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podictionary An almost daily podcast for logophiles (lovers of words), podictionary covers a new word for a minute or two in each episode, discussing etymology (word history) and related trivia. Login to Add this to your Playlist Format : Variety PodcastDirectory.com's listings of the podictionary Podcasts
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ascribe – podictionary 1102 Updated: 2010-02-10 04:01:12 Description: In 1382 one of the meanings of ascribe was to write into an accounts book. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD fiance – podictionary 136 Updated: 2010-02-09 04:01:00 Description: fiancé meant “trust”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD skeptical – podictionary 1101 Updated: 2010-02-08 04:01:19 Description: from Latin thought to have been from "skeptikos" Greek meaning “thoughtful”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD incandescent – podictionary 1100 Updated: 2010-02-05 04:01:41 Description: a candle has a flame that glows, but a hot coal glows from within...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD mirror – podictionary 135 Updated: 2010-02-04 04:01:00 Description: "smei" an Indo-European word that meant “to laugh” or “to smile”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD squash – podictionary 1098 Updated: 2010-02-03 04:01:23 Description: since most of us only eat one squash at a time the appropriate word should be asquutasq since asquutasquash is plural...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD weather – podictionary 134 Updated: 2010-02-02 04:01:00 Description: from an Indo-European root we meaning “to blow”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD rescue – podictionary 1097 Updated: 2010-02-01 04:01:24 Description: "rescue" literally means “shake off again” but why?...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD bachelor – podictionary 1096 Updated: 2010-01-29 04:01:24 Description: it was a sense of youth that lent the word bachelor its modern meanings...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD login – podictionary 132 Updated: 2010-01-28 04:01:00 Description: From this floating piece of carpentry eventually became the term used to describe typing your password....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD humiliate – podictionary 1094 Updated: 2010-01-27 04:01:27 Description: humble literally means “close to the ground”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD arrive – podictionary 130 Updated: 2010-01-26 04:01:00 Description: arrive came from Latin and had been two words; ad ripa...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD slalom – podictionary 1093 Updated: 2010-01-25 04:01:13 Description: The word slalom meant “gentle slope ski track.” ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD zero – podictionary 1092 Updated: 2010-01-22 04:01:02 Description: "zero" traces back to an Arabic word "cifr"...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD amateur – podictionary 129 Updated: 2010-01-21 04:01:00 Description: amateur comes from the French word for “love”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD cynic – podictionary 1090 Updated: 2010-01-20 04:01:19 Description: "cynic" arose in Ancient Greek and means “dog-like”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD album – podictionary 128 Updated: 2010-01-19 04:01:00 Description: Since the word "album" comes from Latin meaning “white,” the Beatles White Album name is redundant (but fitting)...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD chat – podictionary 1089 Updated: 2010-01-18 04:01:51 Description: As if anticipating Twitter 800 years ago the meaning of chatter relates to birds uttering a rapid string of chirps....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD stethoscope – podictionary 1088 Updated: 2010-01-15 04:01:01 Description: pressing his face to her ample bosom seemed a little inappropriate...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD plumbing – podictionary 127 Updated: 2010-01-14 04:01:00 Description: In your bathroom the pipes are called plumbing because at one time pipes were made of lead...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD cylinder – podictionary 1086 Updated: 2010-01-13 04:01:56 Description: in Ancient Greek times there were no steam or internal combustion engines...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD pomegranate – podictionary 126 Updated: 2010-01-12 04:01:00 Description: pomegranate literally means “apple full of seeds.” ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD exhaust – podictionary 1085 Updated: 2010-01-11 04:01:10 Description: You can’t push on a rope....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD desk – podictionary 1084 Updated: 2010-01-08 04:01:51 Description: How is sitting at your desk related to any kind of Olympic sport?...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD work – podictionary 125 Updated: 2010-01-07 04:01:00 Description: "work" had an enormous number of spellings and tenses and variations...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD sponge – podictionary 1082 Updated: 2010-01-06 04:01:20 Description: sponges upon which manufactured items are modeled were animals that live in the sea...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD average – podictionary 124 Updated: 2010-01-05 04:01:00 Description: It seems "average" is not your average word....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD year – podictionary 1081 Updated: 2010-01-04 04:01:08 Description: the Indo-European base might have meant “go” so that word took its sense from the concept of time marching on...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD athlete – podictionary 123 Updated: 2009-12-30 04:01:00 Description: The original Greek word from which athlete evolved may have been athlon which was the word both for “contest” and “prize.”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD fetish – podictionary 1080 Updated: 2009-12-29 04:01:39 Description: Why would anyone be sexually excited by shoes? ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD draconian – podictionary 122 Updated: 2009-12-28 04:01:00 Description: The Draco from whom we get draconian lived in Greece a little more than 600 years BC....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD sky – podictionary 121 Updated: 2009-12-23 04:01:00 Description: Why did the first English reference talk about six or seven skies?...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD immediately – podictionary 1079 Updated: 2009-12-22 04:01:27 Description: the reverse of "mediately.” ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD politics – podictionary 120 Updated: 2009-12-21 04:01:00 Description: Aristotle said “man is a political animal” meaning men live best in a "polis" meaning “city”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD mogul – podictionary 1078 Updated: 2009-12-18 04:01:46 Description: the Grand Mogul was a kingly figure of northern India...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD obscure – podictionary 119 Updated: 2009-12-17 04:01:00 Description: the word scum also comes from the same root...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD luge – podictionary 1076 Updated: 2009-12-16 04:01:47 Description: One of the models of slidy things took on the local name for a “sled”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD swastika – podictionary 118 Updated: 2009-12-15 04:01:00 Description: There are a few other English words that have been used to describe what everyone now recognizes as a swastika....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD dubious – podictionary 1075 Updated: 2009-12-14 04:01:58 Description: the leading "du" of dubious means “two”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD bobsled – podictionary 1074 Updated: 2009-12-11 04:01:07 Description: the original bobsleds were not used for sport but for logging...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD slang – podictionary 117 Updated: 2009-12-10 04:01:00 Description: the word slang was once slang itself ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD blah – podictionary 1072 Updated: 2009-12-09 04:01:09 Description: most surprising is that the word only dates back to 1918...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD idiot – podictionary 116 Updated: 2009-12-08 04:01:00 Description: people were called idiots in the same way we might call someone a layman today...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD dictionary – podictionary 1071 Updated: 2009-12-07 04:01:18 Description: For instance listing words in alphabetical order didn’t occur to dictionary makers for quite a while....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD duck – podictionary 1037 Updated: 2009-12-04 04:01:51 Description: ducks stick their heads under water to feed; they duck their heads...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD tobacco – podictionary 115 Updated: 2009-12-03 04:01:00 Description: Shakespeare never even mentioned the evil weed...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD whiffling – podictionary 1069 Updated: 2009-12-02 04:01:43 Description: an interview with Adam Jacot de Boinod author of The Wonder of Whiffling...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD decimate – podictionary 114 Updated: 2009-12-01 04:01:00 Description: With 300 or 600 dead lying on the field, everyone else tended to behave....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD karaoke – podictionary 1032 Updated: 2009-11-30 04:01:35 Description: breaks down as kara meaning “empty” and oke short for okesutora...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD virtue – podictionary 1068 Updated: 2009-11-27 04:01:53 Description: Etymologically being a virtuous woman wasn’t such a great thing...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD revolution – podictionary 113 Updated: 2009-11-26 04:01:00 Description: the Latin roots of "revolution" were from an Indo-European "wel" meaning “to turn.”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD entail – podictionary 1066 Updated: 2009-11-25 04:01:22 Description: The word "entail" does literally mean “to attach a tail to”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD shave – podictionary 110 Updated: 2009-11-24 04:01:00 Description: Merriam-Webster thinks shave relates to a scabby Latin and Greek root but The Oxford English Dictionary says it’s doubtful. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD victim – podictionary 1065 Updated: 2009-11-23 04:01:48 Description: victims of ages past were restricted to having to have died to qualify as victims...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD talent – podictionary 1064 Updated: 2009-11-20 04:01:46 Description: you’ve got to use the talents you’ve been given in this life...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD orient – podictionary 112 Updated: 2009-11-19 04:01:00 Description: The words orient, orienteering and disoriented don’t appear related oriental rug...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Nike – podictionary 1062 Updated: 2009-11-18 04:01:38 Description: The shoe company Nike takes its name from a Greek goddess...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD commute – podictionary 111 Updated: 2009-11-17 04:01:00 Description: A special rail ticket was called a commutation ticket...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD deed – podictionary 1061 Updated: 2009-11-16 04:01:23 Description: the definition of deed is “that which is done.”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD trance – podictionary 1060 Updated: 2009-11-13 04:01:28 Description: a trance was the state of being between life and death...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD pant – podictionary 109 Updated: 2009-11-12 04:01:00 Description: reason our ancient forbearers were panting, is because they woke up in the night from a fantastic nightmare...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD nova – podictionary 1058 Updated: 2009-11-11 04:01:49 Description: at the time it was such a shocking idea to think that there might even be a new star in the sky that it got all the scientists talking...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD baby – podictionary 108 Updated: 2009-11-10 04:01:00 Description: baban evolved as a word from the sounds that babies make before they learn to talk...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD abacus – podictionary 1057 Updated: 2009-11-09 11:22:52 Description: the Latin word grew from a Greek word abak or abax that meant “slab”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD paint – podictionary 1056 Updated: 2009-11-06 04:01:09 Description: the Indo-European root meant “to cut.” ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD horsdoeuvre – podictionary 107 Updated: 2009-11-05 04:01:00 Description: in 1596, hors d’oeuvre was an architectural term and indicated a piece of masonry that jutted out from the rest building...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD pawn – podictionary 1054 Updated: 2009-11-04 04:01:24 Description: when the Norman Conquerors arrived in England with their French a paun meant “a walker”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD magazine – podictionary 106 Updated: 2009-11-03 04:01:00 Description: an Arabic word kazana meaning to “store up” whose sister word makazan, meaning “storehouse”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD pheasant – podictionary 1053 Updated: 2009-11-02 04:01:29 Description: the Greeks called this bird phasianos thinking they came from near the River Phasis which flows into the black sea....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD lampoon – podictionary 1052 Updated: 2009-10-30 04:01:26 Description: from a French word meaning “let us drink”?...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD bargain – podictionary 105 Updated: 2009-10-29 04:01:00 Description: One unconvincing theory is that the back and forth nature of bargaining is related to the fact that a boat carries goods to and fro....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD placenta – podictionary 1050 Updated: 2009-10-28 04:01:16 Description: It’s the flatness of the thing that gives it the nam...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD trapeze – podictionary 1049 Updated: 2009-10-27 04:01:21 Description: "Trapeza" meaning "table" was once "tetra peza" meaning “four feet.”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD yacht and special behind the scenes – podictionary 1048 Updated: 2009-10-26 04:01:51 Description: if you like what you’re reading I would hope you’d like to listen to it even more...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD leotard – podictionary 1047 Updated: 2009-10-23 04:01:23 Description: Jules Leotard was a French circus performer...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD curfew – podictionary 103 Updated: 2009-10-22 04:01:00 Description: Couvre is easily recognizable as “cover” and feu is the French word for “fire.” ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD aluminum – podictionary 1045 Updated: 2009-10-21 04:01:24 Description: the guy who came up with the stuff called it alumium at first...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD tragus – podictionary 1044 Updated: 2009-10-20 04:01:00 Description: Tragus in Greek meant “billy-goat”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD carpenter – podictionary 1043 Updated: 2009-10-19 04:01:42 Description: Latin root of "carpenter" a craftsman who made chariots, "carpentum" was a two wheeled vehicle...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD surname – podictionary 1042 Updated: 2009-10-16 04:01:55 Description: In the early 1200s surnames hadn’t caught on widely, by the end of the 1400s almost everybody had ‘em. