solstice
Somehow it hadn't occurred to me 'til just now to wonder about the etymology of the word "solstice." The first part is obviously "sol," sun. Turns out the second part...
sahib
I recently read a submitted story in which someone who seemed to be from Africa used the word "sahib." "That's not right," I said to myself; "there's another word like...
Ziti loop
Ever feel like you're trapped in a bad comedy routine? In Logan Airport, in Boston, in May of 2003, I stopped at Baldini's Italian Cooking for lunch. The menu said...
Going forward
It's now been eight months since this blog went on hold. The plan was to integrate the old Words & Stuff columns into this blog, and integrate some entries from...
Blog future
I've been thinking for the past couple weeks, intermittently, about what to do with this blog. It was originally going to be a place for me to post early cites...
German
A piece of spam this morning led me indirectly (by way of a quotation) to Mark Twain's 1880 essay "The Awful German Language," an entertaining complaint about the difficulties of...
What a to-do to die today
Someone just encountered my 1997 Words & Stuff column on elocution and wrote me to ask about elocution. Which led me to look at the column again, which led me...
freeze victims
I was very amused by this headline from One Bakersfield Online today: Bills would provide $1.2 billion to freeze victims in California Turns out it's referring to money that would...
vaticination
I had originally intended this blog to focus primarily on new coinages, to be a resource for early citations for dictionary makers and such. 'Cause, y'know, I figured I already...
can of corn
In a submission, I encountered the phrase "can of corn" as a baseball term; hadn't heard it before, so went and looked it up. Apparently it refers to a baseball...