Word of the Week

I am sometimes baffled by how things come into our cultural consciousness...and change over the centuries. Cue the elves. Elf comes from Germanic folklore, with equivalents in Norse and Saxon mythology. The word itself hasn't changed much since Old English in...

Since it's getting rather frosty outside here in the Appalachians, I thought today we'd take a look at ice...or rather, at when some of its idioms came into use. =) Ice itself is from Old English, from Proto-Germanic is. There are cognates for it in quite a few other...

I was surprised to realize this weekend past that the Advent season is officially begun--I thought it would start next weekend, but my calendar is obviously off. 😉 As a child, I knew that advent marked the season leading up to Christmas...but it wasn't until later...

This one is quick--but interesting! Anyway dates from 1560, though it was traditionally two words until the 1830s. And up until modern history, it was quite literally "any way." As in, Is there any way I can help you? I'll get there any way I can. It quite literally...

About a month ago, a lady at our church volunteered to teach knitting classes. Having been crocheting since she was 9 and then knitting as well when she moved to our area and began working in a yarn store, Ms. Judith knows her stuff! I joined mostly because Xoe has...

Last week, Rowyn was reading Amelia Bedelia, who classically misunderstands commands that include words with more than one meaning. Early on in the story, she's working on a list of chores from her employer, who instructs her to "draw the drapes." Naturally, she sits...

At church this week a slight variation in translations of 2 John made us wonder at the difference between the nouns command and commandment. These different translations were using the words interchangeably, but then...why are there two different words? Both have a...

Romance writers are often looked down upon by those who read "serious literature"--and have generally never even picked up anything labeled "romance," yet judge them anyway. And as much as we romance writers rail against that, it's a tale as old as--well, as popular...

Back from vacation, but not quite ready to let go. 😉 And so, today's word of the week will bring us a bit of the beach... Surf began its life as a noun meaning "waves coming ashore" in about 1680, though it was quite likely a variation on suffe, from the 1590s....

It's release week for The Lost Heiress! So in honor of Brook, this week's Word of the Week is one of Brook's favorite things: espresso. Now, according to etymonline.com, espresso didn't come into the English vernacular until 1945. But the Italians had created caffe...

Yes, hat. Not that there's any surprise in the fact that hat itself has been in the English language since the dawn of the English language. But I was interested in some of the idioms containing it. =) Specifically, today I said something about our right as women to...

Today begins our first day of the 2015-16 school year! Xoe is somehow in 5th grade. I don't know how this happened. Isn't she still 5??? And Rowyn, who I swear was 3 just yesterday, is going into 2nd grade. I made the boy-o groan and the girl-o jump up and down with...

Arrr! I occasionally have a pirate in my house--this is to be expected when one has a 7-year-old boy. I never quite know when a rather adorable little figure is going to appear with his sword in hand and demand all my booty. But last time he did, his sister--being so...

No, not in honor of Donald Trump. 😉 The question arose this past week with my hubby and son, as to where "fired" and "sacked" come from. So naturally, I ran out to my computer to answer it. Fire, as in to terminate employment, is an Americanism from about 1885...

Yesterday my hubby called our daughter "The apple of my eye," and she looked at us like we were off our rocker. "The apple? How does an eye have an apple?" Good question, my girl. Good question. =) The word apple has been in English as long as there was English to be...

Not to be gruesome or anything. 😉 I was looking this one up to see when the phrase "skeleton in the closet" came about. Skeleton itself first arrived in English in about 1570, meaning a mummy, dried-up body, or bone remains. The word came from Latin, but the Latin...

My son is 7. Which means he's obsessed with dinosaurs. Which means that he was in 7-year-old heaven when the new Jurassic World movie came out. Given that he has a really great grasp of "it's just a movie using robots and special effect"--we watched behind the scenes...

Scalawag is one of those words that we think of as being a very old-fashioned insult--and it is...but it's not quite as old as some might think. Meaning "disreputable fellow," scalawag only dates from 1848. It originated in American union jargon, and though where it...

One of my husband's favorite shows is Top Gear--the British version. Being a car show, they have cause to say lots of things that are different than how we say it in America. Boot, bonnet...and aluminium instead of aluminum. On one particular show, the presenter is...

It's going to be a fun week around Writing Roseanna...so I thought I'd start us off with some fun, happy words. =) I suppose I should start with the root word, cheer. The earliest English reference to word, from about 1200, was from the Anglo-French chere, and meant...

We've all heard it through the grapevine (and some of us might break into song at the mere mention...), but do you know where the saying comes from? I didn't--but I learned recently so thought I'd share. =) Grapevine, meaning "a rumor" or "information spread in an...

So, duh moment. Did you know that the noun fence--like, you know, the thing around your yard--is from defense? Yeah. Duh. I'd never paused to consider that, perhaps because the spelling has ended up different, but there you go! It has been a shortening of defense with...

My kiddos on a field trip to a one room school house last year Since someone asked me about this over the weekend, I figured, hey--already looked it up, might as well share! 😉 Especially appropriate since this is our last week of school. Oh yeah. Right about now the...

Many many moons ago, well before I discovered www.etymonline.com (for that matter, well before my daughter was born...I believe I was in college...) I was writing a story in which the heroine accused the hero of being a fanatic about football. He replied that he was...

Since I wrote on the origins of hello last time, my daughter said that I had to look up hi for this week. =) So here we go! Far simpler than hello, LOL. Hi is most assuredly an Americanism, a greeting whose first recorded reference is from 1862. Interestingly, it's...

I can't tell you how many times I've looked up the etymology of hello...but for some reason, I've never shared. Obviously time to remedy that! So the life of hello began with Old High German's hala, hola. It was an imperative form of halon, holon, which meant "to...

My not-so-fabulous shot of the earth as seen at FSU's planetarium Last week, we were super excited to get to visit a local university and see the planetarium with our homeschool group. And of course, this being my family, the night before we were talking about the...

This one made me go, "Ha! Take that, everyone who uses the word I don't like!" 😉 See, I was always a normality girl. But more and more often I'd begun hearing normalcy. And it drove me batty. Here, my friends, is why. Normality itself is a relatively new word,...

I was critiquing a few chapters for a friend of mine last week, and it led me to do some quick research--in which I learned something new, yay! =) Namely, about Sunday school. The phrase Sunday school dates from 1783. However, it wasn't religious instruction. On the...

We think of our conscience as part of our spirit or soul...something that operates apart from thought. Our consciences are the little cricket on our shoulder telling us right from wrong. Right? It's something we feel in our gut and have to learn to listen to. Well the...

First of all, the winner of my giveaway is Susan Poll! Congrats! Now on with the word of the week. =) This weekend past was the annual performance of The Nutcracker by the ballet studio my daughter attends, so we were occupied with all things stage and dancing. I...

When words are this close in spelling, I always find myself wondering if they're related. And, yeah, occasionally get the spellings confused too. 😉 This morning I was rereading what I wrote over the weekend and saw a time where I was using the verb, demur, but put...

We've all heard of the stars of the Silver Screen...but last week I found myself wondering about the term. Where did it come from? When  did it come from? Obviously after movies came about, but when? A simple answer to find. =) Silver screen was originally in...