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD SPECIAL podictionary episode 1041- interview with Philip Durkin Updated: 2009-10-15 04:01:44 Description: interview with Philip Durkin, the Principal Etymologist for The Oxford English Dictionary...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD blanket – podictionary 1040 Updated: 2009-10-14 04:01:40 Description: French word for “white” is "blanc" and a blanket is so called because it was made from white fluff...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD class – podictionary 1017b Updated: 2009-10-13 04:01:13 Description: The Latin "classis" came from the same root as their word used to mean a soldier was being “called up”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD ordeal – podictionary 102 Updated: 2009-10-12 04:01:00 Description: "ordeal" was part of Old English as "ordal" and "ordel"...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD neck – podictionary 1038 Updated: 2009-10-09 04:01:04 Description: some speculate that neck might stem from an Indo-European root knok meaning “a rise” or “high point.” ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD lesbian – podictionary 101 Updated: 2009-10-08 04:01:00 Description: lesbian, from the Greek island of Lesbos...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD annihilate – podictionary 1036 Updated: 2009-10-07 04:01:47 Description: "ne hilum" meant “not even a minimal quantity" ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD frolic – podictionary 1035 Updated: 2009-10-06 04:01:12 Description: "Frolic" may be rooted in a word meaning "to jump"...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD hue – podictionary 1034 Updated: 2009-10-05 04:01:07 Description: the Old French word hu may have evolved based on an inarticulate grunt...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD glue – podictionary 1033 Updated: 2009-10-02 04:01:47 Description: it isn’t easy to imagine how the Indo-Europeans used glue...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD macaroni – podictionary 100 Updated: 2009-10-01 04:01:00 Description: why pasta has certain names and why Yankee Doodle called a feather in his hat macaroni...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD pompous – podictionary 1031 Updated: 2009-09-30 04:01:25 Description: likely first associated with saying formal goodbyes...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD cuckoo – podictionary 1030 Updated: 2009-09-29 04:01:33 Description: When humans behave like cheating birds we take the word for their actions from the name of this bird...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD elbow – podictionary 1029 Updated: 2009-09-28 04:01:29 Description: the literal meaning of the word elbow is “arm bend”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD columbine – podictionary 1028 Updated: 2009-09-25 04:01:47 Description: around Shakespeare’s time columbine flowers got a bad reputation as having something to do with the seamier side of sex...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD tweed – podictionary 99 Updated: 2009-09-24 04:01:00 Description: seemed to think he had gotten a shipment of tweed not tweel and the rest is history...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Excalibur – podictionary 1027 Updated: 2009-09-23 04:01:34 Description: with only a glancing blow on the words "calibrate" and "caliper"...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD ostracize – podictionary 98 Updated: 2009-09-22 04:01:00 Description: From the same word root as "oyster"...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD stigma – podictionary 1026 Updated: 2009-09-21 04:01:33 Description: a mark made upon the skin by burning with a hot iron...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD intramural – podictionary 1025 Updated: 2009-09-18 04:01:19 Description: At wordcount.org "intramural" came in as just a little more popular than the word "thermoluminescence."...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD puke – podictionary 1024 Updated: 2009-09-17 04:01:49 Description: possibly related to the word spew...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD coroner – podictionary 1023 Updated: 2009-09-16 04:01:47 Description: The reason that coroners have a preoccupation with dead bodies is that in medieval England death was a major source of income for the government....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Greek – podictionary 95 Updated: 2009-09-15 04:01:00 Description: the country we know as Greece doesn’t call itself Greece...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD sheriff – podictionary 1022 Updated: 2009-09-14 04:01:24 Description: The word sheriff evolved out of shire reeve. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD cranberry – podictionary 1021 Updated: 2009-09-11 04:01:13 Description: from a German name meaning "crane berry"...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD petard – podictionary 94 Updated: 2009-09-10 04:01:00 Description: petard was a small bomb used to break down doors when storming castles...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD karate – podictionary 1020 Updated: 2009-09-09 04:01:40 Description: karate breaks into two Japanese words "kara" meaning “empty” and "te" meaning “hand”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Chardonnay – podictionary 1019 Updated: 2009-09-07 04:01:32 Description: Chardonnay named based on a place name...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD gap – podictionary 93 Updated: 2009-09-08 04:01:00 Description: in Old Norse it meant “a wide mouthed outcry”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD door – podictionary 1018 Updated: 2009-09-04 04:01:40 Description: the root of "door" shows up in Indo-European as "dhwer"...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD road – podictionary 92 Updated: 2009-09-03 04:01:00 Description: "road" meaning “street” comes from the path upon which one rides...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD hi-jinks – podictionary 1017 Updated: 2009-09-02 04:01:15 Description: "hi-jinks" was originally two words "high" and "jinks"...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD crony – podictionary 90 Updated: 2009-09-01 04:01:00 Description: from the Greek word "khronios" meaning “long lasting”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD frog – podictionary 1016 Updated: 2009-08-31 04:01:36 Description: it may be an ability to hop that gave frogs their name...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD uncle – podictionary 1015 Updated: 2009-08-28 04:01:49 Description: In Latin "avunculus" was specifically your mother’s brother...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD nun – podictionary 1014 Updated: 2009-08-26 04:01:28 Description: the forerunner of "nun" has been found meaning "we nurse"...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD appetite – podictionary 89 Updated: 2009-08-27 04:01:00 Description: the Latin roots of "appetite" mean “strong desire” and have nothing in particular to do with food...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD gun – podictionary 1013 Updated: 2009-08-24 04:01:17 Description: guns are called guns because someone dubbed a particularly impressive weapon with a woman’s name...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD orchard – podictionary 88 Updated: 2009-08-25 04:01:00 Description: break orchard into two parts—hortus and yard...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD vacuum – podictionary 1012 Updated: 2009-08-21 04:01:20 Description: natura abhorret vacuum...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD bildungsroman – podictionary 1011 Updated: 2009-08-19 04:01:54 Description: bildungsroman is certainly an uncommon word...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD moll – podictionary 84 Updated: 2009-08-20 04:01:00 Description: moll like Molly was once an alternative for the name Mary...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD forfeit – podictionary 77 Updated: 2009-08-13 04:01:00 Description: In Latin the original expression had been foris factum...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD giraffe – podictionary 1009 Updated: 2009-08-14 04:01:25 Description: It wasn’t called a giraffe, but instead a camelopard...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD foreign – podictionary 1010 Updated: 2009-08-17 04:01:34 Description: 700 years ago a chamber foreign was an outhouse...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD superstition – podictionary 83 Updated: 2009-08-18 04:01:00 Description: “superstition” has a literal meaning of “stand upon” or “stand over.”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD tawdry – podictionary 1007 Updated: 2009-08-10 04:01:27 Description: tawdry derives from St. Audrey...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD citizen – podictionary 76 Updated: 2009-08-11 04:01:00 Description: when the word citizen first appeared in English it meant someone lived in a city instead of the countryside...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD orangutan – podictionary 1008 Updated: 2009-08-12 04:01:06 Description: orangutan literally means “wild man” or “forest man” ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD lotus – podictionary 738 Updated: 2009-08-03 04:01:08 Description: There seems to be a lesson here, some kind of cautionary tale about drugs. But perhaps the lesson has been lost on us. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD replica – podictionary 743 Updated: 2009-08-04 04:01:45 Description: A reproduction of a work of art, by the artist that made the original. It is so called to distinguish it from a "copy," which is made by another artist....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD clique – podictionary 748 Updated: 2009-08-05 04:01:18 Description: The word clique sounds French doesn’t it. Well, it was.Of course it means “a tight group of people” and is often used in a disparaging way. You don’t want your kids hanging out in cliques because there are sure to be tears as...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD zodiac – podictionary 1006 Updated: 2009-07-31 04:01:12 Description: the etymology of "zodiac" goes back to the same root as "zoo"...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Charles Makes Excuses Updated: 2009-08-02 15:20:53 Description: Today I am only here to say that things have been busy here at podictionary world headquarters; busy and soggy. My normal routine has been temporarily disrupted by travel and childcare demands, plus it’s been raining non-stop for weeks and that’s...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD drive – podictionary 1002 Updated: 2009-07-27 04:01:30 Description: for most of history "drive" was to force animals to move ahead of you...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD school – podictionary 1003 Updated: 2009-07-28 04:01:55 Description: school, etymologically at least, means “taking it easy.”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD hobnob – podictionary 1004 Updated: 2009-07-29 04:01:00 Description: originally hobnob meant “to have and to have not”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD claptrap – podictionary 1000 Updated: 2009-07-22 04:01:46 Description: claptrap is literally a device, a trap, that is designed to capture applause; clapping...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD comma – podictionary 1001 Updated: 2009-07-24 04:01:52 Description: In Greek the root word meant “a piece cut off”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Wednesday – podictionary 86 Updated: 2009-07-21 04:01:00 Description: Thor’s dad, Woden is remembered in Wednesday...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD budget – podictionary 999 Updated: 2009-07-20 04:01:48 Description: In Latin "bulga" meant “a leather bag or knapsack.” ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD microphone – podictionary 997 Updated: 2009-07-15 04:01:28 Description: If you wanted to say “small sound” in Greek you’d say microsphon...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD jovial – podictionary 998 Updated: 2009-07-17 04:01:31 Description: jovial literally means “of Jove” ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD coffee – podictionary 80 Updated: 2009-07-07 04:01:00 Description: the word "coffee" may have meant “to be without appetite” and designated a type of wine....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD beta – podictionary 994 Updated: 2009-07-08 04:01:03 Description: Phoenicians attributed a meaning to the letter, "bayt" was their word for “house.”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD climate – podictionary 995 Updated: 2009-07-10 04:01:36 Description: in Indo-European the word meaning “to lean” was "klei"...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD bulldoze – podictionary 996 Updated: 2009-07-13 04:01:57 Description: bull dosing gave the term bulldoze a meaning of brute force...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD scapegoat – podictionary 82 Updated: 2009-07-14 04:01:00 Description: William Tindale translated Leviticus from Hebrew and invented scapegoat...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD nomad – podictionary 993 Updated: 2009-07-06 04:01:27 Description: The word "nomad" is related to the portioning out of pasture lands....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD yarn – podictionary 992 Updated: 2009-07-03 04:01:58 Description: the ancient word for a kind of cord made from the insides of animals grew into our word yarn...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD jungle – podictionary 75 Updated: 2009-06-25 04:01:00 Description: in Hindi and even more earlier in Sanskrit "jungle" didn’t denote a rainforest but a dry desert...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD town – podictionary 989 Updated: 2009-06-26 04:01:55 Description: town meant “an enclosed space” and was more likely to apply to a farm...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD tennis – podictionary 990 Updated: 2009-06-29 03:23:29 Description: the word tennis comes from the French word tenir meaning “to hold” or “to take.” ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD gasoline – podictionary 78 Updated: 2009-06-30 04:01:00 Description: after the Greek concept of chaos, except transcribed to the word gas instead of chaos...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD channel – podictionary 991 Updated: 2009-07-01 04:01:15 Description: Channel first turns up in English back around the year 1300...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD public – podictionary 986 Updated: 2009-06-19 04:01:34 Description: it turns out that the typo "pubic" has roots deep in the etymology of the word "public"...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD snake – podictionary 987 Updated: 2009-06-22 04:01:36 Description: the words "snake" and "serpent" slither back to a root meaning of something that creeps and crawls...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD curry – podictionary 71 Updated: 2009-06-23 04:01:00 Description: an earlier existence of the word curry meant to “brush” or “rub down,”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD thrill – podictionary 988 Updated: 2009-06-24 04:01:56 Description: "thrill" is related to "drill" and "avatar" and "nostril."...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD adamant – podictionary 983 Updated: 2009-06-12 04:01:53 Description: Medieval scholars read this word adamant in those older documents and tried to figure out what exactly the authors were trying to get at....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD park – podictionary 984 Updated: 2009-06-15 04:01:24 Description: the parent word was parricus—a Latin word meaning “fence”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD grotesque – podictionary 69 Updated: 2009-06-16 04:01:00 Description: grotesque is “from a grotto” just as picturesque is “from a picture” ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD poach – podictionary 985 Updated: 2009-06-17 04:01:12 Description: the reason the cooking method is called poaching is the yolk appears to be in a little bag...