Word-Origin Wednesday is the weekly podcast that walks you through a word origin in five minutes or less.
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Ghost and Ghoul (Word-Origin Wednesday)
4:43
4:43
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4:43"Ghost" is a pretty old word. "Ghoul," as an English word, not so much.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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The names of "October" and a few other months make a lot more sense if we look at Latin and the Roman calendar.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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The everyday meaning of "sympathy" has shifted over the years, but it's always had some connection to its Latin and Greek roots.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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Hysterical (Word-Origin Wednesday)
4:54
4:54
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4:54Before it entered everyday English, "hysterical" was medical Latin.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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Autumn and Fall (Word-Origin Wednesday)
4:06
4:06
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4:06Do you say "autumn" or "fall" to describe the season between summer and winter? Get the lowdown on the history of both words.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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"Dead" and "duck" go way back, but the term "dead duck" is only a couple of centuries old.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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Landlubber (Word-Origin Wednesday)
3:29
3:29
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3:29The often miswritten and mispronounced "landlubber" goes back a few centuries.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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"Nice" has had at least a dozen definitions over the last few centuries.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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The Modern English "peruse" came from the Middle English "peruse" . . . or maybe it came from French.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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Factory And Manufacturing (Word-Origin Wednesday)
4:03
4:03
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4:03With Labor Day approaching, let's look at "factory" and "manufacturing." They were both borrowed from Latin.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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"Escalate" is fairly new word, and the current definition has been around since just the 1950s.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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Put Up Your Dukes (Word-Origin Wednesday)
3:50
3:50
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3:50"Put up your dukes," which has been around since at least the 1800s, is one example of Cockney rhyming slang.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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The transition from "ekename" to "nickname" is a fine demonstration of the transition from Middle English to Modern English.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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"Posh," as it is used today, first appeared in print a little more than a century ago. But where did it come from?Oleh The Grammar Geek
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It took several languages to bring "karaoke" to English in the 1970s.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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"Honey" and "moon" are very old. "Honeymoon" is relatively new, meaning it's a mere 500 years old.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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"Aioli" comes from French, as do the words for many prepared foods.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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"Mascara" is linked to many words from many languages, many of which go back centuries before commercially available mascara hit store shelves.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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The word "liar" goes way back. As it turns out, people have been lying for a long time.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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"Salary" is related to something in your kitchen, and it's not celery.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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Like a lot of food-related words, "omelet" comes from French. Its origin has nothing to do with eggs.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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"Humble" came from French, which took it from Latin. It's always meant "lowly," although that's not how people use it today.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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A lavaliere is a fancy pendant. It's also a type of microphone. To find the origin, we go back to 17th-century France.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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"Memorial" comes from Latin and is related to a slew of other English words, including "remember" and "memorandum."Oleh The Grammar Geek
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Phases Of The Moon (Word-Origin Wednesday)
3:22
3:22
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3:22"Waxing," "waning," "crescent" and "gibbous" go back a long, long time.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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"Whiskey" has been through some changes in its journey to English from (no surprise) Gaelic.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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May Day and Mayday (Word-Origin Wednesday)
3:29
3:29
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3:29May 1 is May Day (two words) in the United States. Don't confuse it with "mayday" (one word), the distress call for pilots.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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Verbiage and Verbage (Word-Origin Wednesday)
3:23
3:23
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3:23The often misused "verbiage" has been around for a few centuries, and its corrupt offspring, "verbage," is older than you might think.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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"Easter" goes back to Old English and then goes back further. Celebrations of spring are older than Jesus.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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Rhythm And Rhyme (Word-Origin Wednesday)
3:51
3:51
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3:51"Rhythm" and "rhyme" are related words, both in meaning and etymology.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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Stay-at-Home Parent (Word-Origin Wednesday)
4:42
4:42
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4:42"Stay" and "home" and "parent" are old words, going back centuries. Words to describe someone who tends to the home and children are also very old. English speakers began using the term "stay-at-home parent" very recently.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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"Leverage" has been in the English language since the 18th century, but its position in everyday corporate speak is fairly recent.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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Tea has been around for thousands of years, but English speakers didn't need a word for it until they started trading it in the 1590s.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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Butt Cheek (Word-Origin Wednesday)
4:06
4:06
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4:06"Butt" and "cheek" have been around for centuries. It took a while for English speakers to put them together.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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"Ambulance" has been an English word since the 18th century, before motor vehicles, and is related to the word "amble."Oleh The Grammar Geek
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"Selfie" is a fairly new word, but its root word and suffix are centuries old. Some people don't like "selfie," but resistance is futile.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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By tracing "hiatus," meaning a break, back to its ancient Proto-Indo European roots, we find it has some modern cousins with similar meanings but very different sounds.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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Penultimate (Word-Origin Wednesday)
3:31
3:31
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3:31"Penultimate" and its cousin, "ultimate," both come from Latin. As the meaning of "ultimate" shifts, poor "penultimate" is being left behind.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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The current popular meaning of "carnival" goes back to the 1920s, but the original meaning, which involves meat, goes back centuries.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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We've been using the word "buck" as slang for money since the 1850s. There are two theories to explain why.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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The slang term "booze" goes back many years as a noun and many more years as a verb. And what's a boozeroo?Oleh The Grammar Geek
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The proper noun "Lent" evolved from a series of longer words ultimately related to spring.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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On Valentine's day, you might send a valentine to your valentine. All of those uses share the same origin.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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"Complicit" is Dictionary.com's 2017 Word of the Year. It's less than a century old, but the original "complicity" is much older.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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Which came first, "OK" or "okay"? And what does Martin Van Buren have to do with it?Oleh The Grammar Geek
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The American Dialect Society named "fake news" its 2017 Word of the Year. The term has been around for a while, but the past few years, it seems to be everywhere.Oleh The Grammar Geek
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"Unkempt," which means "sloppy or disheveled," goes back centuries. It's not the same as "unkept."Oleh The Grammar Geek
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