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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curd / crud / cruddy (paid)

silver

Silver is a chemical element with atomic number 47 and the symbol Ag. It is a soft, white, lustrous metal with the highest electrical and thermal conductivity of any metal. It has, of course, been known since antiquity. Besides its use in coinage and in jewelry and other decorative items,

kangaroo court / mustang court / mustang

It is often the case with slang terms that the metaphor underlying the term has been lost. Slang often circulates for decades before being recorded, and in that time why the term came to be can be forgotten. Such is the case with kangaroo court. We have no firm idea

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pork / pork barrel (paid)

occupy

Occupy is a verb with many shades of meaning, but these senses fall into two broad categories. One sense is that of keeping busy or being engaged, as in occupying one’s time; the other is to seize, to take possession of, as in occupying territory. English borrowed the verb

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artificial intelligence / AI (paid)

doge

Doge, pronounced / doʊ(d)ʒ /, is a variant of dog that became an internet meme and then a US government entity. It is an internet subculture in-joke that in 2025 became an official US government term, a shift that reflects upon the maturity of those appointed to high office by

Gulf of Mexico

The Gulf of Mexico is the body of water bordered by the United States to the north, Mexico to the west and south, and Cuba to the east. The English name is a calque of the Spanish Golfo de México, which dates to the sixteenth century. The name follows the

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silver (paid)

silicon

Silicon is a chemical element with atomic number 14 and the symbol Si. It is a hard, brittle, crystalline metalloid with a blue-gray luster. It is the eighth most common element in the earth’s crust and has a wide variety of uses, perhaps the most common being in glass,

rawdog

The American Dialect Society selected rawdog as its 2024 Word of the Year (WOTY). The word is interesting not only because it was, at the time of selection, a popular and trending slang term, but it is of linguistic note in that its meaning has gone through a series of

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kangaroo court / mustang court / mustang (paid)

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occupy (paid)

moonstruck

We all know that people in love sometimes act insane, and that is the concept behind the modern use of the word moonstruck. Someone who is moonstruck is out of their mind with love. But this was not always the case; the word originally simply referred to insanity. The idea

valentine

(This entry was originally published on 14 February 2021.) How 14 February, St. Valentine’s feast day, became associated with love and lovers is shrouded in mystery. We do, however, have a good idea of when it happened, that is sometime in the late fourteenth century, and the association was

selenium

Selenium is a chemical element with atomic number 34 and the symbol Se. It can appear as a red powder; a vitreous, black solid; or a gray metallic solid. It is rarely found in nature in a pure form, found usually in metal sulfide ores where it takes the place

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silicon (paid)

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rawdog (paid)

mind-meld

Science fiction is a productive source of neologisms. Sometimes what is envisioned in fiction enters the lexicon before science makes it a reality, and sometimes futuristic and fantastic concepts that can never be real enter the language through the genre. When we talk of the intersection between science fiction and

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moonstruck (paid)

meh

Meh is an interjection expressing apathy or uninterest. We don’t know exactly when people began using it, nor where it comes from. Two explanations are commonly proffered. The first is that it is simply a transcription of an inarticulate, oral grunt or sigh. The second is that it comes

Pornhub's WOTY

I have a post on the Strong Language blog on the most popular Pornhub search terms in 2024, from hentai to twink to Mormon threesome. Be sure to check it out.

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dry January / sober-curious / soberocracy

concentration camp

One might, with some justification, think that the term concentration camp, like the term genocide https://www.wordorigins.org/big-list-entries/genocide-1 , came out of Holocaust perpetrated by the Nazis during World War II, but that is not the case. The term is almost half a century older, coming out of

seaborgium

Seaborgium is a synthetic chemical element with atomic number 106 and the symbol Sg. Its most stable isotopes have half lives of only a few minutes, and it has no applications other than pure research. The element is named after chemist Glenn T. Seaborg, who not only led the discovery