The Devilrsquo;s Dictionary says that an incumbent is ldquo;A person of the liveliest interest to the outcumbents.rdquo; A few years ago an election brought the word incumbent into conversation in my house recently.nbsp; This was a new word for my kids an

In looking around online I get the sense that the word pilgrim has a bit of a slang sense to it. It isnrsquo;t strongly established so I may be imagining it, but it seems to me that the word pilgrim is now being applied to people who are just too straigh

As I have repeated endlessly, the bringers of the Germanic roots of Old English to Britain included a bunch of characters known as the Angles. Sponsor: Hold your meetings online for just $49 a month Try GoToMeeting free. It is from these folks

Things have been so busy around here that it was nice today to sit down and have a powwow with my wife; by this I mean ldquo;a meeting.rdquo; Sponsor: Hold your meetings online for just $49 a month Try GoToMeeting free. In my experience this me

The Indo-European root that likely gave us our word number was nem. It had a meaning of ldquo;assignrdquo; or ldquo;allot.rdquo; Sponsor: Hold your meetings online for just $49 a month Try GoToMeeting free. This may have shown up later in an Anc

This word popped out at me a while ago from an Oxford English Dictionary newsletter. Sponsor: Hold your meetings online for just $49 a month Try GoToMeeting free. The reason it was in there was that lexicographers had closely reviewed this entry

Although he lived more than 2000 years ago Horace seems to capture my dilemma with communicating in the internet age. Sponsor: Hold your meetings online for just $49 a month Try GoToMeeting free. He said brevis esse laboro, obscurus fio, which mea

The place I live was once the bottom of a sea. Sponsor: Hold your meetings online for just $49 a month Try GoToMeeting free. I can walk down to the river to see the layers of rock that were laid down in that ancient sea bed, with little fossils imp

Energy saving and a move to reduce climate change emissions have made compact fluorescent bulbs quite popular. Their coiled image is even becoming some kind of a symbol of responsible energy use. But etymologically they arenrsquo;t bulbs at all. Sponsor:

The month of January was named in much the same manner as most of days of the week; after a god. This might make you look at the next janitor you see a little differently when yoursquo;ve learned that the words January and janitor come from the same etym