Word of the Week

This one is yet again at the request of my kids, who asked why in the world we abbreviate "dollar" with $. (They also asked why they sometimes have one line through it and other times two.) So...though it has been suggested by some historians that the $ is related to...

The heat of summer is fully upon us, and we all know nothing tastes as good on those hot summer days as cool treats. Ice cream, Popsicles, frozen coffees and yogurts and you-name-it. My assistant's little boy asked where the word Popsicle comes from, so this Word of...

It has been a rainy, rainy summer here in West Virginia. The result? Critters everywhere they shouldn't be. We live in the woods, and the rodents and spiders inside this year have been terrible. Then...then...there's the copperheads. These venomous snakes usually...

Last Wednesday, I was invited to speak at retailers event near Lancaster, PA. As my husband and I were driving through Pennsylvania, also known in our family as "the land of oh-so-helpful road signs," we saw first the "Don't Tailgate" sign. And then one that said...

I live in a house with both a man and cats. So naturally, the debate about which came first, whisker for a man's facial hair or whisker for the long, sensitive hairs on a cat's face, has come up. (Yeah, okay, so my family's all weird, LOL. Or my word-nerd ways have...

Before bed one night, while we were waiting for his sister to finish washing her face and brushing her teeth, my son and I were coming up with silly reasons for each season's name. It began with the easy-to-determine fall. "Hey!" Rowyn said, "I bet it's because of...

Slang. Something we all know. And probably use. "Informal language." Those words not accepted as proper but not bad. That informal language is in fact usually "characterized by vividness and novelty." Mostly, the word hasn't changed that much...but it's broadened. And...

It's summer. And so, as I was casting around looking for words to feature, my daughter said, "Do something summery! Like, you know...a carnival, or the fair." When I'm writing this, our County Fair has just finished up, and the neighboring county's is scheduled for a...

I love that www.etymonline.com has a list of trending words. Sometimes I click on them solely out of curiosity...like when I saw circus on there today. Last May my family journeyed to Charleston, WV to attend one of the final shows of the Ringling Bros and Barnum...

Yesterday was my wedding anniversary--17 years since I first said "I do" to the love of my life. 😀 So naturally, today I thought I'd take a look at the words! Wed is from Old English weddian, which means "to pledge oneself, vow; to betroth, to marry." This is similar...

This one is a special request from my daughter, who came across it in a book. 😃 So, tootles. Being a 90s tween/teen, I grew up hearing this word as "goodbye" (or maybe it was toodles? Hard to say, as apparently it never appeared in writing, and it has no entry in any...

Sometimes it's so interesting to look at the history of the words that are so very common to our language! God is certainly one of those. I'd heard at some point over the years that god and good are related . . . and I imagine most of you have heard the same. But...

Time for a sweet treat of a word! Cookie. In American English, we all know what this means. Yummy... Tasty... Delicious sweet treats... My favorites are soft and chewy. Some prefer crisp and buttery. But in my opinion, all cookies are awesome. What they aren't,...

Nice. Such a simple word, so well known...and so surprising! I happened to click onto it on www.etymonline.com because it was a trending word, and I was so shocked to see its evolution! Did you know that nice used to mean "foolish, stupid, senseless"? Apparently it's...

If you've been hanging around my blog since 2011 (there are a few of you--you know who you are, LOL), then you may remember that I've featured this word before. And you may remember it solely because it was first ever Word of the Week. But since so many of my readers...

Today's Word of the Week comes as a special request from Lynne F.'s nephew, who asked about grub, and how/when it came to be a slang word for food. Well, grub is the larva of an insect, and has meant that since the early 1400s. Etymologists aren't actually sure if...

This is actually a repost of a word from 6 years ago, but my daughter asked me about it last week, so it seemed a fine time for a revisit. 😁 Reckless is one of those that always confused me as a kid. I mean, why was it reckLESS when you were indicating that people...

Some families are football families. Baseball families. Basketball families. We are a hockey family. And since the playoff just began and we're cheering our Penguins on, I thought I'd pause to look at one of the hockey terms. (Okay, so it was a trending word on...

I looked this one up, wanting to use it in a book set in 1917...only to find a history I knew nothing about! So mannequin has been around since 1902, but it wasn't a form used to display clothes. Or rather, not a non-living one. When mannequin first appeared, it was...

Today's Word of the Week is actually just inspired by www.etymonline.com's trending word list, LOL. Which is funny, because those who know me well know that my church has actually opted to keep Saturday as the Sabbath rather than Sunday, so you might think I have an...

This week, something fun is happening, and I'm celebrating by making all the week's blog posts go to the theme. This week, the book previously known as Love Finds You in Annapolis, Maryland will re-release from WhiteFire as A Heart's Revolution. On Wednesday, I'll be...

A couple weeks ago on the radio, I heard someone musing about the shift of the university experience from its origins. He was saying how university came from uni (one) + verity (truth), and how in recent years people have forgotten the one-truth bit and are instead...

