Flunkeys and lackeys two centuries ago
By Anatoly Liberman
In An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology, I called William L. Blackley’s 1869 book Word Gossip singularly uninformative, and I am sorry for that remark.
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By Anatoly Liberman
In An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology, I called William L. Blackley’s 1869 book Word Gossip singularly uninformative, and I am sorry for that remark.
By Anatoly Liberman
I received a letter with a question about the etymology of swag "booty; cockiness, etc." The reader complained that dictionaries have nothing to say about the origin of this word. She is quite right.
By Anatoly Liberman
The town where I live has a good newspaper. From time to time, it gives advice to its readers for avoiding language mistakes and for speaking correct English.
By Anatoly Liberman
I have "sauntered," I have paid some respect to "lust" (see the previous two posts), and now I am ready "to cringe." The most interesting part of today’s story is not even the origin of the verb cringe but the multitude of words, possibly related to it and explaining nothing.
By Anatoly Liberman
I have "sauntered," I have paid some respect to "lust" (see the previous two posts), and now I am ready "to cringe." The most interesting part of today’s story is not even the origin of the verb cringe but the multitude of words, possibly related to it and explaining nothing.
By Anatoly Liberman
Years ago, I wrote about our four-letter words, and the comments were, as could be expected, numerous. Incidentally, the origin of those words is nether too interesting nor (in at least one case) too complicated. Lust is not l*** or l**t, and one can speak about it, without hurting anyone’s sensibilities.
By Anatoly Liberman
First of all, let me thank those who commented on the previous posts and said so many kind words about the blog. Invigorated by this support, I am ready to ask the greatest question that should bother a philologist: Why is the tongue called tongue?
By Anatoly Liberman
This is a story of the adjective free, and the story is complicated. Let me begin from afar.
By Anatoly Liberman
To saunter "to walk in a leisurely way, stroll" is a verb, famous for its etymological opacity. It is instructive and a bit frustrating to read the literature on this word, published between roughly 1874 and 1910, though a few amusing notes in my collection antedate the eighteen-seventies.
By Anatoly Liberman
First of all, my thanks to those who commented on the previous posts. Don’t miss the note about the ancient Romans’ view of babies on the father’s knee and the suggestion that the idiom to pull one’s leg may be of nautical origin.
By Anatoly Liberman
One can teach an advanced course on etymology, while climbing up the leg, ant-wise. On foot we reach the territory of Indo-European, but it is not every day that an English word finds itself in such respectable company.
By Anatoly Liberman
While working on the post about mean and moan, I decided to write something about groan, but I did not realize how far this word would take me.
By Anatoly Liberman
Few people realize how troublesome the word mean is. We have mean as in meaning ("what do you mean?"); mean "ignoble, base" (as in such a mean fellow), and mean, as in the meantime and meanwhile.
By Anatoly Liberman
As usual, I’ll begin with a comment on the letters I have received. I never wrote that too few queries about words of unknown origin were coming my way: I complained that a stream of letters addressed to Oxford Etymologist had in principle become a trickle.
By Anatoly Liberman
My sincere thanks to all those who commented on the recent posts. I have never heard about the rule about one day referring only to the future.
By Anatoly Liberman
Right after the appearance of the post on hag (March 5, 2025), I received a letter with a question about the origin of the word witch.