Language
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For two days, I kept track of the initials that I needed to know to make sense of the world. Here they are, all familiar, no doubt: HOA,, MRI, IED, CNN, EPA, FDA, DNA, OMB, ED, NBA, COVID, GPS, AWOL, PTSD, TCM, WTF, BPL, TIA, ETA, MST. Just two days. IK that there's a part…
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"Kith and kin" is an excellent example of a "pairing" — sometimes called a "coordinate pair." A pairing is a linguistic event in which two words join to produce a single meaning. "Kith" has no independent existence nowadays and only exists as an element of the pair. "Kith and kin" means "family." Originally, back then,…
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In his new book on the Vikings, Neil Price uses some words that I didn't know. Some old, some new. "Haptic" — relating to the sense of touch. A "byre" is farmhouse in which humans live in contact with livestock. A "volute" is a spiral or scroll-like ornament. An "allodium" is land held absolutely and…
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It's not often that a figure of speech makes the headlines — as happened this week with the rhetorical term "sarcasm." At a press conference a couple of days ago, the present occupant of the White House, Donald J. Trump, whose use of language is occasionally infelicitous, let fly with a giant whopper. He announced…
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Frequentatives perplex me. Even on good days, I can't tell a frequentative from an iterative or what used to be called a present progressive or even from a simple present that expresses a continuing action, such as "he walks to work" — in the sense that he walks every day or many days, not just…
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Let me guess that a modern reader coming upon Shakespeare's euphonious phrase "vaulting variable ramps" would be baffled as to its sense. Just WS being willfully obscure, one might complain. But it's not so; it's just that the language keeps on changing, making things difficult for audiences and readers. The most obvious meaning of "vaulting…
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A "col" is the lowest point of a ridge between two peaks; a "barmkin" or "barnekin" is a walled courtyard; a "carr" is a fen or wetland overgrown with trees; a "bauchling" (mostly Scots) is a reproaching or taunting in order to dare an adversary to fight; a "bastle" is a fortified farmhouse; a "cantref" (plural…
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If a widow and a widower form a relationship when they're both in their seventies, what is the proper and appropriate name for their relationship? Legally, they're married, because here in the state of Colorado, if you live together and represent yourself as married, you're married, even if you haven't sought governmental sanction. Yet "husband"…
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There are some words which one might read, study, and parse the dictionary definition and yet still not understand — words for which one has no intuitive or even rational conception. For example, there's the word "heaven." I know that "heaven" can mean "sky," a definition that poses no problem, but when "heaven" is presumed…