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD doodle - podictionary 981 Updated: 2009-06-08 04:01:11 Description: the doodle you do with a pencil could possibly be named because it's seen as foolish...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD shoe - podictionary 64 Updated: 2009-06-09 04:01:00 Description: etymologists aren’t sure if "shoe" goes back to a word related to walking or a different word meaning “to cover”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD pixel - podictionary 982 Updated: 2009-06-10 04:01:43 Description: a pixel (or pix-el) is literally and figuratively a "picture element." ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD antique - podictionary 68 Updated: 2009-06-11 04:01:00 Description: Antique is from the Latin antiquus, meaning “former” or “ancient” ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD snoop - podictionary 980 Updated: 2009-06-05 12:04:21 Description: from Dutch and German. In a number of Germanic languages snoepen means to "buy candy"...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD mea culpa - podictionary 978 Updated: 2009-06-01 04:01:39 Description: Latin for “through my own fault” ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD giggle - podictionary 73 Updated: 2009-06-02 04:01:00 Description: an onomatopoeia; the word "giggle" imitates the sound of a giggle...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD pal - podictionary 979 Updated: 2009-06-03 04:01:26 Description: "pal" in Romani had been "phral" thought to be related to a Sanskrit word meaning “brother.” ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD hyphen - podictionary 974 Updated: 2009-05-25 04:01:36 Description: The Greek meaning of the word hyphen is “in one”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD dine - podictionary 66 Updated: 2009-05-26 04:01:00 Description: "dine" is thought to come from a Latin root "disjejunare"...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD fire - podictionary 975 Updated: 2009-05-27 04:01:17 Description: Indo-European had two different words for things like fire. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Dutchdouble - podictionary 976 Updated: 2009-05-28 04:01:45 Description: double Dutch was applied to a language you didn’t understand...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD holocaust - podictionary 977 Updated: 2009-05-29 04:01:53 Description: holocaust literally means “wholly burned”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD cow - podictionary 972 Updated: 2009-05-20 04:01:18 Description: the plural of "cow" used to be "kine."...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD typhoon - podictionary 973 Updated: 2009-05-22 04:02:13 Description: one of those rare words that blew in from two places with similar enough meanings that one word came to apply in both cases...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD salacious - podictionary 971 Updated: 2009-05-18 04:01:57 Description: literally something that is salacious is something that makes people want to jump their partner...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD gossip - podictionary 67 Updated: 2009-05-19 04:01:00 Description: a gossip was someone who came to sponsor a child at their baptism...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD punt - podictionary 969 Updated: 2009-05-14 04:01:55 Description: The glass blower stuck a blob of molten glass on an iron pole called a "pontil" from French meaning “little point.” ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD bee - podictionary 970 Updated: 2009-05-15 11:42:09 Description: it is the sound of these insects that gives them their name...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD dude - podictionary 61 Updated: 2009-05-12 04:01:00 Description: "dude" appears to be a word that sprung from the pages of a newspaper one day and was instantly adopted by everybody...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD franchise - podictionary 968 Updated: 2009-05-13 04:01:26 Description: The Franks took their tribal name from the word for their favorite weapon, a spear. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD lobby - podictionary 967 Updated: 2009-05-11 04:01:02 Description: The root meaning of lobby is of “shelter” and ultimately may have evolved from the same root as the word leaf...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD handicap - podictionary 964 Updated: 2009-05-04 04:01:44 Description: handicap was once three words “hand in cap.”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD colonel - podictionary 59 Updated: 2009-05-05 04:01:00 Description: the person who merited this title lead a column of soldiers: column, colonel...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD valedictorian - podictionary 965 Updated: 2009-05-06 04:01:55 Description: valediction back in Latin meant "farewell speech"...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD banter - podictionary 966 Updated: 2009-05-08 04:01:17 Description: Jonathan Swift claimed the word borrowed from “the bullies in White Friars.” ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD CBC interview - podictionary special Updated: 2009-05-01 04:01:46 Description: Charles Hodgson interviewed on CBC about History of Wine Words...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD hyperbole - podictionary 962 Updated: 2009-04-27 04:01:19 Description: literally “cast beyond” or “over throw” as you might do when you fire a baseball above the reach of a teammate. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD scrumptious - podictionary 57 Updated: 2009-04-28 04:01:00 Description: It might be from scrumptious or it might be related to scrimp...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD tarantula - podictionary 963 Updated: 2009-04-29 04:01:33 Description: From the Italian city of Taranto...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD sanction - podictionary 958 Updated: 2009-04-17 04:01:36 Description: sanction is etymologically related to the words sacred and saint...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD sincere - podictionary 959 Updated: 2009-04-20 04:01:19 Description: Latin sincerus meaning “clean,” or “pure” originates in Indo-European roots sem meaning “one” and ker meaning “growth.”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD discombobulate - podictionary 56 Updated: 2009-04-21 04:01:00 Description: discombobulate was not an assembly of other legitimate word components. Instead it was a product of our human fancy....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD hype - podictionary 960 Updated: 2009-04-22 04:01:47 Description: we think of hype as meaning revved up but etymologically it comes from "down”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD ace - podictionary 961 Updated: 2009-04-24 04:01:03 Description: An Etruscan source is suggested by John Ayto, the OED suggests instead a Tarentine word ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD enchilada - podictionary 956 Updated: 2009-04-13 04:01:00 Description: enchilada has quite a responsibility for a meal whose name really means “seasoned with chilies.” ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD terrorist - podictionary 50 Updated: 2009-04-14 04:01:00 Description: The Indo-European root that gave Latin the word terror was ter and meant to “tremble” or “shake.”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD frugal - podictionary 957 Updated: 2009-04-15 04:01:17 Description: Back in Latin frugalis meant not only “economical,” but “useful” and came from a root frux meaning “profit.” ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD flag - podictionary 953 Updated: 2009-04-06 04:01:49 Description: before the word flag emerged a flag was called a fane. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD geezer - podictionary 43 Updated: 2009-04-07 04:01:00 Description: before the word geezer there was guiser, as in “one who puts on a guise”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD uncanny - podictionary 954 Updated: 2009-04-08 04:01:37 Description: the same Indo-European roots as the word know...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD truck - podictionary 955 Updated: 2009-04-10 04:01:11 Description: the Greek word it came from was trechein meaning “to run.”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD euphemism - podictionary 952 Updated: 2009-04-03 04:01:02 Description: from Greek euphemism literally means "to speak fair," that's fair as in "beautiful."...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD pneumonia - podictionary 951 Updated: 2009-04-01 04:01:17 Description: The root of pneumonia goes back to an Indo-European word pleu meaning "to flow."...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD style - podictionary 950 Updated: 2009-03-30 04:01:27 Description: Here's how style got from a stick in the ground to being a fancy hat or pair of shoes. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD impair - podictionary 41 Updated: 2009-03-31 04:01:00 Description: Indo-European root ped meaning "foot" gave the Latin root peior a meaning "to stumble"...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD grass - podictionary 36 Updated: 2009-03-24 04:01:00 Description: the word grass is related to the word green...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD dromedary - podictionary 948 Updated: 2009-03-25 04:01:59 Description: bicycle races at the velodrome. the drome part that fits into dromedary and means "running."...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD court - podictionary 40 Updated: 2009-03-26 04:01:00 Description: court has an Indo-European root gher meaning to "grasp" or "enclose"...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD egregious- podictionary 949 Updated: 2009-03-27 04:01:37 Description: something egregious was something that stood out from the heard, like a black sheep...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD elf - podictionary 947 Updated: 2009-03-23 04:01:41 Description: the word elf may be related to the Indo-European root albho meaning "white."...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD sand - podictionary 946 Updated: 2009-03-20 04:01:40 Description: the word sand has almost unchanged since the time of Indo-European language...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD admiral - podictionary 944 Updated: 2009-03-16 04:01:27 Description: The Arabic root of admiral is the same as emir...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD gross - podictionary 32 Updated: 2009-03-17 04:01:00 Description: William Shakespeare used it comparing “things rank and gross in nature.” ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD lift - podictionary 945 Updated: 2009-03-18 04:01:28 Description: back in Old Norse the word’s ancestor meant “air” or “sky.”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD vacation - podictionary 31 Updated: 2009-03-12 04:01:00 Description: The root of "vacation" is "vacare" meaning “to be empty” with an Indo-European root "eu" meaning “leave” or “abandon.” ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD pornography - podictionary 943 Updated: 2009-03-13 04:01:07 Description: the word "pornography" itself is much like "bibliography" or "lexicography," the -graphy ending means “writing about” and comes from Greek...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD obsessed - podictionary 941 Updated: 2009-03-09 04:01:18 Description: The Latin word was obsidere and the literal meaning is “before to sit”; so that the figurative meaning is that the devil is sitting before you. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD somersault - podictionary 28 Updated: 2009-03-10 04:01:00 Description: from Latin it was two words "supra" and "saltus" literally meant “above leap” figuratively “jump over.” ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD casual - podictionary 942 Updated: 2009-03-11 04:01:23 Description: at its root the word "casual" actually means “by chance”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD restaurant - podictionary 938 Updated: 2009-03-02 04:01:15 Description: a restaurant is etymologically supposed to “restore” you...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD stable - podictionary 26 Updated: 2009-03-03 04:01:00 Description: etymologically "stable" means that it’s “likely to stand” or “a place to stand”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD virgin - podictionary 939 Updated: 2009-03-04 04:01:16 Description: virgin appears first in English around the year 1200...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD nostalgia - podictionary 940 Updated: 2009-03-06 04:01:12 Description: Greek roots were nostos meaning “return home” and algos meaning “pain.”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD history - podictionary 937 Updated: 2009-02-27 04:01:49 Description: in Greek the word "histor" at first meant a “wise” or “learned man”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD ago - podictionary 935 Updated: 2009-02-23 04:01:39 Description: two words "ago" was made up of were "a" meaning “away” and "go" or "gone," so that "ago" literally means “gone away.” ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD recreation - podictionary 23 Updated: 2009-02-24 04:01:00 Description: When recreation first appeared in English one of its main applications was to eating. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD exaggerate - podictionary 936 Updated: 2009-02-25 04:01:20 Description: he Latin meaning of exaggerate was to “over aggregate.”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD apocalypse - podictionary 932 Updated: 2009-02-16 04:01:27 Description: Apocalypse is Greek for "uncover" or "disclose." So literally itdoesn't mean anything bad. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD sophisticated - podictionary 19 Updated: 2009-02-17 04:01:00 Description: when sophisticated first appeared in English around the time of Shakespeare it meant "not pure" or "not genuine." ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD expect - podictionary 933 Updated: 2009-02-18 04:01:19 Description: expect is from the Latin word exspectare where ex means "out" and spectare means "to look."...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD motto - podictionary 934 Updated: 2009-02-20 04:01:31 Description: Latin muttum to mean "grunt" or "mumble"; hardly the thing you'd want to paste on your proud national emblem....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD pretend - podictionary 930 Updated: 2009-02-11 04:01:50 Description: The Latin root breaks in to prae and tendere two words that mean literally "before, to streach." So to pretend was to hold out your reasons before you. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD ruthless - podictionary 931 Updated: 2009-02-13 04:01:22 Description: Beowulf and King Alfred both use rue to mean "sorrow" and "regret." The word ruth grew out of this Old English rue...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD bungle - podictionary 929 Updated: 2009-02-09 04:20:01 Description: the word bungle may have been formed based on some sound that represents a clumsy performance...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD malicious - podictionary 8 Updated: 2009-02-10 04:01:00 Description: malicious is abounding in malice and delicious is full of delight and courageous is full of courage...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD mob - podictionary 928 Updated: 2009-02-06 04:01:54 Description: they were called a "mob" because it was easier than "mobile vulgus" from Latin. