history of the phrase ‘c’est la guerre’ (‘it can’t be helped’)
UK and USA, World War One—borrowing from French, literally ‘it is war’—expresses acceptance of, or resignation at, the situation engendered by war
Read MoreCategory: linguistics
Why ‘island’ and ‘aisle’ ought to be spelt ‘iland’ and ‘aile’.
The letter ‘s’ in both the nouns currently spelt ‘island’ and ‘aisle’ is due to folk-etymological association of those words with the unrelated noun ‘isle’.
Read Morethe curious case of the French word ‘oignon’
Decided by the Académie française, the erroneous spelling ‘oignon’ (= ‘onion’) has become a symbol of prejudiced people, ignorant of the history of their own language.
Read Moremeaning, origin and early instances of ‘to lie doggo’
UK, 1882—to remain motionless and quiet; to keep a low profile—probably from ‘dog’ and suffix ‘-o’, with allusion to the characteristically light sleep of a dog
Read Moremeaning and origin of the phrase ‘alarums and excursions’
confused activity and uproar—alludes to the frequent collocation of ‘alarum’ and ‘excursion’ in stage directions in Shakespearean drama
Read Morethe emergence of the political term ‘whataboutism’ in 1978
The Guardian, UK, 23 May 1978—used by one Lionel Bloch to designate—and denounce—the rhetoric employed by the advocates of the communist regimes
Read Moreorigin and sense development of Anglo-Irish ‘bejesus’
1825, Anglo-Irish alteration of ‘by Jesus’—1867 as one word—‘the bejesus out of’ (1931) intensifies the action conveyed by the preceding verb
Read Morelinguistic notes on the ‘one’ in ‘alone’ and ‘only’
Why is the element one in words such as alone and only not pronounced like the numeral one? Both the indefinite article an (a before consonant) and the numeral one are from Old English ān—which has survived in Scotland as ane, used both as indefinite article and as numeral. This Old-English word ān meant a/an, one, […]
Read Morethe meanings and supposed origin of ‘I should cocoa’
UK slang, 1936—emphatic agreement, though often ironical—‘cocoa’ is said to be rhyming slang for ‘so’ in ‘I should say so’
Read Morea personal view on the ‘animal-friendly’ phrases suggested by PETA
Fundamentally, I object to the will of any group to artificially modify language in order to impose their world view.
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