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
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
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
Newsletter 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
Newsletter 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,
Newsletter lunatic-fringe As commonly used today, a lunatic fringe is an extremist minority in a movement or group. But that’s not its original meaning. The earliest uses of the phrase deprecatingly refer to a woman’s hairstyle, one where the hair is cut straight across the forehead, that is to say,
Newsletter SWAT / swatting SWAT is a US police acronym of the phrase Special Weapons and Tactics. A SWAT team is a paramilitary police unit trained and equipped to engage in situations where violence was expected, such as hostage situations and drug raids. According to Mitchel P. Roth’s Historical Dictionary of Law Enforcement,
Newsletter moscovium Moscovium is a synthetic chemical element with atomic number 115 and the symbol Mc. It is extremely radioactive, its longest-lived isotope has a half-life of less than a second. It has no applications other than pure research. Element 115 was first synthesized in 2003 at the Joint Institute for Nuclear
Newsletter bachelor This word for an unmarried man has had several meanings over the centuries. Bachelor is borrowed from Anglo-Norman bacheler, which is presumably from the Latin baccalaria, a division of land. The normal sound changes would lead us to conclude that the French is from the form baccalaris, but that form
Newsletter leap-year The necessity for adding a day to the calendar every four years is due to the fact that the Earth’s orbit of the sun is not exactly 365 days; it’s closer to 365.25 days. Therefore, about every four years we add one day to the calendar to
Newsletter molybdenum Molydenum is a chemical element with atomic number 42 and the symbol Mo. It has been known since antiquity but was generally considered a type of lead or graphite. It wasn’t classified as an element until the eighteenth century. The element takes its name from the Latin molybdaena, a
Newsletter Valkyrie Words disappear from the language all the time. The concepts they represent become less useful or they are replaced by spiffier, newer terms and fade into obscurity and eventual disappearance from all but the largest of historical dictionaries. But occasionally these words are plucked from the fields of the slain
