Word of the Week

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...

I was actually going to talk about the word "fiance," and how it entered (or perhaps re-entered after British folks stopped speaking French in the middle ages) English surprisingly late, but I mis-typed, got curious, and discovered that "fiasco" is way more...

Can't say as I've ever looked up the etymology of "giddy" before, but since I've been using it to describe my emotional state all week, I decided it would be an appropriate Word today. =) (For any who haven't yet heard why I'm giddy, check out my "Woo Hoo!" post.) In...

I don't often pause to examine the etymology of words like "handsome," which have meant what they mean for centuries, and so I can use freely in all my manuscripts. But once in a while, it's fun to see how it came to mean what we know all those hundreds of years ago....

First of all, I'd like to say I think about this phrase for my books ONLY. 😉 It recently came up in a manuscript I'd read, where a character says, "He cheated on me." Obviously, we all know what she meant. "Cheat," is in fact the most common way these days to say...

Perhaps I ought to start with a pronunciation guide of this one, eh? 😉 Schadenfreude (SHAHD-en-FROY-de) is something we've all probably felt, and felt the sting of. Loosely defined, it's a noun meaning 'malicious satisfaction taken at the misfortune of others.' When...

Okay, so this week's word isn't so much a simple word as the explanation of a name. And maybe I'm the only nerd in the world to get excited about realizing the reason for this one, but just in case . . . Remember in Disney's Cinderella, when the alert her that a new...

I maintain that "cleave" is one of the most bizarre words in the English language. Why? Because it means two exactly opposite things. Cleave, definition 1 - to stick, cling, adhere to something closely. Cleave, definition 2 - to divide, to split, to cut Um . . ....

Yes, you read the title right. Today I'm bringing to you an enlightening treatise on the word "macaroni." =) Now, in my house "macaroni" is synonymous with "the most common food to be found, because it's the only thing my kids are 100% guaranteed to eat." But as with...

While I'm far, far away from working on modern books, I thought I'd introduce a new feature on Mondays for now. Actually, I owe the idea to two Facebook friends, who responded to one of my word-nerd moments with the thought that I should do a word-a-day on my blog....