able to act at will ( Read more... )

Some of my favorite words in use in Scotland, and then some random ones.( Read more... )

Here's my quick reply to someone's query of "what does St. Patrick have to do with Leprachauns?" It strays a bit... more about what St. Patrick's day is about. Please feel free to correct/add to it- it's off the top of my head ( Read more... )

For those of you who find marriage patriarchal, it might interest you to know the origin of this word. Whether marriage has been, or is currently a patriarchal institution is another issue, but the history is interesting.

Husband

literally, in Anglo-Saxon: house-bound (hus=house+band=bound ( Read more... )

You can thank Terry Pratchett for bringing that one up Messenger". It made sense (especially given the BA in comparative religion), but I had to look it up.( Read more... )

I was interested in this in its use as a noun.

"A depraved, corrupt, or vicious person."

it implies an orignial, blameless, higher state that one can fall or degenerate from, and yet it might be used to describe someone on first sight ( Read more... )

Masterpiece

today it means and outstanding piece of work, often specifically of art or craft, or the work considered the greatest work of an artist.

a work of outstanding skill.

But "originally referring to a piece of work by a craftsman accepted as qualification for membership of a guild as an acknowledged master" (from the Oxford online ( Read more... )

Weird

originally wyrd, from wer (German) to turn or wind (later meaning change, like turn into- think were-wolf). The original meaning of wyrd is "fate" or one of the Fates, Wyrds or Norns (the Triple Goddess of fate ( Read more... )

this one just struck me because we were talking about them today. About the Hajis (Muslims who have been to Mecca), the pilgrims that traveled to the shrines and churches in the holy land and throughout Europe in the Middle Ages, the US pilgrims, and then John Wayne, calling newcomers "pilgrim".

Pilgrim"pilgrim" from Latin peregrinus ‘foreign’ ( ( Read more... )

HistoryThis one has interested me since I realized that in Italian, German, Greek, French, and Spanish the words for "History" and "Story" are the same (7th grade?). Until fairly recently (thank you postmodernism) in English it seems as if we have taken "History" as "fact" and "story" as fiction. I don't know about the languages outside of Europe ( Read more... )