Category: etymology (page 4 of 4)

78: Henge

10 July 2012 / / Comments Off on 78: Henge

You’ve heard of Stonehenge, but have you heard of Manhattanhenge?

Perhaps Carhenge would be more your style.

Either way, all these henges give us a look at how words get created. How many words get made this way? More than …

76: Bogan

26 June 2012 / / Comments Off on 76: Bogan

It’s official: bogan has made it into the Oxford dictionary.

It’s language’s highest bar to clear, and its inclusion means that by any definition, bogan is truly a word. How do words get into the dictionary, anyway? And what do …

52: Carols

13 December 2011 / / Comments Off on 52: Carols

So you know the lyrics to Christmas carols? They may not be what you think.

Some of them have evolved over time, and how they’ve changed can tell us about language long ago.

Linguist Daniel Midgley gets festive on this …

36: Go the Fuck to Sleep

16 August 2011 / / Comments Off on 36: Go the Fuck to Sleep

On every frazzled parent’s reading list is a new children’s book: Go the Fuck to Sleep by Adam Mansbach.

Perhaps you wouldn’t read it to a child, but you might wonder where the f-word comes from, and why we can …

33: Weird Words (featuring Rod L. Evans)

26 July 2011 / / Comments Off on 33: Weird Words (featuring Rod L. Evans)

Are you a word maven? Have you ever used an aglet? Do you know where to find an octothorpe?

These and other words are lurking in your dictionary, and they’ve been brought to light in a new …

24: Planking

24 May 2011 / / Comments Off on 24: Planking

Do you plank?

Have you ever taken part in a flash mob, or been rickrolled?

Even if you haven’t, you may have wondered how the names for these and other Internet-related crazes got started.

Well, linguist Daniel Midgley is going …

8: Money for Nothing

25 January 2011 / / Comments Off on 8: Money for Nothing

CW: homophobic slur

This month, Canadian radio banned the Dire Straits song ‘Money for Nothing’ over an anti-gay slur in its lyrics.

Has the f-slur now become as unacceptable as other swear words? And how has the word changed since …

3: Pavlova

7 December 2010 / / Comments Off on 3: Pavlova

This week, the Oxford English Dictionary dropped a bombshell: the first reference to Pavlova appears in a New Zealand publication, not an Australian one.

How much do we know about the names of our favourite desserts? Why is a lamington…

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