Tag: etymology
member name: The Editors of the American Heritage(R) Dictionaries
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August 27, 2008 09:33 AM EDT --
LITERALLY
For more than a hundred years, critics have remarked on the incoherence of using literally in a way that suggests the exact opposite of its primary sense of "in a manner . . . more
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December 29, 2005 09:13 AM EST --
Join the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionaries each week as they investigate the mysterious origins of our everyday language.
CURFEW
A curfew was originally a medieval regulation . . . more
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April 28, 2006 11:24 AM EDT --
MALAPROP
"She's as headstrong as an allegory on the banks of the Nile" and "He is the very pineapple of politeness" are two of the absurd pronouncements from Mrs. Malaprop . . . more
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March 26, 2007 01:27 PM EDT --
BRAND NEW
Nowadays, the word brand is probably most often heard with the meaning “a trademark or distinctive name identifying a product or a manufacturer,” but it can be traced all . . . more
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April 20, 2007 12:06 PM EDT --
AX
Ax, a common nonstandard variant of ask, is often identified as an especially salient feature of African American Vernacular English. While it is true that the form is frequent in the . . . more
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March 03, 2006 10:55 AM EST --
WIKI
Anyone who has not yet encountered a wiki while surfing the web will sometime soon, for wikis are proliferating quickly. In fact, the word wiki comes from a word for "quick." A . . . more
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January 26, 2007 11:30 AM EST --
MARSHMALLOW
Marshmallows were originally medicine, despite their modern reputation as the fluffiest of foods and the emptiest of calories. They were originally made from the root of the marsh . . . more
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March 30, 2007 01:51 PM EDT --
ANYMORE
In standard American English the word anymore is often found in negative sentences: They don’t live here anymore. But anymore is widely used in regional American English in positive . . . more
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April 04, 2007 02:02 PM EDT --
CANADA
Linguistically, mountains can be made out of molehills, so to speak: words denoting a small thing can, over time, come to denote something much larger. This is the case with Canada, now . . . more
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April 13, 2007 09:36 AM EDT --
AUTHOR
From an etymological perspective, the word author ought to be pronounced almost like otter. Author ultimately comes from Latin auctor, “creator,” a noun derived from the verb . . . more
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April 18, 2007 09:41 AM EDT --
NON SEQUITUR
noun
A statement that does not follow logically from what precedes it.
Anticipation began to plague her with such ferocity that the thought of a husband, on which all her . . . more
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June 01, 2007 09:31 AM EDT --
STOOP
Originally brought to the Hudson Valley of New York by settlers from the Netherlands, a few items of Dutch vocabulary have survived there from colonial times until the present. Stoop, “a . . . more
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June 15, 2007 09:13 AM EDT --
DOGIE
In the language of the American West, a stray or motherless calf is known as a dogie. In Western Words, the noted scholar Ramon F. Adams gives one possible etymology for dogie, a word whose . . . more
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August 31, 2007 01:47 PM EDT --
Vamoose
The verb to vamoose, "to leave hurriedly," has a full range of tenses and grammatical moods in English, and it can be used with all grammatical persons: . . . more
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June 11, 2008 02:32 PM EDT --
A DEFINE-A-THON is the new word game sensation created by the Editors of the American Heritage ® Dictionaries. Why are they taking us beyond the spelling bee? Because being able to SPELL . . . more
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July 18, 2008 11:18 AM EDT --
COUPON
A Roman might have had difficulty predicting what would become of the Latin word colaphus, which meant "a blow with the fist." As the variety of Latin spoke in . . . more
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November 04, 2005 03:40 PM EST --
Join the Editors of the American Heritage(R) Dictionaries each week as they investigate the mysterious origins of our everyday language.
NE . . .
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February 17, 2006 09:41 AM EST --
BOYCOTT
Charles C. Boycott seems to have become a household word because of his strong sense of duty to his employer. An Englishman and former British soldier, Boycott was the estate agent of . . . more
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December 09, 2005 09:04 AM EST --
Join the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionaries each week as they investigate the mysterious origins of our everyday language.
BLURB
In a lifetime of reading the fluff on book jackets . . . more
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December 16, 2005 09:21 AM EST --
Join the Editors of the American Heritage® Dictionaries each week as they investigate the mysterious origins of our everyday language.
NICE
Since its adoption from Old French in the thirteenth . . . more
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