Herersquo;s a message from a subscriber named Pierce. SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. He asks ldquo;is it true that carpenter is the only common English word from a Celtic root?rdquo; I

My parents gave me a first name and a second name and I inherited my surname from my father. SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. My wife was born in a culture that didnrsquo;t give middle nam

This is a special podictionary episode in which I interview Philip Durkin, the Principal Etymologist for The Oxford English Dictionary. I contacted Dr. Durkin because his book The Oxford Guide to Etymology was recently released in North America and he wa

Slippery things are etymologies. SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. I learned recently that in 1381 in London an unruly crowd cornered a bunch of Flemish people in a church then set up a blo

A month or so ago students were being called back to classes and thatrsquo;s oh so etymologically appropriate. SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. The word class in this sense means ldquo;cla

The word ordeal was part of Old English as ordal and ordel but according to the OED it disappeared during much of the period of Middle English only to reappear around the time of Shakespeare. SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo

Herersquo;s a test. Touch your own neck. Did you touch the front, the side or the back? SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. Irsquo;ll lay odds that most people touched the side of their neck

Around 2600 years ago there lived a poet by the name of Sappho. SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. This was a period when Greece was at its classical peak after a dark age and although her l

SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. I was lucky enough to catch Cory Doctorow at a book reading recently. In addition to being a science fiction author whose excuse for being there was his b

The word frolic seems to me forever associated with Newfoundland. SPONSOR: GotoMeeting Hold your meetings online for just $49/mo. Try GoToMeeting FREE for 30 days. Long before my brother-in-law (a Newfie) even met my sister I heard a comedy skit where N