dawn.vogel | October 10, 2025
This week’s post is a little less etymology and more about a concept I just learned about called agnotology, which is the study of deliberate, culturally induced ignorance or doubt. The second part of the word is of course the same Greek root that gives us other “-logy” words, and the “agnoto-” is from Neoclassical […]
dawn.vogel | September 19, 2025
The other day, I started thinking about verb and noun pairs like evolve and evolution, resolve and resolution, and revolve and revolution. But “revolt” also becomes “revolution” when turning it into a noun, despite it not having the “suffix-volve” construction of these other pairs. What gives? This one might not really be quite as complex […]
dawn.vogel | August 15, 2025
For this week’s Fun for Friday and etymology, I’m sharing a post from Useless Etymology about the Greek word “naus” and the variety of English words that come from that root. As you might guess from the title, it’s about ships, but there are many other words that come from the same root. And when […]
dawn.vogel | July 18, 2025
This week’s etymology dive is an odd one, related to the Roman God Bacchus (the Greek God Dionysus). I had the thought recently that it seems like the words “baccalaureate” and “bacchanalia” might be related to one another. But their meanings are different enough that I wasn’t certain how they might be connected. Bacchus and […]
dawn.vogel | June 13, 2025
Useless Etymology recently posted about the origin of “magpie,” as in the bird, and it’s a wild ride! First off, you’ve got “pie” as a name for a bird, which is derived from the Latin “pica.” Hang on, though. “Pica” is also a condition in which humans eat non-food items, normally because of a vitamin […]
dawn.vogel | May 9, 2025
Since it’s nearly Mother’s Day, this week’s Fun for Friday is about etymology and mothers! “Mother” is one of those words with very deep roots, across multiple languages. Part of the explanation of this is that “mater” originally comes from Proto Indo-European, which is the root of a LOT of languages. And of course, this […]
dawn.vogel | April 18, 2025
I recently heard someone refer to themself as a “Fellow” in an academic sense, which got me thinking about the origin of that word in that specific context. The origin of “fellow” (in a non-academic sense) is that of a companion or partner in a business sense, going back to Proto-Indo-European and coming to English […]
dawn.vogel | March 14, 2025
Why do maps include something called a legend, and how does that connect to the idea of legends as stories? The etymology of “legend” is tied to the Latin word “legere,” which means “to read.” Unsurprisingly, this connects to things like legibility. It’s also connected to “lex” and “lectus,” which connects to things like lexicon […]
dawn.vogel | February 21, 2025
I work alongside archaeologists in the cultural resources management field, which means I see the word “culture” a lot. And I couldn’t help but notice, as I was typing it, that “cult” is the first four letters of that word. So I figured there must be a connection! There is, and it makes a lot […]
dawn.vogel | January 10, 2025
Have you ever wondered about the etymology of the words we use for … words about talking? Useless Etymology has, and they wrote a brief post about the etymology of jargon, jabber, and gibberish, which are related to one another. It’s fascinating to me to see the way these words are related and how they […]
