Wild Word Friday! SWARD is one of those words seldom heard in modern English. As a noun, it’s used to designate a grass-covered area or a field. As a verb it means to cover or become covered with grass. SWARD traces its roots to an Anglo-Saxon word, sweard, which means a skin or hide. In…
Wild Word Friday! SIMULACRUM means a counterfeit image, a travesty or sham. The simula portion of SIMULACRUM has ancient roots in the Latin word simul, which means together with or likewise. Crum comes to us from the Anglo-Saxon, crump or crumb. Both versions of the word mean bent or crooked. (Did you know that in…
Wild Word Friday! PITCH is one of those words that takes up a third of a column in the dictionary because it has so many meanings. It also has two separate entries in the dictionary because there are two separate and unrelated origins for the word, each with its own group of meanings. Today I’m…
Wild Word Friday! TERMAGANT is a new word to me. I was perusing the dictionary trying to find a reasonable spelling for a word I was using in my current work-in-progress. I’m a terrible speller, and sometimes even Spell Check can’t decipher what I’m trying to write. Then it’s back to the old days and…
Wild Word Friday! You may have noticed that novels about the AMISH People are very popular. The AMISH lifestyle fascinates many people, particularly those who need a break from the fast-paced, hard-edged world we live in today. The AMISH people in the United States live much as they did 200 years ago, and refer to…
Wild Word Friday! When I was a child, one of my very favorite things was visiting my paternal grandparents at their FARM. They had a mean rooster that would chase you if you ventured too close to the chicken coop. Their big black horse would eat an apple right out of your very flat open…
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…
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