Word of the Week

An unexpected cold front and winter storm system is moving through the mid-atlantic--we're only getting rain here, but a few miles to the north and up a few mountains, they're supposed to get a foot of snow. Yikes!  But of course, that means it's the perfect day...

Last Friday I journeyed with the kids, my sister's family, and my parents to the Pittsburgh zoo. We had a great time seeing all the animals, and even the car ride was fun (over two hours away). On the way home, somehow or another we got talking about food, and Xoe...

Since it's Holy Week, I thought I'd try to find a word that looked forward to the path that Jesus walked in these next few days--and I knew "Easter" had some background, so it was the winner. 😉 When Anglo-Saxon Christians first started celebrating the Mass of...

Gotta say, I love the word "balderdash." (Though I have a hard time 'hearing' the word without imagining a top-hatted English gentleman huffing it in an upper-crust accent, LOL.) And it has a long history with the English language. =) Balderdash came into English...

Schedule. It's something we use every day. A time table we keep. An action we perform daily for things like, oh, blog posts. 😉 As both a verb and a noun, it's a word in such common use that I was shocked to discover it didn't take on that oh-so-known meaning until...

"Thank" seems like a pretty basic word, right? It's obviously been around for a while. Say, as long as manners. 😉 Still, there's been some interesting evolution of the word! Interestingly, "thank" and "think" share a root--"thought, gratitude" is the meaning of the...

What a striking figure. No, not that lady over there, the one I figured out for the math problem. Go figure, right? I know, I know--it's just a figure of speech. 😉 Figure obviously has a lot of meanings, both as a noun and as a verb. It entered the English language...

There's little I like more than realizing a word in common use today has come to mean the opposite of what it once did.  Snob is definitely one of those words. It appeared in English from some mysterious place, and scholars aren't sure of its origins--just that...

You get two for the price of one today. =) I can't tell you how many times in historical writing I have the urge to use the word "finagle." You know, like She finagled him up the aisle. Or He finagled his way out of it. Something to convey some tricky footwork, so to...

Cool. It could be argued (successfully, I think) that cool is a word that not only gets used, but over-used. It's the word we use to mean someone is hip, fashionable, or has that certain something that sets them apart as desirable. Or, spinning off that, it's the word...

This ranks as one of those "who'd a thunk?" late arrivals to the English language. Not in every sense, of course, but I think you'll be surprised by some of the years on this! Okay, so "show" as in act or performance is as old as you might expect, coming from the...

As usual, my word of the week comes from last week's writing experience. =) My heroine has just spent weeks preparing a performance, which went off without a hitch. Her father comes up and says, "You were a . . ." Sensation is what I want to say. But that sounds a bit...

My husband has been asking for months and months, "When's my vacation?" Working for himself as he does, he can rarely take a day off. This weekend we traveled a few hours to visit friends for a birthday celebration, and we looked at it as a mini vacation. Which of...

It's the first Monday of 2012, and though we may not all make resolutions, I imagine many of us are thinking about what we want to do differently this coming year, and what we won't want to budge on. We're embracing the idea of a fresh start in some areas and...

I know, I know--what a strange, bizarre word of the week. And now y'all are probably wondering what I got into this weekend! 😉 Actually, it comes up because I'm a cruel author who just seriously injured her hero. I need him to be out of it for a while so said, "Hmm,...

I like the word "kid." I use it with my children (do you know how hard it was for me to write that sentence without using the word "kid"? LOL), I use it for jests. It's a standard part of my vocabulary. But I'll never forget the substitute teacher in high school who...

I've given Halloween a lot of thought since having kids, have debated it and pondered, have looked up its history and tried to decide where I come down on it. Inevitably, I come to the conclusion that, like a Christmas tree or the face of Jesus most often used (stolen...

Yesterday in the car, I looked out at the bright blue sky and had a Mr. Roger's moment--I started singing "It's a Beautiful Day in the Neighborhood" and my daughter asked, "Why's is called a neighborhood? Does it have anything to do with the hood of a coat?" I'd never...