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD proud - podictionary 926 Updated: 2009-02-02 04:01:36 Description: The English knew the French before William the Conqueror but based on the English adoption of "proud" they didn't much like them....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD potato - podictionary 14 Updated: 2009-02-03 04:01:00 Description: Potatoes as new arrivals began to be called bastard potatoes because they looked like what Europeans knew as potatoes, but they were somehow different. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD prude - podictionary 927 Updated: 2009-02-04 04:01:28 Description: The name Prudhomme literally means "proud man" people began referring to proper women as prude if they pretended children were produced in some manner other than the proven method...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD admire - podictionary 922 Updated: 2009-01-26 04:01:35 Description: admire comes to us via French from the Latin word admirari meaning "to wonder at." further back a root in Indo-European smei meant to laugh or smile and grew into the Latin mirus meaning wonderful. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD tyranny - podictionary 10 Updated: 2009-01-27 04:01:00 Description: Unlimited power is apt to corrupt the minds of those who possess it; and this I know, my Lords, that where law ends, there tyranny begins....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD pigeon - podictionary 923 Updated: 2009-01-28 04:01:38 Description: around the year 1450 there appeared from unknown sources a new meaning of the word pig...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD drivel - podictionary 925 Updated: 2009-01-30 04:01:17 Description: Drivel is a word with a history stretching back to Old English but it only took on this meaning of nonsense about 150 years ago. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD toque - podictionary 919 Updated: 2009-01-19 04:01:13 Description: The correct terminology for a tall white chef's hat is toque blanche....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD daughter - podictionary 9 Updated: 2009-01-20 04:01:00 Description: The timeless nature of a parent/daughter relationship means that a word was needed for this girl-child as long as humans have had language....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD tacit - podictionary 920 Updated: 2009-01-21 04:01:20 Description: a tacit agreement is an understanding that is communicated by a look or gesture...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD dexterity - podictionary 921 Updated: 2009-01-23 04:01:09 Description: The word adroit is from the French a droit meaning "to the right." Perhaps it is no coincidence that dexterity comes from the Latin word for the right hand. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD vamp - podictionary 918 Updated: 2009-01-16 04:01:51 Description: in 1225 a vamp was a shoe or sock and more specifically that part that got worn out...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD sound - podictionary 7 Updated: 2009-01-13 04:01:00 Description: bassoon literally means "deep sound"...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD verdant - podictionary 917 Updated: 2009-01-14 04:01:40 Description: verdant literally means "green." Edward Bradley, writing under the pen name Cuthbert Bede used both words to name the chief character in his book The Adventures of Mr. Verdant Green, An Oxford Freshman....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD makeshift - podictionary 916 Updated: 2009-01-12 04:01:57 Description: The key here is the etymology of the word shift. an earlier meaning of the word shift that was "arrange." ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD rook - podictionary 915 Updated: 2009-01-09 04:01:54 Description: Having meant a sort of crow for centuries, around 1500 we see the word being used in name calling—like being called a pig or a dog. By the time of Shakespeare calling someone a rook could specifically mean that they were a cheat or a thief....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD psychiatrist - podictionary 2 Updated: 2009-01-06 04:01:00 Description: In ancient Greece psyche referred that ethereal aspect of ourselves, also more literally to our breath, and by extension, this word for the fluttery breath of life became the Greek word for "butterfly." ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD conniption - podictionary 914 Updated: 2009-01-07 04:01:01 Description: Most of the dictionaries can't tell us where conniption might have come from. Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable suggests that it might have come from convulsion. Etymonline says that it is perhaps related to corruption or a rare English word ca...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD dapper - podictionary 913 Updated: 2009-01-05 04:01:22 Description: The source of the word dapper doesn't mean "well dressed," but instead means "heavy." The idea is that someone who is weighty and important will look the part....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD quaff - podictionary 911 Updated: 2008-12-29 04:01:27 Description: The word quaff, meaning "to drink deeply" appeared in English in the early 1500s, can you hear the sound of a beer being sucked back in the word?...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD regurgitate - podictionary 54 Updated: 2008-12-30 04:01:00 Description: a word like regurgitate implies the existence of another word, gurgitate....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD crisis - podictionary 912 Updated: 2009-01-02 04:01:43 Description: the reason a crisis is called a crisis is because it is in crisis that new directions are decided upon...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD hobby - podictionary 47 Updated: 2008-12-09 04:01:00 Description: the reason a horse got called a hobby was that many little working horses were actually named Hobby or Robbie or Hobin or Robin...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD penthouse - podictionary 904 Updated: 2008-12-10 04:01:37 Description: magazines like this often end up in bathrooms. A look at the etymology of the word penthouse makes this location kind of appropriate...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD quarantine - podictionary 905 Updated: 2008-12-12 04:01:46 Description: By the time the word quarantine got into English it meant "a forty day period"...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD nicotine - podictionary 906 Updated: 2008-12-15 04:01:49 Description: the plants were named nicotaine is because a guy named Jean Nicot was singing their praises as a cure for everything from headache to cancer...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD migraine - podictionary 49 Updated: 2008-12-16 04:01:00 Description: hemicrania meaning "half the head" became migraine. So it is pain in half the head that lead to the name. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD bayonet - podictionary 907 Updated: 2008-12-17 04:01:01 Description: The name is usually attributed to a town in France. Bayonne is thought to have become famous for the kind of knives or swords they made. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD junket - podictionary 908 Updated: 2008-12-19 04:01:13 Description: Where junket started was in Latin and then in French where words for "rushes" were applied to woven baskets. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD spruce - podictionary 910 Updated: 2008-12-22 04:01:47 Description: Is there a connection between "spruce up for a party" and spruce trees?...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD dice - podictionary 53 Updated: 2008-12-23 04:01:00 Description: they are called dice, because they give the numbers. The word dice comes from Latin datum meaning "that which is given." ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD zaftig - podictionary 897 Updated: 2008-11-24 04:01:48 Description: the Oxford English Dictionary's definition is "of a woman: plump, curvaceous, sexy."...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD cash - podictionary 37 Updated: 2008-11-25 04:01:00 Description: Money makes the world go round and cash is king. The word cash appeared in English right around the time of Shakespeare, and he, being right on top of this language thing, used it. Today’s podictionary word brought to you by GoToMeeting. Try i...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD media - podictionary 898 Updated: 2008-11-26 04:01:13 Description: in the spirit of social media I invite you to use the comment space in the blog post for this episode to tell me, and tell each other, why you think that phrase "the media is the message" is so memorable....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD coat - podictionary 899 Updated: 2008-11-28 04:01:02 Description: The legacy of these naming conventions survives in waistcoat and petticoat....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD interview - podictionary 900 Updated: 2008-12-01 04:01:18 Description: The word comes from French and was once two words entre voir literally meaning "to see between" but more figuratively "to see each other." By that definition telephone interviews would be an impossibility. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD museum - podictionary 44 Updated: 2008-12-02 04:01:00 Description: The Museum was singular, there was only one, and it was at Alexandria in classical times. In Greek it was the Museion because it was the temple of the muses....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD vitamin - podictionary 901 Updated: 2008-12-03 04:01:38 Description: And so it was that the word was punished by the removal of its "e" so that people wouldn't ever be fooled again into thinking that a vitamin needed to be an amine. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD pretzel - podictionary 902 Updated: 2008-12-05 04:01:47 Description: The religious observance drains out of his account when he relates that the temperance movement has caused wines, cordials and liquors to be replaced with coffee and lemonade....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD bellwether - podictionary 903 Updated: 2008-12-08 04:01:22 Description: I took a look in the newspapers at how the word bellwether was being used. The shopping trends between American Thanksgiving and Christmas are said to be a bellwether of the economy. The number of Harvard grads taking jobs in the financial sector wa...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD cancer - podictionary 11 Updated: 2008-11-04 04:01:00 Description: The idea (as reported to us by an ancient physician named Galen) is that a tumor is a central mass with enlarged blood vessels running into it and looks vaguely like a crab with its legs & claws sticking out around it....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD sophomore - podictionary 889 Updated: 2008-11-05 04:01:05 Description: sophomore literally means half wise and half stupid, as a well educated but highly inexperienced person might seem...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Egypt - podictionary 890 Updated: 2008-11-07 04:01:18 Description: Ptah was the god of creation. You can hear his godly name at the end of the word Egypt....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD incubate - podictionary 891 Updated: 2008-11-10 04:01:43 Description: The Latin root of the word is incubare which figuratively meant to "hatch" or "brood," but literally means "to lie on."...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD clue - podictionary 24 Updated: 2008-11-11 04:01:00 Description: Today we use the metaphor of the "thread of a conversation" and similarly our ancestors used the metaphor of a ball or "clue" of thread as an aid in finding their way through a maze. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD felon - podictionary 892 Updated: 2008-11-12 04:01:04 Description: t turns out that most fat dictionaries list two different words felon. One of these is an old word meaning a "big zit" or "enflamed pustule."...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD disheveled - podictionary 893 Updated: 2008-11-14 04:01:56 Description: Geoffrey Chaucer used the word dishevley in The Canterbury Tales and by it he meant "bald."...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD scale - podictionary 894 Updated: 2008-11-17 11:48:12 Description: Weigh scales come instead from an Old Norse word skal that meant "a drinking bowl." So weigh scales came about because they are made with two pans or bowls, one hanging on each side. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD ghetto - podictionary 34 Updated: 2008-11-18 04:01:00 Description: English takes the word ghetto from Italian where getto means foundry. The reason is that in the 1500s Jews living in Venice were required to live on one particular island, which had previously been the site of a foundry....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD guppy - podictionary 895 Updated: 2008-11-19 04:01:46 Description: "Very interestink" thought Dr. Albert Carl Ludwig Gotthilf Guenther, the zoology curator. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD cantaloupe - podictionary 896 Updated: 2008-11-21 04:01:08 Description: The scuttlebutt is that cantalupo is a name that means "howling of wolves" or "wolf song" but this etymology does not come from any recognized authoritative source so I'm treating it with a grain of salt. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD cleavage - podictionary 868 Updated: 2008-10-02 04:01:43 Description: It wasn't until 1946 that cleavage made an appearance as a word in English applying to the female form. That first citation for this use of cleavage appeared in Time Magazine....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD chauffeur - podictionary 1 Updated: 2008-10-28 04:01:51 Description: The word chauffeur is older than the internal combustion engine. It first appeared in a French dictionary in 1680, which means it must have been used in speech before that....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD calorie - podictionary 886 Updated: 2008-10-29 04:01:13 Description: People concerned about their waistlines count calories but just can't get up the energy to say the whole word and have adopted a convention of inaccurately calling food energy calories even though that's only one tenth of one percent of what they mea...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD gesticulate - podictionary 887 Updated: 2008-10-31 04:01:42 Description: It's Halloween, the streets filled ghosts gesticulating in excitement. It's appropriate they'll be carrying candy because the root of gesticulate has to do with carrying....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD facetious - podictionary 888 Updated: 2008-11-03 04:01:11 Description: the guy who called Shakespeare facetious wasn't mean spirited, he was doing a little boot-licking...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Ps and Qs - podictionary 881 Updated: 2008-10-21 04:01:22 Description: The Oxford English Dictionary has a list of seven possibilities on the origin in its June 2008 update to the entry; none of which it can give its stamp of authenticity....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD juxtaposition - podictionary 882 Updated: 2008-10-22 04:01:02 Description: In the audio version of this episode Penny Kome asks me to do incongruous juxtaposition. Yikes! Here's a helpful definition: incongruous, not congruous....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD maneuver - podictionary 884 Updated: 2008-10-24 04:01:06 Description: Originally the word was two Latin words manus opera. Manus meant "hand" and opera meant "labor" so that originally to maneuver was to do work by hand. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD insinuate - podictionary 885 Updated: 2008-10-27 04:01:36 Description: insinuate came from renaissance Latin and that in Latin its parent insinuare had already developed all the meanings we adopted into English. But having adopted all those meanings, we then promptly forgot most of them leaving us with our "indirect hin...