I wish....

Just stumbled across this statement in a Calgary Herald article from earlier this year:
Since it first appeared in 1998, more than a million copies of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary have been sold. And Katherine Barber, who supervised its production and that of the 2005 second edition, has become a minor celeb as "Canada's Word Lady."
A million copies! Wow! So how come I don't have a job anymore???
(Actually I think that figure is, shall we say, somewhat exaggerated).

Tweeting about bunnyhugs?

This article in the Toronto Star suggests that regionalisms such as "bunnyhug" (Saskatchewanian for "hoodie") might spread thanks to Twitter and Facebook. I want "jambuster" (Manitoban for "jelly doughnut") to take over the world! Get to it, you Manitobans!
All the same, I wonder how much people actually talk about their hooded sweatshirts and doughnuts on Twitter or Facebook.

Word of the Week: pilot

Pilots will be showing off this weekend at Toronto's annual air show. To designate someone in charge of a boat, the English had been quite happy with the Anglo-Saxon word “steersman” till the mid-1400s. Why they decided they needed to replace it with a nifty new French word, “pilot”, we don't know. The French word came via Latin from the Greek pedota, from pedon (an oar or rudder). Since there were no aircraft, “pilot” was originally confined to people steering boats, but in the 19th century we see pilots in hot-air balloons, and just two years after the Wright brothers made their first flight in 1905, the word was being used of fliers.

No flora in your lightbulbs or toothpaste

Two related words which are very commonly misspelled are "fluorescent" and "fluoride". Don't forget the "U". Fluorescence and fluoride have nothing to do with flowers. They're derived from a mineral, fluor, called that because it is easily melted and thus fluid.

P.S. If you find the English language fascinating, you might enjoy regular updates about English usage and word origins from Wordlady. Receive every new post delivered right to your inbox! If you are not already subscribed, you can either:

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What century are they living in?

I was reading an online ballet magazine today which had a post, written this week, in which I was astounded to see that the writer wrote about "taking a 'bus" and "talking on the 'phone". Considering that the word "phone" has been used to mean "telephone" since 1880, a mere 4 years after Alexander Graham Bell first wrote about his invention, I think we can happily say that we don't need the apostrophe anymore.
"'Bus" is an even more glaring example of pretentious punctuation. We have evidence of "bus" as a short form for "omnibus" back to 1832, only three years after the first evidence of "omnibus" itself, which is so dead in the English language that surely no one needs to think that they have to memorialize that missing "omni" with an apostrophe. People, buy yourselves a dictionary published in the last decade!

Waiter! There's a gun in my salad!

 

















Just reading a newspaper article about edible flowers which has the following flower-prep recommendation: "Remove the stamens and pistols from most flowers". Always good advice! I agree it's not that appetizing to find a gun in your salad, but really what they meant was "pistil".

Pistil is derived from a diminutive of the Latin word pilum (a pestle; one of those small club-shaped implements used to crush things in a bowl).
Above is a picture of a pestle and one of a pistil. You can see how one was named after the other.

Pistol (a handgun) is derived, unusually for English, from Czech. In Czech, the word píst'ala (a whistle, pipe, flute) was apparently first applied during the Hussite wars to a weapon with a barrel and a clear-sounding shot.

P.S. If you find the English language fascinating, you might enjoy regular updates about English usage and word origins from Wordlady. Receive every new post delivered right to your inbox! If you are not already subscribed, you can either:

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(if you are reading this on a mobile device): send me an email with the subject line SUBSCRIBE at wordlady.barber@gmail.com

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Also check out my upcoming Rollicking Story of the English Language courses. 

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Hurtling over hurdles

I just read a posting for a job which required candidates who could "find creative solutions to hurtles that arise". What they meant was "hurdles". These two words are pronounced the same in North American English.

"Hurtle" is a verb meaning "move wildly at a dangerous speed". A car can hurtle down a street. Something can hurtle through the air.

"Hurdle" is first of all a noun, one of those fence-like objects that runners leap over. The word is also used figuratively, as in the sentence in question.

Originally hurdles were portable rectangular frames of woven wicker, used on farms as temporary gates or walls of sheep pens. As is typical with English nouns, a verb developed out of this meaning "jump over a hurdle".

Perhaps a way to remember that hurtle is spelled with a t is that if your car is hurtling down the street you are likely to get hurt.

Photo by Andrew McElroy on Unsplash

P.S. If you find the English language fascinating, you might enjoy regular updates about English usage and word origins from Wordlady. Receive every new post delivered right to your inbox! If you are not already subscribed, you can either:

use the subscribe window at the top of this page

OR

(if you are reading this on a mobile device): send me an email with the subject line SUBSCRIBE at wordlady.barber@gmail.com

Privacy policy: we will not sell, rent, or give your name or address to anyone. You can unsubscribe at any point.

Also check out my upcoming Rollicking Story of the English Language courses. 

Follow me on twitter: @thewordlady