“ad fontes!”
The noun pastis designates an aniseed-flavoured aperitif, while pastiche, or pasticcio, denotes a work of art that imitates the style of another artist or period and a work of art that mixes styles, materials, etc. Unlikely as it may seem, these words are doublets, or etymological twins: although they differ in form and meaning, they go […]
Read MoreThe French term foie gras, from foie, liver, and gras, fat, fatty, denotes the liver of a specially fattened goose or duck prepared as food. Short for pâté de foie gras, it also denotes a smooth rich paste made from fatted goose or duck liver. Its first known use in English is in The Fudge […]
Read MoreMEANING a place or state of utter confusion and uproar ORIGIN In Paradise Lost (1667), the English poet John Milton (1608-74) invented Pandæmonium, with a capital P, as the name for the capital of Hell, containing the council chamber of the Evil Spirits. This noun is from ancient Greek παν- (= pan-), […]
Read MoreMEANING outside the limits of social convention ORIGIN The primary meanings of the noun pale are a wooden stake or post used with others to form a fence and a wooden fence made of stakes driven into the ground. This word appeared in the late 14th century and is from Anglo-Norman and Middle French pal, meaning a stake, a palisade, a […]
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Nowadays, a curfew is a regulation requiring people to remain indoors between specified hours, typically at night – for example: a dusk-to-dawn curfew. The word is from Old French and Anglo-Norman forms such as cuevre-feu and covrefeu, hence the Modern French word couvre-feu (plural couvre-feux), composed of: – couvre, imperative of the verb couvrir, to cover, – feu, meaning fire. The corresponding medieval Latin names were ignitegium […]
Read MoreThe noun galaxy is from post-classical Latin galaxias, denoting the Milky Way, from Hellenistic Greek γαλαξίας (= galaxias), short for γαλαξίας κύκλος (= galaxias kuklos), milky circle, from ancient Greek γάλα/γαλακτ- (= gala/galakt-), milk. Originally therefore, galaxy, often with the and capital initial, denoted the Milky Way, that is, the diffuse band of light stretching across […]
Read MoreThe English adjective pregnant has several meanings: carrying a fetus or fetuses within the womb, full of meaning or significance, inventive or imaginative, prolific or fruitful. It is from the Latin adjective praegnans/praegnant-, with child, pregnant, variant of praegnas/praegnat-, probably from the prefix prae-, before, and the stem of the verb gnasci (past participle gnatus), […]
Read MoreThe word tennis in its current sense is short for lawn tennis. The original form of tennis (known as real tennis to distinguish it from the later lawn tennis) was played with a solid ball on an enclosed court divided into equal but dissimilar halves, the service side (from which service was always delivered) and […]
Read MoreThe phrase to carry coals to Newcastle means to supply something to a place where it is already plentiful; hence, figuratively, to do something wholly superfluous or unnecessary—cf. also to sell refrigerators to the Eskimos and to sell sand in the Sahara. This phrase (in which coals is an obsolete plural) refers to Newcastle upon Tyne, in […]
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