The Russian word for a main train station is Vokzal (воксал). Say it out loud – does it remind you of anything? Say it in a suitably English accent, and it sounds like Vauxhall. Is this a coincidence, or is there an etymological connection between this minor suburban railway station on the London and South Western Railway and the grand Imperial terminii of Tsarist Russia? The most […]
Etymology
Have you ever piled on the pounds after a particularly nasty breakup? Seen your weight increase during periods of stress? It is a concept many will be familiar with. But only in German does the phenomena merit its own word – Kummerspeck. Kummerspeck translates as the excess weight gained from emotional overeating, but, literally translated, it means ‘grief bacon’. Mental Floss have gathered together 29 of […]
Amazing words
Electrocute means, and only means, to put to death by means of a powerful electric current. It should not be used for a mere electric shock. This was a distinction I hadn’t full appreciated until reading Mind the Gaffe – something of a pedant’s handbook. Its first recorded use in English was on 7 June 1889 when New Jersey’s Trenton Times described how a prisoner had […]
Shocking vocabulary
Malaria gets its name from the Italian mala aria (bad air), and was originally associated with the swamps and marshlands of Rome. The word was first recorded in English in 1740, when Horace Walpole wrote: “A horrid thing called the mal’aria, that comes to Rome every summer and kills one”. So ubiquitous was the disease that it acquired a specific name– Roman Fever, where its virulence […]
Bad air, miasma and malaria
Were does the phrase ‘back to square one’ originate? Where was the original square one? There are two main theories explaining the origin of the phrase ‘back to square one’: 1. Returning back to the beginning in children’s games such as hopscotch and snakes and ladders; or 2. The first live radio commentary featured a Division One match between Arsenal and Sheffield United, broadcast on January […]
Back to square one
A mondegreen is the mishearing or misinterpretation of a phrase, typically a standardized phrase such as a line in a poem or a lyric in a song, due to near homophony, in a way that gives it a new meaning. It derives its name from Sylvia Wright’s mishearing of the last stanza to the ballad “The Bonney Earl O’Moray: Ye Highlands and ye Lowlands, Oh, where […]
Say that again?
slactivism (ˈslæktɪˌvɪzəm) – noun The public proclaiming of one’s political beliefs through activitiesthat require little effort or commitment. Facebook Cartoon Characters, Snopes.com and Dictionary.com’s definition of Slactivism
Slacktivism
Metaphysics derives its name from a quirk of librarianship and mistranslation. Aristotle’s philosophical works were arranged by Andronicus of Rhodes to follow chapters dealing with physics. Meta (μετά) is Greek for ‘after’ or ‘beyond’ and metaphysics were simply the chapters after those dealing with physics (φυσικά). Aristotle referred to the subject as ‘first philosophy’. A History of Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years, Diarmaid McCulloch