A recent news article prompted me to research the use of jack as a catch-all term: Apparently, a pair of pot smugglers ignored the sensible admonition “Don’t get high on your own supply” and, in a state of THC-fueled paranoia, called 911 to complain that while transporting their precious cargo, they were being harassed by … Read more
Looking into the origin of ply as a result of thinking about the expressions “plying [someone] with drinks” or “plying [someone] for information,” I found etymological connections to an interesting variety of terms. Here are some words related to ply based on its Latin ancestor. Ply derives from the term plicare, meaning “to fold.” Generally, … Read more
Preposition use is tricky. Sometimes a rule can be applied, as in the choice between in and into: The dog jumped from the bank into the water. (connotes movement from outside to within) The drowning man flailed in the water. (connotes containment within) More often, the choice of which preposition to use is idiomatic. That … Read more
After writing a post about the suffix -ism, I explored the class of words that include the letters s and m in sequence in which the letters are not a consonant blend (as in small) or in which the s is not at the end of a prefix (as in besmirch and dismiss); with some … Read more
Terms for members of the aristocracy are often applied by extension to other, often colloquial, usage. Here are titles of English nobility and some of their other connotations. King, from the Old English word cyning, refers to a hereditary lifelong ruler; a king who rules over other kings might be called a high king. The … Read more
Not long after Martin “Pharma Bro” Shkreli stepped out of the media spotlight, the notoriously greedy former pharmaceutical-company executive briefly popped back onto the popular-culture radar to helpfully illustrate how epithets have evolved (or devolved, as some may judge). Shkreli, at the time the CEO of Turing Pharmaceuticals, became for a time the most hated … Read more
What’s the difference between classic and classical? Both words, befitting their roots in the word class, refer to quality, but the meanings are distinct. Classic and classical, both first attested around the turn of the seventeenth century, derive from the French term classique, a descendant of the Latin word classicus, which (in turn stemming from … Read more
A recent reference to a certain Republican presidential candidate in which he was described as vile sent me to online etymological resources to look up the origin of the term. Interestingly, vile is unrelated to the similar-looking villain. Vile derives from the Latin term vilis, which means “base,” “cheap,” “common,” or “worthless.” Villain, on the … Read more
A reader wonders about the usage in the following invitation to a website: Come in, familiarize yourself to our site, ask questions and read our stories. She asks, “Shouldn’t that be ‘familiarize yourself with our site’?” Yes, the idiom is “familiarize with.” Since the 1880s at least, the usual preposition to follow familiarize has been … Read more
An ESL speaker asks for a discussion of the nouns factory, industry, and plant in the context of the following: “mineral water factory,” “mineral water industry,” and “mineral water plant.” factory An earlier meaning of factory was “the employment, office, or position of a factor.” A factor, as in the word cornfactor, is “an agent … Read more
1. all roads lead to Rome: an expression meaning that many methods will lead to the same result 2. get (back) on track: resume focus 3. get off track: lose focus 4. beat a path to [one’s] door: arrive in great numbers, with the implication that someone who offers a highly desirable good or service … Read more
Greetings and pleasantries, often uttered without sincerity or conviction as rote statements, are often also used without appreciation of their literal meanings. Here are the connotations and derivations of common comments. Adieu This French term, uttered by someone taking leave of others, is sometimes used by English speakers; it’s a contraction of “A dieu vous … Read more