Bashful is one of those wonderful words without an opposite. Try as you might, nobody will ever call you bashless. Which poses the question: what the devil is bash and how did you get so full of it?

To answer that question one can turn to the Old Curiosity Shop where Dickens mentions that Dick Swiveller "spends all his money on his friends and is ( Read more... )

As you step out in the cold misery of a British May, you don your hat. Then you see a lady of your acquaintance and you doff your hat. Then you don it again. Doff. Don. Doff. Don. And suddenly you realise, in a moment of etymological ecstasy, that the verb don is merely a contraction of do on, and that doff is merely a contraction of do off. And ( Read more... )

Cottoning on to something, in the sense of understanding it is a rather odd phrase. Indeed, it's so odd that it doesn't exist in America, so far as I can tell. On those strange shores cottoning on means getting on well with, which is in fact exactly what the phrase meant on these strange shores a hundred and fifty years ago.

In John Camden Hotten's ( Read more... )

Оказывается, значение этого слова за века своего бытования сильно смягчилось. В староанглийском qualm означало смерть, мор, чуму, и пыточная называлась qualm-house, а место казни - qualm-stow. Затем, в 16 веке, слово qualm употреблялось для описания невзгод, например, затяжной болезни, после - недомогания, слабости и прочих неудобств.
(Ну а сейчас ( Read more... )

Let us wend our irregular way to an odd leftover of grammar. The English verb go declines as: go, goes, went, gone. Or at least that's what you're taught in school; but it's a goddam lie.

The verb go looks terribly irregular. What's that W word doing between the Gs of go and gone? The etymological truth, though, is that went is a completely ( Read more... )

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