When Marco Polo brought the first porcelain to Europe, just how did it get its name? From Roman nursery slang, perhaps.
English
Did one of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ fantasy novels change the meaning of the word ‘careen’?
Ask Google Translate to turn the Hungarian for “I am learning Hungarian” into French, and it tells you that I am learning English, in French.
Spoof was originally a card game. But why April fools? A quick trip around trickery.
With three whole chapters about the comma alone, anyone interested in English should read this book.
Like so many of David Crystal’s books, “Words in Time and Place” is seriously addictive, and essential for anyone with the slightest interest in the English language.
Greg Pierce at Agile Tortoise has now released a free OS X dictionary based on WordNet, which effectively brings Terminology to your Mac.
This is a book to dip into only if you have good self-control: one word will lead to another, until you have visited each of the 500 or so.
Words have recently caused many casualties. Whether they were in emails exchanged with the Murdochs and read to […]
A panorama is an image, usually broad in its extent, of landscape, and has seen extensive figurative application. What is remarkable is that it did not exist until 1789, and still thrives today.
