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Q: I am reading Ben-Hur (1880) by Lew Wallace and I have come across a word, “lewen,” that I cannot find in any dictionary. It appears to be an architectural [...]
Q: I’m perplexed by the use of “bad boy” to refer to an object. For example, a tool: “This bad boy is very useful.” Can you shed light on this [...]
Q: I couldn’t find anything on the verb “gress,” yet it forms the root of many often used words today. How about a take on the apparently outdated verb and [...]
Q: I once heard that “jealousy” is a feeling about someone we think we have a right to (such as an intimate partner) and “envy” is a feeling about something [...]
Q: Why do we say “roof of the mouth” rather than “ceiling”? A friend asked me this and I had no idea but I thought maybe you would. A: The [...]
Q: Your recent post about “repair” refers to guests who “repaired to the drawing room.” That made me wonder about the origin of “drawing room.” I doubt it was ever [...]
Q: This kind of construction always puzzles me: “He built his home on the banks of the Ohio River.” Can the plural “banks” refer to the land on just one [...]
Q: Have you ever looked into “after” in the context of “What y’after?” I can’t see any relationship between the “behind” and the “pursuing” meanings of the word. A: Both [...]
Q: I am trying to find the source of the expression “emotional baggage,” but references seem few and far between. Any pointing in the right direction would be greatly appreciated. [...]
Q: I recently came across the use of “donjon” for an inner tower of a castle. I assume the word is somehow related to “dungeon.” A: Yes, both English words, [...]
Q: How did the verb “repair” come to mean to move to another place as well as to fix something? A: The verbs “repair” (to fix) and “repair” (to go) [...]
Q: Where does the expression “talking head” originate from? And why has it become so pejorative? A: When the term first appeared in the mid-19th century, it referred to mythical [...]
[Note: In observance of Memorial Day, we’d like to share an article that Stewart wrote for United Press International in 1971 about the last day in the life of an [...]
Q: Where does the expression “off the cuff” come from? A: The use of “off the cuff” to mean without preparation apparently comes from notes jotted on one’s shirt cuffs. [...]
Q: I see the verb “critique” used all the time in place of what I believe is the correct word—“criticize.” I thought “critique” meant to analyze the pros and cons, [...]
Q: My wife asked me about the expression “happy as a clam,” and I had to admit I knew nothing about it. But I am sure you do. A: English [...]
Q: I first heard the expression “one of the best there is” in a game from 2011, and it’s been on my mind ever since. Shouldn’t it be “one of [...]
Q: Where did the expression “claw back” (referring to money) come from? It seems to be a fairly recent usage. A: The phrasal verb “claw back” is heard a lot [...]
[Note: In recognition of the Passover and Easter holidays, we’re republishing a post that originally ran on May 23, 2022.] Q: Why do the words for Passover and Easter sound [...]
Q: What explains the increasing use of “gender” in place of “sex” in sexual terminology? For me, prudishness doesn’t explain it. A: The nouns “sex” and “gender” have been used [...]
Barbara Newman reviews two Boccaccio books for the LRB (Vol. 47 No. 14 · 14 August 2025; archived): Histories of Italian literature begin with the Tre Corone or Three Crowns: [...]
Back in June I posted to Facebook as follows: OK, I need to know what to make of what appears to be a meaningless sentence in Paige Williams’ article on [...]
I recently came upon the Wiktionary page Reconstruction:Proto-Indo-European/tewk- and was struck by the wide semantic divergence involved. The reconstructed meaning is ‘germ, seed, sprout, offspring’ (presumably based on Indo-Iranian *táwkma), [...]
The indefatigable Bathrobe has sent me a couple of good links I hereby share with you: 1) Arthur Waley’s “Notes on Translation” (The Atlantic, November 1958; archived) has lots of [...]
Some interesting words I’ve run across recently: 1) I was watching Jia Zhangke’s movie Ash Is Purest White, about a couple involved in the (pretty petty) underworld milieu of Datong, [...]
Jonathan Law writes about misprints in editions of poetry; he is either way too fond of such typos or is pretending to be for the purposes of pleasing his audience, [...]
Zach Helfand’s “The History of The New Yorker’s Vaunted Fact-Checking Department” (archived) is an excellent read and scratches an itch I’ve had for years (“how does that work, anyhow?”); it [...]
1) From Hua Hsu’s New Yorker piece “The Otherworldly Ambitions of R. F. Kuang” (archived): As [Rebecca] Kuang stirred a pot of pasta, I asked Eckert-Kuang [Kuang’s husband] about his [...]
Michael Idov (“a Latvian American novelist and screenwriter”) has a NY Times piece (archived) on a subject that has often exercised me: the terrible names English-speaking authors come up with [...]
Andrew Van Dam of the Washington Post decided to investigate the question What are the most American and most British words? (archived). After a long thumb-sucking introduction (“And for columnists [...]
Victoria Livingstone writes about the ever-more-pressing issue of using machine-translated texts to save money: I lived in Latin America for several years and I speak Spanish fluently, but I am [...]
Nelson Goering, last seen here talking about Old English, has a Facebook post about another interest of his, Chinese history; he’s discussing Yuri Pines’ Zhou History Unearthed: The Bamboo Manuscript [...]
Time to uphold the hat portion of my mandate! This 2015 post by johankaell begins: This time we will go slightly of focus for the blog but we just have [...]
Yip Wai Yee reports for the Straits Times about the Taiwan Centres For Mandarin Learning: How do you say “MRT” in Mandarin? In this particular Chinese language class, the correct [...]
Another Hattic tidbit from Nancy Mitford’s The Pursuit Of Love (see this post): “Poor Linda, she has an intensely romantic character, which is fatal for a woman. Fortunately for them, [...]
My final post from David Daiches’ Two Worlds (see this post), from chapter 7, is probably the most Hattic of the lot; it’s about Scots Yiddish, which intrigued me in [...]
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