Yet another word I just never bothered to look up...but once I did, I was a bit surprised! PinterestGerman servants, early 1900s Did you know that family didn't mean "parents with their children" until 1660, though it was an English word since the early 1400s??? I...

A commonplace book, circa mid-1600s. Photo via Beinecke Flickr Laboratory This special request comes from Bev Duell-Moore. =) And hilariously, as soon she asked me to feature it, I did a quick search...which came in mighty handy just a few days later, when I needed a...

Upon special request, today we're going to look into the word autograph . . . which is fitting, since there are just a couple days left in this month's sale of autographed copies of The Reluctant Duchess! 😉 I didn't give it too much thought when this request came...

This week's Word is another special request from Lynne F.  ~ Remember that any time you have one you'd like me to look up, just let me know! ~ Pinterest Nun dates back to the very beginnings of English, all the way to the days of Old English, when it was spelled...

Today's Word of the Week is a special request from Lynne F. (and as a reminder, if ever you have a word you'd like me to look into, please feel free to let me know and I'll add it to my list!). Nurse is rather interesting, in that the noun and verb forms evolved a bit...

I'd noticed when reading historical work--either original or fiction--that recipe and receipt were often used in ways that we today would deem, well, flipped. But I'd never really paused to look it up. I'm glad I just did, because I learned something! We'll start with...

Yet another Word of the Week inspired by my weekend activities. 😉 I confess: I'm not a decorator. Most of the decorations in my house are books, LOL. (The best decorations, if I do say so myself.) Things like curtains...meh. I've put them up in most rooms, simply to...

Last week, my friend Rachel McMillan (of Toronto) asked on Facebook what the different American regions called a certain type of hat. You know, that basic knit hat for the winter. There, she said, they universally called it a toque. Other answers included "winter hat,...

Did you know that  yule and jolly are from the same root? According to some sources, both come from the Old Norse jol (that J would be pronounced like a Y--see my word of the week on the letter J), which was borrowed into Old French as well, as jolif, which...

These days, when people say science, they have a particular thing in mind, right? Chemistry, biology, anatomy, physics, etc. But did you know that science used to be a far more general term? The word dates from the 14th century, from the French word of the exact same...

Last week, in talking about the word novel, I mentioned that novels were previously referred to as romances, which of course set us up perfectly for this week's Word. =) Since around 1300, romance meant "a story, written or recited, of a knight, hero, etc." Why were...

I'm not sure how I've managed to go this long without featuring the most obvious word in the world as my Word of the Week ~ Novel ~ but it's high time I remedy that oversight! We're all probably familiar with the two ways novel is used in English today--"A novel idea"...

Saturday as the kids and I were driving Rowyn to a birthday party, they were observing that it was way too warm for fall, and all the trees were still green . . . and Xoë then said, "I don't like that we call it fall. It should be autumn. Why did we ever start doing...

The other day, my husband asked, "So what's the difference between career--as in to career down a hill, the verb, and careen?" To which I brilliantly said, "Uh . . . er . . . I don't know." So naturally, I had to look it up. And it's SO INTERESTING! Let's start with...

Okay, so it's more a letter of the week. 😉 My curiosity over the letter J began in part when I saw a Facebook rant, claiming that we're all in big trouble spiritually because we've forgotten the true name of the Son of the God--that it was Yeshua, not Jesus. The...

Sometimes we have to examine those favorite words. Like pizza. Right? I don't know about your house, but in mine, pizza is a staple. My children adore it. Almost as much as I do. (Hey, I've had more years to grow the love...) So it's no surprise that the other day, as...

My dearest daughter suggested this word of the week, because she thought it was such a fun word to say. 😉 So, bamboozle. This will be rather quick, because etymologists aren't entirely sure where it came from, LOL. What they can tell you for certain is that it's...

I've just returned from a week of vacation in the beautiful Outer Banks of North Carolina . . . which means my schedule is bursting with things that need done. Now, as it happens, I knew from some of my writing projects that schedule would not have been a word used in...

Short and sweet--and funny!--word today. =) Amused. We all know what it means, right? "Entertained. Aroused to mirth." And today, that's true. But did you know that the word originally meant "distracted, diverted, cheated"??? Truth! When amused entered the language...

So this has been a debate in my house in recent weeks. Xoe will say something about being/looking up pictures of/something geared at a tween. Rowyn will reply with, "I hate that word. It's not even a thing. I'm not a tween and I'll never be a tween." To which Xoe will...

Figured I'd jump on the eclipse bandwagon today and talk about a part of it I haven't seen anyone else mention--the word itself! 😉 Eclipse has been in English since around 1300 (since, you know, there was English), taken from French, which was taken from Latin,...

Yesterday, my family and I went hiking at Seneca Rocks. On our way there, we passed a sign that said Watch for West Virginia Wild Life. "I've already seen it," I said. "I saw that groundhog galumphing along." Later last night, my husband was finishing up the first...

So as I was writing last week, trying to finish up the first draft of An Hour Unspent, book 3 in the Shadows Over England Series, I ran into a silly problem. I was trying to have someone describe the hero's little brother. He's a bit of a prankster, but only in an...