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD marathon - podictionary 858 Updated: 2008-09-18 04:01:14 Description: a marathon is a race modeled after a guy who ran until he dropped dead...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD menial - podictionary 859 Updated: 2008-09-19 04:01:51 Description: it was the lowly nature of the household work that attached itself to the word before the word could get out of the house and be attached to lowly work elsewhere...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD rocket - podictionary 860 Updated: 2008-09-22 04:01:16 Description: It is believed that rockets were invented in China more than 1000 years ago. I instantly thought of fireworks in this context but it appears that before rockets were used for fireworks and joyous entertainment, they were used for killing people and w...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD bittersweet - podictionary 861 Updated: 2008-09-23 04:01:43 Description: how highly would you value any recommendations given to you by a guy who dressed in animal skins, lived in a broken-open grave, ate only after dark, and drank only the muddy swamp water that surrounded his pitiful home...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD echo - podictionary 862 Updated: 2008-09-24 04:01:53 Description: This episode brought to you by my book on the words we use for our bodies: Carnal Knowledge - A Navel Gazer’s Dictionary of Anatomy, Etymology, and Trivia available at bookstores or online. For more information please visit www.navelgazersdicti...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD seal - podictionary 864 Updated: 2008-09-26 04:01:22 Description: Today’s podictionary word brought to you by GoToMeeting. Try it free for 30 days by following the link www.gotomeeting.com/podcast Archibald Primrose was Prime Minister of England for a short time near the end of the reign of Queen Victoria. H...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD butterfly - podictionary 865 Updated: 2008-09-29 04:01:00 Description: Someone I know and love told me with much confidence that the word butterfly came about because some king or other tended to get his merds wixed up ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD betray - podictionary 866 Updated: 2008-09-30 04:01:07 Description: "If I had to choose between betraying my country and betraying my friend, I hope I should have the guts to betray my country."...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD pavilion - podictionary 867 Updated: 2008-10-01 04:01:46 Description: pavilion was army slang, the tents being named for the look of the door flaps tied up and back on either side resembling a butterfly's wings. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD amethyst - podictionary 869 Updated: 2008-10-03 04:01:49 Description: An amethyst is a purple kind of gemstone. It's a grapey kind of purple. It's this color that lead to its name....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD alibi - podictionary 870 Updated: 2008-10-06 04:01:30 Description: The series Law is a bottomless pit was certainly framed in a legal environment and so it should be no surprise that the legal term alibi moved from legal Latin to English with the assistance of this pamphlet....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD dregs - podictionary 871 Updated: 2008-10-07 04:01:51 Description: The word dregs came to English from Old Norse and appears first in 1300. Already though the lowly nature of dregs had extended the meaning of the word to include other undesirable things. There in the same documenta religious poemdregs shows up bo...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD sofa - podictionary 872 Updated: 2008-10-08 04:01:25 Description: Why would anyone have ever called a sofa a chesterfield?...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD pandemonium - podictionary 873 Updated: 2008-10-09 04:01:56 Description: The financial markets of late might be seen as a place where pandemonium rules. In actual fact things are a little more hopeful than that for two etymological reasons. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD litter - podictionary 874 Updated: 2008-10-10 04:01:27 Description: The French word for "bed" is lit, which had earlier been litere in Old French. The reason a cat has a litter of kittens is because she gives birth to them all in one bed....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD red-tape - podictionary 875 Updated: 2008-10-13 04:01:14 Description: The first person to write the phrase down was Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Later a woman knocked at his door and asked "Is this the house where Longfellow was born?" He said that it was not. She asked "Did he die here?" He answered "Not yet."...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD slide - podictionary 876 Updated: 2008-10-14 04:01:51 Description: [audio clip] “My name is Matt Mullenweg and an interesting word is slide.” I met Matt Mullenweg at a recent event called WordCamp. WordCamp wasn’t a meeting about words as you might expect in the context of this podcast for word lov...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD antidisestablishmentarianism - podictionary 877 Updated: 2008-10-15 04:01:50 Description: Antidisestablishmentarianism is like Paris Hilton....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD figure - podictionary 879 Updated: 2008-10-17 04:01:56 Description: The Romans were impressed enough by the Greeks that they adopted a whole pile of words from them. Figure is not one of them. Instead they adopted the idea of figure....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD prep - podictionary 880 Updated: 2008-10-20 04:01:58 Description: The first citation for prep as an abbreviation of prepare was over 100 years ago and originally meant to train a horse....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD amaze - podictionary 787 Updated: 2008-06-11 04:01:09 Description: before Shakespeare amaze meant "to put out of one's wits; to stun or stupefy, as by a blow on the head." ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD wreck - podictionary 789 Updated: 2008-06-13 04:01:26 Description: first citation 1077 and attributed to no less than William the Conqueror himself...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD squirrel - podictionary 768 Updated: 2008-05-15 05:01:29 Description: they all have one thing in common, a big bushy tail. In fact the entire species in named for it's tail....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD assess - podictionary 773 Updated: 2008-05-20 04:01:34 Description: The 1935 citation in the Oxford English Dictionary that liberates assessment for uses beyond taxation is credited to Webster. Since by 1935 Noah Webster had been dead lo those 90 years we will turn our gaze instead to the New International Dictionary...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD changes at podictionary Updated: 2008-06-01 15:09:17 Description: This is about where I'm headed with podictionary. I think I'd like to make some changes. First let me say that I am not going to stop producing podictionary; not for some time yet anyway....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD campaign - podictionary 780 Updated: 2008-06-02 04:01:19 Description: Political campaigns are conducted like military operations. That's fitting because in 1656 Thomas Blount in his Glossographia wrote of the word campaign: "A word much used among Souldiers, by whom the next Campaine is usually taken for the next Summ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD awkward - podictionary 781 Updated: 2008-06-03 04:01:32 Description: awkward can be broken into two parts; awk and ward. The ward part is the same as in toward, forward and backward. It indicates a direction. The Oxford English Dictionary actually says in its etymology "in an awk direction." So it turns out that there...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD nubile - podictionary 782 Updated: 2008-06-04 04:01:08 Description: At first in English a person was nubile with respect to their age; they were old enough to marry. The change in meaning from "marriageable" to "sexy" must have come during the decades when there was no sex without marriageor at least no public ackno...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD evict - podictionary 784 Updated: 2008-06-06 04:01:47 Description: The American Heritage Dictionary points back to an Indo-European root weik meaning "to fight" or "to conquer." The leading "e" in evict is an intensifier according to the Oxford English Dictionary, as if to conquer someone wasn't enough. By the time...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD accost - podictionary 785 Updated: 2008-06-09 04:01:55 Description: how Edmond Spenser accosted Geoffrey Chaucer...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD paparazzi - podictionary 786 Updated: 2008-06-10 04:01:00 Description: The paparazzo who was the subject of the first English citation supposedly practiced for quick photo-ops by having a friend toss a coin in the air so he could "shoot" it dead centre in his frame; along the lines of a western gunslinger. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD nutrition - podictionary 771 Updated: 2008-05-20 04:01:28 Description: If you've ever been or been close to a new mother when she hears babies crying you'll believe it when I make the connection between flow and nutrition. Just the sound of babies crying is usually enough to get a nursing mother's milk flowing....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD size - podictionary 772 Updated: 2008-05-21 04:01:52 Description: When size first appears in English back before the year 1300 it did not mean "dimension" or "magnitude." ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD curl - podictionary 774 Updated: 2008-05-23 04:01:29 Description: There was a little girl / Who had a little curl / Right in the middle of her forehead; / And when she was good / She was very, very good, / But when she was bad she was horrid....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD stall - podictionary 775 Updated: 2008-05-26 04:01:25 Description: The etymological sources give a bewildering spider-web of related words but seem to connect this kind of stalling of a car to the stall a horse might stand in. It's the standing still that counts....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD taxi - podictionary 776 Updated: 2008-05-27 04:01:51 Description: Those earliest German taxameters didn't actually compute the price of your ride, they simply connected to the wheels of the carriage so that they could show you how far you'd gone. So today we'd call them odometers. Strange that, because the word odo...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD cab - podictionary 777 Updated: 2008-05-28 04:01:42 Description: Back in Italian and into Latin the root meant "a goat jumping." In fact the American Heritage Dictionary tells me that caper meant "he-goat" back in Latin. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD bail - podictionary 779 Updated: 2008-05-30 04:01:39 Description: Would no one stand bail for her? Out of one of the upper balconies of the theatre leaps a sailor who swings down to the stage as he might descending rigging from his ship and offers to protect the actress while threatening the other poor actor. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD envelope - podictionary 769 Updated: 2008-05-16 05:01:04 Description: this is one of those words that came into English twice from French, each time with a slightly different meaning....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD matrix - podictionary 770 Updated: 2008-05-19 04:01:31 Description: it came as a mild surprise to me as I was writing my book on body words that the part of your fingernail called the matrix was so called because this was a Latin word for "womb"...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD chain - podictionary 764 Updated: 2008-05-09 05:01:21 Description: Two chemists were trying to figure out why a chemical reaction was behaving in a certain way when one pulled out his pocket watch and undid the chain that secured it to his vest. He wiggled it theorizing on the analogy to the chemical reaction and i...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD humble - podictionary 765 Updated: 2008-05-12 05:01:10 Description: In expressing that feeling of it being "pretty nice right here" I am actually not thinking of home as humble. The Oxford English Dictionary's first citation for humble is extracted from a sermon dated to the year 1250 and carries a definitions of: Ha...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD cricket - podictionary 766 Updated: 2008-05-13 05:01:19 Description: "That's disgusting. I mean, sushi is bad enough"...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD develop - podictionary 767 Updated: 2008-05-14 05:01:07 Description: Real estate development certainly doesn't reveal roads, houses and shopping malls that had previously been hidden in farmer's fields and woodlots. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD deliver - podictionary 760 Updated: 2008-05-05 05:01:21 Description: it seems that somewhere back in the mists of time people started thinking that setting something free with the word liber wasn't highfalutin enough and felt the need to add a de to it without actually changing the meaning...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD cuisine - podictionary 761 Updated: 2008-05-06 05:01:19 Description: The French might be seen as great cooks these days but the etymology of the word cuisine reveals the dirty little secret that they learned it from someone else....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD dilettante - podictionary 762 Updated: 2008-05-07 05:01:15 Description: This seems to be a word thatlike amateurstarted out as a good thing but has come down to us as a bit of a not-so-good thing. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD OUPblog feed now in iTunes directory Updated: 2008-04-17 14:14:16 Description: This is just a quick non-episode of podictionary to let subscribers know that the Oxford University Press blog feed for my Thursday episodes can now be found in the iTunes podcast directory. If you use iTunes you can subscribe to the OUPblog feed mos...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD club - podictionary 749 Updated: 2008-04-18 05:01:59 Description: Groucho Marx was accepted as a member of a very exclusive club called the Friar's Club and then sent them a telegram saying "Please accept my resignation. I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member."...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD turmoil - podictionary 750 Updated: 2008-04-21 05:01:32 Description: The theory is that "turmoil" arose from Old French and meant a container that was part of a mill. The container was always in motion to shake the grain into the grindstone of the mill....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD porcupine - podictionary 751 Updated: 2008-04-22 05:01:56 Description: Shortly after the word porcupine waddled its way into English the French king Louis XII came to the throne. He brought with him the fearsome symbol of his family crest, the terror-inspiring porcupine....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD tea - podictionary 752 Updated: 2008-04-23 05:01:01 Description: both coffee and tea show up in the written record in the same year1598and in the same document, but tea came out as chaa and didn't turn up again as tea until 1655...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD dwarf - podictionary 754 Updated: 2008-04-25 05:01:08 Description: in some ways in an ancient world view, dwarves were seen on a par with the gods...