Wild Word Friday! The word AWARD comes to us via a progression that goes backwards in time from the Middle English, awarden, to the Old Norman French, eswarder, to the Old French, esgarder. Esgarder springs from the Latin, ex-garder, which is the base word for many English words that refer to the concept of guarding…
Wild Word Friday! When I was growing up, one of my favorite television shows was Lassie. (Yes, that was way back in the 1950s!) Lassie, a COLLIE, managed to save all manner of people from all manner of horrible situations, and I’m sure she was also responsible for a popularity surge in the breed itself….
Wild Word Friday! When anyone talks about WALE, I think about cloth, like corduroy, with raised ridges that are called WALEs, but I recently discovered a “new to me” meaning. In Scotland the noun WALE means a choosing or a choice or something chosen as best. As a verb WALE means to select. This meaning…
Wild Word Friday! Once upon a time, the English had a law that required a homebuilder to get a permit before he could build eaves that allowed water to drip on land owned by someone else. Not only were eaves sometimes a controversial matter in ancient England, in the 1600s they gave us the verb EAVESDROP,…
Wild Word Friday! Here in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, we are very aware of the difference between a snow storm and a BLIZZARD. You can drive in a snow storm. It’s not fun, and it is dangerous, but you can. In a snow storm, you can walk to your neighbor’s house. In a BLIZZARD you shouldn’t…
Wild Word Friday! When my 92-year-old father-in-law refers to electricity, he says ‘lectricity. The process of dropping an initial syllable when pronouncing a word is so common in human speech that it’s been given a name – APHAERESIS (uh-fur-eh-sus). APHAERESIS – the word – may be totally unfamiliar to us in our everyday speech, but APHAERESIS…
Wild Word Friday! Please don’t ask me how to pronounce it, but SELEDREORIG is an Anglo-Saxon word that means “sadness for the lack of a hall.” In Anglo-Saxon days, a hall was a long rectangular community building, usually made of timber and roofed with thatch. Most halls had a centrally located hearth. According to archaeologists, almost every Anglo-Saxon…
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