dawn.vogel | February 22, 2019
Sometimes, where we think a word came from is not necessarily the true story. According to Merriam-Webster, folk etymology is “the transformation of words so as to give them an apparent relationship to better-known or better-understood words.” This article talks about a number of cases of folk etymology, including the source of the words and […]
dawn.vogel | January 25, 2019
If you’re as fascinated by word origins as I am, you might like this list: Etymologically Speaking. It’s one of the more extensive lists I’ve found for word origins, plus it also does some cool things with looking at the same word in several languages, showing how those words wound up similar or very different! […]
dawn.vogel | January 11, 2019
Why doesn’t anything rhyme with purple? Or orange? It might have to do with the origins of those words. This article on Gizmodo talks about the etymology of colors, or how they got their English names. But did you know that not all languages have words for every color? And there’s also the belief that […]
dawn.vogel | November 2, 2018
If you’ve ever wondered how famous bands got their name, look no further! Wikipedia has you covered with this list of band name etymologies! It’s interesting to see the prevalence of names that come from dreams and also from Tolkien. Take a look through and see if your favorites are mentioned!
dawn.vogel | July 20, 2018
Writers thrive on words, and sometimes we want to use less common words rather than ones that everyone knows. While the words on this list may not be super uncommon, they’re still some fund words to use. There are two for every letter of the alphabet, which could also make for a fun writing challenge: […]
dawn.vogel | June 15, 2018
Grammarly has a neat little article including ten interesting facts about the English language, which you can read here. In it, you can learn all about pangrams, ambigrams, and ghost words! The most fascinating fact to me is the last one, which states that the word “girl” did not originally mean a female child, but […]
dawn.vogel | February 9, 2018
I’m always interested in linguistics and etymologies. Here’s an article from a few years back where the Oxford Royale Academy has named 14 words with the most fascinating word origins in the English language.
dawn.vogel | February 2, 2018
Did you know that originally, February didn’t even exist as a month? And that the Roman god Februus is named after a Roman festival from which the month takes its name, not the other way around? If you’re interested in word origins, check out this article about the origins of the name of the second […]
dawn.vogel | December 8, 2017
Ever wonder where the English words for our seasons come from? Winter is, apparently, an old Germanic word that spread into other languages, but there are still some questions as to its roots. You can learn more about this at Oxford University Press’s blog. And if you’re interested in finding out about the other seasons, […]
dawn.vogel | November 17, 2017
Just in time to impress your friends and family members around the Thanksgiving table, here is a list of the origins of ten common Thanksgiving words. In addition it talks a little bit about what goes into some of the foods we consume at Thanksgiving, including why marshmallows really aren’t marshmallows any more! So whether […]