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD scandal - podictionary 755 Updated: 2008-04-28 05:01:40 Description: this was the second coming for the word into English because we see citations for it hundreds of years before, but that first time it mutated into another English word slander and so scandal had to be rediscovered...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD cappuccino - podictionary 756 Updated: 2008-04-29 05:01:04 Description: how did a group of monks give their name to a fancy coffee drink?...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD filibuster - podictionary 757 Updated: 2008-04-30 05:01:07 Description: The Dutch term for a pirate was vrijbuiter and this appears to have quite quickly have been mutated in English mouths into filibuster. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD freebooter - podictionary 759 Updated: 2008-05-02 05:01:52 Description: The Dutch parent word is from a Germanic source and so maps pretty nicely to the English components free and boot that came to us from Old English and its Germanic roots. In this case boot doesn't mean the thing you pull onto your foot. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Webster2 - podictionary 747 Updated: 2008-04-16 05:01:33 Description: You might wonder how he gets away with it. For instance if I wanted to call my book The Oxford Dictionary of Body Parts I might just hear from an attorney...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD sparkle - podictionary 745 Updated: 2008-04-14 05:01:27 Description: Sparkle goes back to spark which the written record shows us as an Old English word used at least as early as the year 725. Before that the earlier path of this word remains dark and neither the OED nor others can tell us much about where it came fro...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Webster1 - podictionary 746 Updated: 2008-04-15 05:01:00 Description: Last summer I had the pleasure of meeting Johnny Carrera. Johnny Carrera is a dictionary artist. I bet you never even knew such a thing existed....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD outrage - podictionary 744 Updated: 2008-04-11 05:01:21 Description: In the play Hamlet the suicidal lead character's famous line talks about the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune. Hamlet is not talking about fortune taking out its rage on him. For Hamlet the slings and arrows just weren't being fair. The troubl...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD podictionary still elsewhere Thursdays Updated: 2008-04-10 05:01:52 Description: This is another non-episode of podictionary. Sometimes when you are looking for a web page instead of the information you want, your browser serves up “404 - not found.” Voicemail audio clip: Charles, this is Bruce Mar. It was not lost o...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD hunch - podictionary 740 Updated: 2008-04-07 05:01:55 Description: The earliest meanings had a sense of "push" to them. A hunch-back may be thought of as a back that is pushed up out of shape. When you hunch your shoulders you push them up By the mid 1800s a hunch could be a "tip" or a hint" that someone gave you, s...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD valet - podictionary 741 Updated: 2008-04-08 05:01:57 Description: The Oxford English Dictionary tells me that the word first appeared in English in 1567 and came from French. It links the word to two other words: vassal and varlet. Evidently in Old French the meaning of all three words evolved out of that for a ma...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD butler - podictionary 742 Updated: 2008-04-09 05:01:26 Description: Butler comes from French and means "bottle bearer."...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD hunch - podictionary 740 Updated: 2008-04-07 05:01:55 Description: The earliest meanings had a sense of "push" to them. A hunch-back may be thought of as a back that is pushed up out of shape. When you hunch your shoulders you push them up By the mid 1800s a hunch could be a "tip" or a hint" that someone gave you, s...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD vellum - podictionary 735 Updated: 2008-03-31 05:01:25 Description: Paper that is 600 or 1200 years old is usually not paper anymore but dust. Instead of using paper the scribes of the day used parchment and vellum. These materials protected old documents so well because they had earlier been designed to protect anim...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD loyal - podictionary 736 Updated: 2008-04-01 05:01:58 Description: You know of course that Henry VIII went though wives like most people go through cars; exciting at first, but after a few years you start thinking of a newer model. I suppose loyalty was most important to Henry when someone was being loyal to him, no...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD jiggery-pokery - podictionary 737 Updated: 2008-04-02 05:01:01 Description: The place where jiggery-pokery first surfaced in 1893 was in A glossary of words used in the county of Wiltshire. I was able to lay electronic hands on this old glossary and it tells us a few things. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD podictionary elsewhere Thursdays Updated: 2008-04-03 05:01:13 Description: There’s no podictionary episode here today. That’s for the very GOOD reason that starting today Thursday episodes of podictionary will be carried on the Oxford University Press blog. This means that if you want to hear Thursday episodes o...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD ode - podictionary 739 Updated: 2008-04-04 05:01:37 Description: The guy who first did set ode to paper was a dictionary maker named Thomas Elyot. As I reported earlier Thomas Elyot was fortunate enough to have King Henry VIII take an interest in his dictionary project. That was after another little task King Henr...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD vomit - podictionary 734 Updated: 2008-03-28 05:01:07 Description: Some years ago I went to see a play. As we sat reading the program before the lights dimmed I was interested to see a note apologizing to patrons for any inconvenience during the construction of the theatre's new vomitorium. I've stopped going to th...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD stickler - podictionary 730 Updated: 2008-03-24 05:01:03 Description: The first citation we have for stickler is from another dictionary maker, Thomas Elyot. He lived during the time of Henry VIII and was on good terms with the king. It seems that Henry VIII even took an interest in Thomas Elyot's dictionary. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD affidavit - podictionary 731 Updated: 2008-03-25 05:01:43 Description: it came from Latin and the lawyers of the time were using it because the literal English translation of the Latin affidavit was "has stated on oath." It's the fid in the middle of affidavit that gives us the oath, or at least a pledge of faith. It's ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD caucus - podictionary 732 Updated: 2008-03-26 05:01:13 Description: John Adams says that the Caucus Club drank phlip (a mix of beer and whiskey). American Heritage dictionary says that the club's name comes from a Latin word caucus meaning a "drinking vessel." Not everyone agrees....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD nephew - podictionary 733 Updated: 2008-03-27 05:01:39 Description: According to the American Heritage Dictionary there was an Indo-European root nepot that didn't mean the son of your sibling necessarily, but could also mean "grandson." ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD etiquette - podictionary 729 Updated: 2008-03-21 05:01:59 Description: Emily Post clearly felt that if you knew your etiquette you could write your own ticket in life, and etymologically she's right. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD federal - podictionary 726 Updated: 2008-03-18 05:01:06 Description: The fact that the OED chooses Thomas Jefferson and George Washington as its first two citations for this usage tells me that the OED in this case didn't really search too hard to make sure they had the earliest citation. It just feels like these two...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD tax - podictionary 727 Updated: 2008-03-19 05:01:28 Description: If you feel that the government is putting the touch on you when they gather their taxes this is an etymologically accurate feeling....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD task - podictionary 728 Updated: 2008-03-20 05:01:55 Description: 600 years ago, the thinking is that the earliest meaning of the word task in English was in fact "tax." ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD interrogate - podictionary 725 Updated: 2008-03-17 05:01:59 Description: It's the rogare part that is more fun I think. In Latin it means "to ask" but the word root goes back to Indo-European and there reg- meant "to move in a straight line." Evidently the connection here is that when you ask someone a question you often ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD supercalifragilisticexpialidocious - podictionary 717 Updated: 2008-03-05 05:01:49 Description: It has to be a real word; for a while there it was worth 12 million dollars. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD boutique - podictionary 718 Updated: 2008-03-06 05:01:39 Description: boutique didn't show up in English so much from France or from French aristocracy in England, as from India...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD wheelbarrow - podictionary 719 Updated: 2008-03-07 05:01:48 Description: There is actually an Oxford English Dictionary entry under "drunk" for various proverbial phrases including from 1709 "drunk as a wheelbarrow." Think of yourself with a heavily loaded wheelbarrow weaving back and forth trying to keep it from dumping....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD courage - podictionary 720 Updated: 2008-03-10 05:01:13 Description: At first in English the word courage had meanings extending to all sorts of feelings one might attribute to one's heart: thoughts, feelings desires and passions; gentle, sexual, and violent. It was in the 1300s that courage began to make it into prin...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Dutch - podictionary 721 Updated: 2008-03-11 05:01:56 Description: When the word Dutch first shows up in English in 1380 it didn't actually restrict itself to this geographic location. If you have ever heard a German refer to their own country in their own language you may have been struck that it sounds kind of li...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD nepotism - podictionary 722 Updated: 2008-03-12 05:01:01 Description: An Italian guy named Gregorio Leti was so mad at the church that he published a book called Il Nipotismo di Roma. Since books that call down the powers that be and point out all their flaws are always popular, this one was translating in a flash into...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD parsimonious - podictionary 723 Updated: 2008-03-13 05:01:06 Description: Beyond meaning "cheap" and the Latin root meaning "to save" there are other Latin meanings - extends to saving your food - parsimonious and pastrami are cousins....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD foible - podictionary 724 Updated: 2008-03-14 05:01:28 Description: The Latin root has an unexpected meaning though; flebilis was a Latin word meaning "something to be wept over" from flere "to weep."...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD capsize - podictionary 713 Updated: 2008-02-28 05:01:53 Description: No one really knows why tipping a boat over is called capsizing but the OED and others do give one theory. The theory is that capsize means to "sink by the head" or top of the ship since cabo means "head" in several languages. So if a ship turns over...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD recipe - podictionary 714 Updated: 2008-02-29 05:01:38 Description: In Latin the parent word was recipere and meant "to take." About the time of William Shakespeare's birth just over 400 years ago physicians would give written instructions on what to take to make a sick person better and would head the list with thi...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD dandelion - podictionary 715 Updated: 2008-03-03 05:01:54 Description: there was a superstition that picking dandelions would make you wet your bed. For this reason another name for the plant was pissabed....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD disgruntled - podictionary 716 Updated: 2008-03-04 05:01:32 Description: from this human issuance of complaint being called a gruntle came the word disgruntled; having fired off the complaint you were in a grumpy mood...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD prescription - podictionary 712 Updated: 2008-02-27 05:01:18 Description: Grammarians start from a point of view that there is a right way and a wrong way to express yourselfthat's prescriptive. Lexicographers on the other hand are only reporting on words as they see them being used; no value judgmentsthat's descriptive....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD lurid - podictionary 709 Updated: 2008-02-22 05:01:48 Description: In his rage he wrote: "Must this then be suffered? He even published a rebuttal dictionary to The New World of Words called A World of Errors Discovered in The New World of Words....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD control - podictionary 710 Updated: 2008-02-25 05:01:57 Description: back in Latin the word contrarotulare came about as a blend of two earlier Latin words contra meaning "against" and rotulus meaning "roll." While the literal meaning of this Latin word is "against the roll" the figurative meaning is "duplicate regist...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD pound - podictionary 711 Updated: 2008-02-26 05:01:02 Description: It's the word octothorp that merits a little more time. Even though Americans had been calling this thing the pound sign or the number sign for 50 years Bell Labs was having none of it. So in 1974 the magazine Telephony announced that this symbol "at...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD spur - podictionary 705 Updated: 2008-02-18 05:01:30 Description: If you are a hunter you'll know that spoor are droppings that allow you to track an animal. But the reason these droppings are called spoor is because the root meaning of spoor is the track or trail of the animal itself. In a number of European railw...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD cinema - podictionary 706 Updated: 2008-02-19 05:01:46 Description: The Greek word for "motion" is kinema and before we ever had the word cinema we first had to labor under the much more tongue tiring kinematograph. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD desiderata - podictionary 707 Updated: 2008-02-20 05:01:29 Description: Even though Les Crane was a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars and had a right to be here he didn't have a right to infringe on the Desiderata copyright and so got sued for it. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD syllabus - podictionary 708 Updated: 2008-02-21 05:01:42 Description: The problem was that Cicero wasn't writing about a list, he was writing about the little tags on the scrolls and the classics scholars jumped to conclusions. So everybody makes mistakes; who really cares. And that's the second point; who cares? ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD despise - podictionary 704 Updated: 2008-02-15 05:01:52 Description: before being French it was Latin and before that the American Heritage Dictionary points all the way back to Indo-European. Although the Indo-Europeans must have had a hate-on for one another from time to time the whole word despise doesn't go back q...