It's always baffling when I think to look up a word that I take for granted and realize that it's a relatively new addition to the English language. I had this experience with the words fiancee/fiance a couple years ago, when I first began writing Love Finds You in...

It's that time of year again. The leaves are turning colors, the weather is turning cooler, and the pumpkin vines are taking over my yard. Okay it's the first year we've planted pumpkins, so this is a first--and a lesson to us on where NOT to plant them next year!...

My word of the week is "holiday," not only because today is Labor Day, but because this week all my posts are going to be gearing up toward 9/11. Which isn't an official holiday, I know, but I think for all of us it's a day of remembrance. "Holiday" is a fairly...

My hubby and I get a kick out of watching the History Channel's Pawn Stars. They have some truly awesome stuff come in there that does a history-lover's heart good. =) So as I was browsing through interesting words today, I thought we'd talk about pawning and hocking...

I grew up in West Virginia. My house was on a hill above a farm, the Potomac River surrounding it on three sides--which means Maryland on three sides, for all you folks who aren't intimately acquainted with mid-Atlantic geography. 😉 For the most part, people from my...

I'm in the process of putting a book proposal together . . . which naturally gets me to thinking about the word. As a kid, I had no idea the family of "propose" words could mean anything other than asking someone to marry them--until, of course, I read or watched...

There I was, tippity-tapping away on my story, eyes (surely) intense as I put my poor heroine into a terrible situation. Knife at her throat, blade glinting in the lantern light. But that isn't the villainy--the villainy is in the news he imparts. News that sets her...

'Tis the season for cookouts and barbecues, and I'll use that as my excuse for talking about ketchup, LOL. Really, it's because I recently discovered its history, and it's just too bizarre to our modern minds not to share. =) When we Americans think of ketchup, we...

I love being an American. I'm proud of my country, I admire our roots, and I truly believe in the ideals on which we were founded. I will sing "God Bless America" from the top of my lungs! I don't think my country's perfect by any means--but it's mine. I'm a patriot....

It's officially summer--a time to get out and do. Right? Blue skies, warm sun, green leaves, and a whole world awaiting. My kids have been seizing the summer, and it makes me grin. Rowyn's often found digging in the dirt, adopting worms as pets. Xoe's latest thing is...

There are times when I use a word, when I remember distinctly seeing it in older books, but when it isn't until I look up its etymology that I remember the subtle differences that have evolved in said word over time. Ecstatic is one of those. I remember learning this...

Yesterday was my honey's birthday, so I thought I'd take a look-see at the word and see if it's as old as I assume it is. The answer? Mostly. 😉 The Old English form byrddæg meant an annual celebration of one's birth, but was used mostly for saints and kings. It...

Passport - it's pretty literal. "The authorization to pass through a port." Not surprising, right? What surprises me is that the word (and hence the concept of a noun to embody it) is from around 1500. I had no idea it was that old! (The one in the picture is French,...

This week's word comes to us courtesy of Dictionary.com's Word of the Day. =) It's my homepage, and occasionally I so love the words they highlight that I just have to share. So, longueur. Ever heard of it? I hadn't, I confess. It's pronounced long-GUR, and here's the...

Intelligence is a pretty old world. It's been around since the 14th century, meaning exactly what it does now. And even the secondary meaning--"information gathered, especially by spies"--dates back to the 1580s. I found this pretty surprising. As I'm doing research...

I can't say as I've ever understood why, when we comprehend something, we stand under it. So this week we're working to understand the word understand. =) According to the wonderful world of www.etymonline.com (one of the best resources IN THE UNIVERSE!), this word,...

Every night, the family gathers around for bedtime prayers. I start off with a prayer of thanks for the day, for protection that night, for a good day following, and for anything else pertinent to that particular day. Then Xoe adds her bit, Rowyn either cheerily says...

You can tell I'm longing for my first cup, right? Yes, this week we're looking into the wonders of coffee. I mean, of the word. 😉 Word of the Week - coffee The best guess of the awesome www.etymonline.com is that our word coffee came from the Italian caffe, which...