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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tidal wave / tsunami

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pill / the pill (paid)

nihonium

Nihonium is a synthetic chemical element with atomic number 113 and the symbol Nh. The half-life of its longest-lived isotope is measured in seconds. It has no applications beyond pure research. The element was first reported to have been produced in 2003 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (JINR)

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niobium / columbium (paid)

April fool

No one knows for sure why April, and in particular the first of April, is associated with the playing of pranks on unsuspecting dupes, but the tradition seems to have evolved from the long association between love and springtime—the initial association was with those who have been made foolish

riding

When I moved to Canada in 2010, I soon discovered that legislative districts there are known as ridings. At first, I assumed the name came from the distance one could ride to get to the polls, but me being me, I had to look it up, and I discovered that

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Maritimes / Maritimer / Maritime Provinces / Atlantic Provinces (paid)

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tidal wave / tsunami (paid)

meltdown / melt / molten

In the public imagination, the noun meltdown is closely associated with nuclear reactor accidents. Given Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukashima, this association is quite understandable. But the word has an older use in metal smelting. And of course, it is also used metaphorically for an emotional breakdown. The history

nickel

Nickel is a chemical element with atomic number 28 and the symbol Ni. It’s a hard, silvery-white, lustrous metal. It’s a common metal, but rarely found in pure form in nature. Nickel is widely used in all sorts of products, notably stainless steel, magnets, batteries, and as plating

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nihonium (paid)

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riding (paid)

bible

Bible has several meanings in Present-Day English usage. Most commonly it refers to the Christian and Jewish scriptures, and when used this way it is generally capitalized. But bible can also be used in an extended sense to mean any authoritative book or collection of writings, in which case it

main / Main Street / High Street / main / high / highway

The use of Main Street and High Street is an example of the divergence of North American and British English. While both terms can be found on either side of the Atlantic, the former is more common in North America and the latter in the UK. Both are terms for

meltdown / melt / molten (paid)

In the public imagination, the noun meltdown is closely associated with nuclear reactor accidents. Given Three Mile Island, Chernobyl, and Fukashima, this association is quite understandable. But the word has an older use in metal smelting. And of course, it is also used metaphorically for an emotional breakdown. The history

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Easter / Easter bunny / pasch / paschal (paid)

shamrock

Shamrock is an Anglicization of the Irish seamróg, which means little/young clover (seamar). The name is applied to a variety of species of clover, i.e., the genus Trifolium, as well as to other three-leaved plants, such as the wood sorrel (Oxalis acetosella). The shamrock’s role as a

neptunium

Neptunium is a transuranic chemical element with atomic number 93 and the symbol Np. It is a hard, silvery, ductile metal. Its practical applications are limited, serving primarily as precursor in plutonium production. It potentially could be used as fuel for nuclear reactors or as the fissionable material in a

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nickel (paid)

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bible (paid)

jejune

The etymology of jejune is a pretty much straightforward one, but the history of the word provides a good illustration of two processes. One, you can clearly see how the word was borrowed from Latin and then anglicized. And two, one of its present-day meanings came about via an erroneous

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tacit

Tacit is an adjective that denotes something that is silently or wordlessly understood. It’s etymology is quite straightforward, a borrowing from the Latin tacitus, the past participle of the verb tacere, meaning to be silent. Thomas Eliot’s 1538 dictionary records the Latin. Early dictionaries like this one included

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main / Main Street / High Street / main / high / highway (paid)

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neon

Neon is a chemical element, a noble gas, with atomic number 10 and the symbol Ne. It was discovered in 1898 by William Ramsay and Morris W. Travers, who named it after the Greek νέον (new). Neon has a small number of applications, the most well known of which is,

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neptunium (paid)