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD queen - podictionary 700 Updated: 2008-02-11 05:01:02 Description: the earliest meanings of the most ancient of these word rootssomething that sounded like gwenwas simply "woman." There was no royalty association at all. Which I guess means that The Queen is only human after all....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD pumpernickel - podictionary 701 Updated: 2008-02-12 05:01:20 Description: The common theme is that the bread was not thought to be very good. In fact in some renditions of the story the name arose because the bread is particularly hard to digest, at least according to the story teller. So hard to digest in fact that it cau...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD asylum - podictionary 702 Updated: 2008-02-13 05:01:25 Description: The Greek word made it into Latin and then in France as Latin morphed into French the word morphed a little before making it to English as asyle in about 1400. But unbeknownst to the users of this word asyle, another word was simultaneously seeking ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD vertigo - podictionary 703 Updated: 2008-02-14 05:01:29 Description: After I began looking up the word vertigo I stopped and asked a friend what it meant. This is a dangerous thing for me to do because my friends know I'm into dictionaries and they quickly become suspicious of why I might be asking....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD silhouette - podictionary 698 Updated: 2008-02-07 05:01:08 Description: Silhouette came from French because there was a guy responsible for the finances and budget of the French government Etienne de Silhouette. He must have been a little left leaning because he was very unpopular with the aristocracy; he seemed to be im...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD bitch - podictionary 699 Updated: 2008-02-08 05:01:18 Description: If you've ever seen a female dog in heat you'll know that her biology rules her and she doesn't seem to have much choice but to offer herself to any boy dog she chances to meet. A woman being called a bitch was being accused of being worse than a pro...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD allude - podictionary 690 Updated: 2008-01-28 05:01:01 Description: Back in Latin allude was originally two words ad ludere, ad meaning "to" and ludere meaning "play." So the reason that allusion is indirect reference is that the person is only playing with the reference. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD Gotham - podictionary 691 Updated: 2008-01-29 05:01:18 Description: Gotham is a legendary town populated by fools...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD oyster - podictionary 692 Updated: 2008-01-30 05:01:51 Description: The os- in the oyster word root is the same os- as in osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is a disorder of the bones and os- means "bone."...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD elope - podictionary 693 Updated: 2008-01-31 05:01:11 Description: Back in Shakespeare's day it was a crime. Back much further than that too. Back then to elope meant that you were already married and you were running away from your husband to hang with some other guy. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD available - podictionary 694 Updated: 2008-02-01 05:01:24 Description: The word avail has French parentage, but was actually born in England, the French word seemingly being just vail. Since most of French was once upon a time Latin, that French vail started out being the Latin valere meaning "worth" or "value." That's...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD rabid - podictionary 695 Updated: 2008-02-04 05:01:55 Description: Another name for rabies is hydrophobia. This translates from Latin and ultimately Greek to mean "fear of water" (actually the Oxford English Dictionary says "horror of water"). ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD sewer - podictionary 696 Updated: 2008-02-05 05:01:15 Description: Now I wouldn't think that being a sewer would be a very desirable job, but the fact is there are two words sewer. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD alimony - podictionary 697 Updated: 2008-02-06 05:01:26 Description: the editors of the OED thought that having an affair was a bad thing, while Susanna thought it was maybe a good thing...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD morphine - podictionary 670 Updated: 2007-12-27 05:01:50 Description: Somnus was the Roman god of sleep and one of his offspring was Morpheus, the god of dreams. In 1804 the opium poppy also had offspring, aided by a German chemist. In this case the offspring was known as morphine, also a bringer of dreams. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD fantasy - podictionary 671 Updated: 2007-12-28 05:01:06 Description: Way back in ancient Greek the word meant "to make visible" and was built on the root phaos meaning "light" which also gives us photon and photograph. One of the other meanings of the word fantasy that English inherited from earlier users of the word...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD ejaculate - podictionary 672 Updated: 2008-01-02 05:01:12 Description: Samuel Pepys did include on July 23, 1666 the word ejaculate in his diaries, but his meaning was the same one that Arthur Conan Doyle had Doctor Watson voice when he used the word in the Sherlock Holmes stories. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD hologram - podictionary 673 Updated: 2008-01-03 05:01:20 Description: The way a hologram works is similar to the way rainbow colors emerge from a greasy puddle. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD limbo - podictionary 674 Updated: 2008-01-04 05:01:07 Description: The border of hell definitely has some bad connotations to it. There are plenty of citations to back me up on this. Milton, Shakespeare, Johnson all use limbo with meanings equivalent to "oblivion", "prison" or "hell." With this in mind it seemed ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD exotic - podictionary 675 Updated: 2008-01-07 05:01:19 Description: The ancient Greeks used exo- to mean "outside" and so exotikos meant "from the outside." So for the ancient Greeks an exotic person was a foreigner. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD chameleon - podictionary 676 Updated: 2008-01-08 05:01:24 Description: In Greek chameleon is built on two words, except those two words don't make all that much sense in the context of what this thing is. The two words mean "ground lion" or "dwarf lion." For me it's a bit of a stretch to imagine anyone confusing these...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD meter - podictionary 677 Updated: 2008-01-09 05:01:48 Description: To achieve an exact length for the meter the Paris Academy of Sciences was given a huge budget. To get this budget they were obliged to reject a much simpler approach that had already been accepted French National Assembly. Even though this was pre...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD icon - podictionary 678 Updated: 2008-01-10 05:01:08 Description: I see that one of the more recent citations in the OED for an icon who is a person mentions a guy named Srinivasa Ramanujan. Depending on where you come from he can either be an icon of mathematical genius or an icon of Indian genius. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD rebel - podictionary 679 Updated: 2008-01-11 05:01:21 Description: The word rebel shows up in English as early as 700 years ago. Way back then the word seemed to obey Newton's third law that for every action there was an equal and opposite reaction. By this I mean that the "re" in rebel represents push-back....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD minx - podictionary 680 Updated: 2008-01-14 05:01:56 Description: The first citation for minx is actually as a common name for a dog just as spot or fido might be these days. We can imagine that people who loved their dogs began to name them with a name that meant "dear one." There was an old Dutch word minnekin t...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD tramp - podictionary 681 Updated: 2008-01-15 05:01:08 Description: The first citation we have for tramp is back in 1388 and the meaning it's given is "to walk with a heavy resonant step." Just exactly how bringing your foot down with force might have evolved into a meaning of a loose woman might leave you scratchin...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD tattoo - podictionary 682 Updated: 2008-01-16 05:01:57 Description: The word tattoo came to English in the journals of Captain James Cook. He was reporting on the habits of Polynesian peoples who he couldn't help but notice seemed to have designs printed right into their skin. This was unusual enough for an English...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD pounce - podictionary 683 Updated: 2008-01-17 05:01:46 Description: When a falcon pounces on his prey he does so with sharp claws. Our pouncing on houses for sale or delicious tomatoes evolved as an analogy to birds and animals pouncing on one another.In turn animal pouncing was so called because sharp claws of bird...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD mortar - podictionary 684 Updated: 2008-01-18 05:01:50 Description: A mortar and pestle is a simple tool used for grinding things. It consists of a bulky kind of bowlthat's the mortarand a club shaped pestle that is used to bash away at whatever is in the bowl to render it into smithereens. It may help you rememb...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD explicit - podictionary 685 Updated: 2008-01-21 05:01:58 Description: With the sexual meaning of "explicit" it's hard to notice that the word is actually closely related to the word "explain"unless you somehow think of pornographic videos as educational. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD nitrogen - podictionary 686 Updated: 2008-01-22 05:01:02 Description: people valued nitre or natron and so they called this gas (that's as common as dirt) "nitre forming"the gen in nitrogen means that the stuff forms nitre. Nitre was valuable 300 years ago or more because nitric acid was known as royal water for its a...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD budgie - podictionary 687 Updated: 2008-01-23 05:01:19 Description: The word budgerigar first appeared in 1847 in a book called Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia by a guy named Ludwig Leichhardt. He achieved what was then the longest overland journey in Australia by a European then he and his team seemed...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD delinquent - podictionary 688 Updated: 2008-01-24 05:01:26 Description: The deeper Latin root is a word linquere that didn't mean anything at all like "a young tough." Instead it meant "to leave." I can think of two possible reasons why a word meaning "gone-outa-here" might grow to mean "'a crook." ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD debris - podictionary 689 Updated: 2008-01-25 05:01:02 Description: The "bris" in debris means "broken" and had a more subtle tone to it than just something that was broken; the mode of breakage was by crushing. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD pounce - podictionary 683 Updated: 2008-01-17 05:01:46 Description: When a falcon pounces on his prey he does so with sharp claws. Our pouncing on houses for sale or delicious tomatoes evolved as an analogy to birds and animals pouncing on one another.In turn animal pouncing was so called because sharp claws of bird...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD mortar - podictionary 684 Updated: 2008-01-18 05:01:50 Description: A mortar and pestle is a simple tool used for grinding things. It consists of a bulky kind of bowlthat's the mortarand a club shaped pestle that is used to bash away at whatever is in the bowl to render it into smithereens. It may help you rememb...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD tattoo - podictionary 682 Updated: 2008-01-16 05:01:57 Description: The word tattoo came to English in the journals of Captain James Cook. He was reporting on the habits of Polynesian peoples who he couldn't help but notice seemed to have designs printed right into their skin. This was unusual enough for an English...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD tramp - podictionary 681 Updated: 2008-01-15 05:01:08 Description: The first citation we have for tramp is back in 1388 and the meaning it's given is "to walk with a heavy resonant step." Just exactly how bringing your foot down with force might have evolved into a meaning of a loose woman might leave you scratchin...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD rebel - podictionary 679 Updated: 2008-01-11 05:01:21 Description: The word rebel shows up in English as early as 700 years ago. Way back then the word seemed to obey Newton's third law that for every action there was an equal and opposite reaction. By this I mean that the "re" in rebel represents push-back....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD minx - podictionary 680 Updated: 2008-01-14 05:01:56 Description: The first citation for minx is actually as a common name for a dog just as spot or fido might be these days. We can imagine that people who loved their dogs began to name them with a name that meant "dear one." There was an old Dutch word minnekin t...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD icon - podictionary 678 Updated: 2008-01-10 05:01:08 Description: I see that one of the more recent citations in the OED for an icon who is a person mentions a guy named Srinivasa Ramanujan. Depending on where you come from he can either be an icon of mathematical genius or an icon of Indian genius. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD exotic - podictionary 675 Updated: 2008-01-07 05:01:19 Description: The ancient Greeks used exo- to mean "outside" and so exotikos meant "from the outside." So for the ancient Greeks an exotic person was a foreigner. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD chameleon - podictionary 676 Updated: 2008-01-08 05:01:24 Description: In Greek chameleon is built on two words, except those two words don't make all that much sense in the context of what this thing is. The two words mean "ground lion" or "dwarf lion." For me it's a bit of a stretch to imagine anyone confusing these...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD meter - podictionary 677 Updated: 2008-01-09 05:01:48 Description: To achieve an exact length for the meter the Paris Academy of Sciences was given a huge budget. To get this budget they were obliged to reject a much simpler approach that had already been accepted French National Assembly. Even though this was pre...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD limbo - podictionary 674 Updated: 2008-01-04 05:01:07 Description: The border of hell definitely has some bad connotations to it. There are plenty of citations to back me up on this. Milton, Shakespeare, Johnson all use limbo with meanings equivalent to "oblivion", "prison" or "hell." With this in mind it seemed ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD morphine - podictionary 670 Updated: 2007-12-27 05:01:50 Description: Somnus was the Roman god of sleep and one of his offspring was Morpheus, the god of dreams. In 1804 the opium poppy also had offspring, aided by a German chemist. In this case the offspring was known as morphine, also a bringer of dreams. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD fantasy - podictionary 671 Updated: 2007-12-28 05:01:06 Description: Way back in ancient Greek the word meant "to make visible" and was built on the root phaos meaning "light" which also gives us photon and photograph. One of the other meanings of the word fantasy that English inherited from earlier users of the word...