalyst in chemical reactions, especially in automobile catalytic converters; in electrical

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roentgenium (paid)

weird

[Dredging this one up from the archives, originally published 16 August 2021.] Weird, as we most often use it today, is an adjective meaning strange, odd, or uncanny. But that’s a relatively new sense, only arising in the last two hundred years or so; the word, with a different