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD ejaculate - podictionary 672 Updated: 2008-01-02 05:01:12 Description: Samuel Pepys did include on July 23, 1666 the word ejaculate in his diaries, but his meaning was the same one that Arthur Conan Doyle had Doctor Watson voice when he used the word in the Sherlock Holmes stories. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD hologram - podictionary 673 Updated: 2008-01-03 05:01:20 Description: The way a hologram works is similar to the way rainbow colors emerge from a greasy puddle. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD thesaurus - podictionary 669 Updated: 2007-12-21 05:01:01 Description: I don't think many people thumb through their Roget's anymore. It's much easier to right-click. So doesn't that make the traditional thesaurus a bit of a dinosaur? ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD hohoho - podictionary 665 Updated: 2007-12-17 05:01:40 Description: the OED tells me that in 1890 an Englishman recorded the fact that one African tribe referred to another tribe as ho, which was effectively calling them "a heap of dried peas." ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD beast - podictionary 666 Updated: 2007-12-18 05:01:23 Description: what's so beastly about the number 666? I am reminded of the times I've taken children on wilderness canoe trips. Sometimes they worry about animals in the woods. I ask them what animal do they think is the most dangerous species in the whole world...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD myriad - podictionary 667 Updated: 2007-12-19 05:01:15 Description: Myriad comes from ancient Greek and literally means "ten thousand." According to the Oxford English Dictionary it was pretty rare for them to express an overwhelmingly large number by this word myriad. Instead of using the word for "ten thousand", ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD insomnia - podictionary 668 Updated: 2007-12-20 05:01:25 Description: Insomnia means "not somnus" in Latin; somnus meaning sleep, but also being the Roman god of sleep. There is a whole family surrounding this state of being. Like many Roman gods Somnus was a continuation of an earlier Greek god Hypnos and had sons inc...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD siren - podictionary 663 Updated: 2007-12-13 05:01:33 Description: Sirens as used by police and ambulances were not actually invented as warning devices, instead these kind of sirens were invented as measurement devices to figure out what the frequency of sounds were. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD chopsticks - podictionary 664 Updated: 2007-12-14 05:01:48 Description: William Dampier spent lots of time as a pirate but also worked as a legitimate English navigator and captainalthough the line between pirate and legitimate English captain was sometimes pretty thin....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD health - podictionary 643 Updated: 2007-11-15 00:01:40 Description: Prince Philip is the Duke of Edinburgh and Queen Elizabeth’s husband and he is quoted as saying that his good health in old age is due to the number of banquets and formal events that he has attended at which people have toasted his health. Now...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD halibut - podictionary 644 Updated: 2007-11-16 00:01:13 Description: There is a fish restaurant in the touristy part of the city where I live that tries to entice diners in with fish-based puns. One urges them to eat fish “just for the halibut.” The pun of course is on “just for the hell of it”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD mentor - podictionary 645 Updated: 2007-11-19 00:01:43 Description: According to The Concise Oxford English Dictionary a mentor is “an experienced and trusted adviser.” The first citation for mentor in English is 1750 according to the Oxford English Dictionary. But it is very likely that you could have he...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD omen - podictionary 646 Updated: 2007-11-20 00:01:42 Description: The Devil’s Dictionary says that an omen is: A sign that something will happen if nothing happens. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that that omen came into English only in 1582 but that it comes from classical Latin where it also had a m...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD luxury - podictionary 647 Updated: 2007-11-21 05:01:11 Description: In the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations we find the following from the Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope: Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it. Now seeing it there in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations out...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD orgy - podictionary 648 Updated: 2007-11-22 05:01:55 Description: I’ll leave it to your imagination instead of relating what Urbandictionary’s very popular definitions say about the word orgy. Malcolm Muggeridge once wrote that “an orgy looks particularly alluring seen through the mists of righteo...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD wolf - podictionary 649 Updated: 2007-11-23 05:01:33 Description: When I was a young boy I had some stuffed animals that must have been produced as an early sort of marketing tie-in to the 1933 Disney film The Three Little Pigs. I’m not quite that old, but maybe the stuffed animals were. I actually don̵...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD vicious - podictionary 650 Updated: 2007-11-26 05:01:33 Description: The etymology of vicious is from French back to Latin. In the early 1300s when the word first entered English on the coattails of that punk William the Bastardleader of the band The Norman Invasionat first it meant "addicted to vice," "depraved" or...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD trollop - podictionary 651 Updated: 2007-11-27 05:01:10 Description: Trollop itself seems to have an etymology with rather loose morals, or at least loose word roots. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD junta - podictionary 652 Updated: 2007-11-28 05:01:39 Description: the clue to the roots of junta is in committee. As might be suspected of a Spanish word, junta is originally from Latin. It comes from a root meaning "to join" up until 1808 when junta takes on a decidedly military meaning. I see no evidence as to ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD fiasco - podictionary 653 Updated: 2007-11-29 05:01:16 Description: All these disasters out of a bottle.; because at root the word fiasco means "bottle." ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD university - podictionary 654 Updated: 2007-11-30 05:01:55 Description: Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world but when it began, almost instantly after the Norman Invasion, it wasn't called a university. Universitas is Latin and so Oxford's transition to university status, which happened in 1231 d...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD brand - podictionary 655 Updated: 2007-12-03 05:01:57 Description: Perhaps it's appropriate then that the word brand means "burn." My old employer got burned in my opinion, paying that much. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD penitentiary - podictionary 656 Updated: 2007-12-04 05:01:56 Description: Penitentiary didn't at first have to do with imprisonment. Instead it had to do with feeling badly about what you'd done. To feel penitent comes from a Latin root meaning "regret for one's actions." Obviously it's also related to the word repent. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD jail - podictionary 657 Updated: 2007-12-05 05:01:10 Description: had a laugh when I looked up the gaol spelling at Etymonline. Doug Harper's entry there reads: see jail, you tea-sodden football hooligan ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD porcelain - podictionary 658 Updated: 2007-12-06 05:01:46 Description: Looking at a piece of porcelain like a tea cup one is not reminded of shellfish, pigs or women's private parts, but looking at the etymology these connections are indeed there....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD china - podictionary 659 Updated: 2007-12-07 05:01:23 Description: Augustus was the ruler of Poland and Saxony and he agreed with what Arthur C Clarke would later say "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." And so he imprisoned a guy named Johann Frederick Bottger who was supposed to ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD inaugural - podictionary 660 Updated: 2007-12-10 05:01:39 Description: Clearly important was the behavior of birds so these guys looked not only at whether birds were chirping and how they were flyingin flocks or solobut also at how the holy chickens were pecking andwhen you killed a bird and cut it openhow it's ins...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD auger - podictionary 661 Updated: 2007-12-11 05:01:36 Description: Did he say "a nauger" or did he say "an auger"? ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD ginger - podictionary 662 Updated: 2007-12-12 05:01:28 Description: If you've ever been to a horse show you know the high value placed on the posture of the horses being judged. One of the techniques for getting a horse to carry its tail in the approved high position was to "ginger the horse." To put ginger up a...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD china - podictionary 659 Updated: 2007-12-07 05:01:23 Description: Augustus was the ruler of Poland and Saxony and he agreed with what Arthur C Clarke would later say "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." And so he imprisoned a guy named Johann Frederick Bottger who was supposed to ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD brand - podictionary 655 Updated: 2007-12-03 05:01:57 Description: Perhaps it's appropriate then that the word brand means "burn." My old employer got burned in my opinion, paying that much. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD penitentiary - podictionary 656 Updated: 2007-12-04 05:01:56 Description: Penitentiary didn't at first have to do with imprisonment. Instead it had to do with feeling badly about what you'd done. To feel penitent comes from a Latin root meaning "regret for one's actions." Obviously it's also related to the word repent. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD jail - podictionary 657 Updated: 2007-12-05 05:01:10 Description: had a laugh when I looked up the gaol spelling at Etymonline. Doug Harper's entry there reads: see jail, you tea-sodden football hooligan ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD porcelain - podictionary 658 Updated: 2007-12-06 05:01:46 Description: Looking at a piece of porcelain like a tea cup one is not reminded of shellfish, pigs or women's private parts, but looking at the etymology these connections are indeed there....more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD university - podictionary 654 Updated: 2007-11-30 05:01:55 Description: Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world but when it began, almost instantly after the Norman Invasion, it wasn't called a university. Universitas is Latin and so Oxford's transition to university status, which happened in 1231 d...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD fiasco - podictionary 653 Updated: 2007-11-29 05:01:16 Description: All these disasters out of a bottle.; because at root the word fiasco means "bottle." ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD junta - podictionary 652 Updated: 2007-11-28 05:01:39 Description: the clue to the roots of junta is in committee. As might be suspected of a Spanish word, junta is originally from Latin. It comes from a root meaning "to join" up until 1808 when junta takes on a decidedly military meaning. I see no evidence as to ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD trollop - podictionary 651 Updated: 2007-11-27 05:01:10 Description: Trollop itself seems to have an etymology with rather loose morals, or at least loose word roots. ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD luxury - podictionary 647 Updated: 2007-11-21 05:01:11 Description: In the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations we find the following from the Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope: Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it. Now seeing it there in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations out...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD orgy - podictionary 648 Updated: 2007-11-22 05:01:55 Description: I’ll leave it to your imagination instead of relating what Urbandictionary’s very popular definitions say about the word orgy. Malcolm Muggeridge once wrote that “an orgy looks particularly alluring seen through the mists of righteo...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD wolf - podictionary 649 Updated: 2007-11-23 05:01:33 Description: When I was a young boy I had some stuffed animals that must have been produced as an early sort of marketing tie-in to the 1933 Disney film The Three Little Pigs. I’m not quite that old, but maybe the stuffed animals were. I actually don̵...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD vicious - podictionary 650 Updated: 2007-11-26 05:01:33 Description: The etymology of vicious is from French back to Latin. In the early 1300s when the word first entered English on the coattails of that punk William the Bastardleader of the band The Norman Invasionat first it meant "addicted to vice," "depraved" or...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD creed - podictionary 642 Updated: 2007-11-14 05:01:47 Description: Creed is an old old word. It shows up in English 1000 years ago just before the Norman Conquest but it appears to trace from the Latin credo that means "I believe." Since church is all about belief it is easy to imagine this word coming to Old Engl...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD health - podictionary 643 Updated: 2007-11-15 05:01:58 Description: Prince Philip is the Duke of Edinburgh and Queen Elizabeth’s husband and he is quoted as saying that his good health in old age is due to the number of banquets and formal events that he has attended at which people have toasted his health. Now...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD halibut - podictionary 644 Updated: 2007-11-16 05:01:35 Description: There is a fish restaurant in the touristy part of the city where I live that tries to entice diners in with fish-based puns. One urges them to eat fish “just for the halibut.” The pun of course is on “just for the hell of it”...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD podictionary feedback episode # 14 Updated: 2007-11-17 17:00:59 Description: I haven’t posted a feedback episode in a long time. The reason for that is that by far the majority of feedback I’ve been getting have been requests for me to look into this or that word on behalf of a listener. Like this one: [AUDIO FILE...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD mentor - podictionary 645 Updated: 2007-11-19 05:01:17 Description: The first citation for mentor in English is 1750 according to the Oxford English Dictionary. But it is very likely that you could have heard the word in England long before that. First as a Greek wordmore specifically a person's nameand later in ...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD omen - podictionary 646 Updated: 2007-11-20 05:01:57 Description: The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that that omen came into English only in 1582 but that it comes from classical Latin where it also had a meaning of something that foreshadows an event. The OED frustratingly says that there are lots of theories...more... LISTEN NOW | VIEW CACHE | DOWNLOAD gimmick - podictionary 641 Updated: 2007-11-13 05:01:06 Description: The etymology of gimmick is pretty sketchy. Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable says that gimmi | |||||
