The word flair has been around in English for a long time—since the mid-14th century—however, the senses that most English speakers are familiar with did not enter English until much later. While the noun form of flair entered English from the Old French word of the same spelling, this term ultimately came from the Late Latin verb fragrare, which meant “to smell sweet.”
A curious word hit the mainstream following the 2013 release of a romantic comedy called Drinking Buddies: mumblecore. The term was rumored to have been coined in jest by a sound editor in 2005, but the construct demonstrated considerable lasting power, canonized in New York Times articles such as “A Generation Finds Its Mumble” from 2007 and later in “Mumblecore Masters, Enunciating Clearly,” in reference to Drinking Buddies, starring …
With all the hullabaloo about the figurative sense of literally, language enthusiasts have given much thought to this often maligned term. We’ve even discussed how the metaphorical extension of literally is nothing new—it’s been around since the 1700s—but now we’d like to explore a few other adverbs and their ironic uses. I believe that recent uses of definitely and totally suggest that the linguistic development …
Frugal is a great word for thrifty people because it glorifies the idea of saving without any of the negative connotations of cheap or miserly. English speakers started using frugal at the turn of the 17th century. While the noun form had already existed in English since the 1530s, the earliest citing of the adjective form is not until Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor about …
The exact origin of motley is uncertain, but it’s likely to have come from the Middle English word mote, meaning “speck.” It makes sense then that mottled and speckled have similar meanings. Mottle is actually a back formation of motley.
By Rebekah OttoRecently the wordsmiths of the United States have availed themselves once again to decry the figurative use of the word literally. This particular spate of analysis finds its origins in a Reddit post titled, “We did it guys, we finally killed English,” which featured an image of Google’s definition for the word. Since that popular post, journalists and language experts have added their voices to …
This may come as a surprise, but the link between sustainability and environmentalism is actually fairly recent. Before 1980, sustainability was an uncommon variant of sustainable, as in “capable of being upheld,” and it could be used in any context. But in 1980 that all changed when the International Union for the Conservation of Nature published the World Conservation Strategy, including an entire section called …
Though the phrase soul mate gained steam toward the end of the twentieth century, the idea goes all the way back to Plato’s Symposium, written in 385–380 BCE. In Symposium, when the two dialogists discuss love, Aristophanes tells Socrates that human beings used to have four arms, four legs, and two faces, and they were happy and complete.
The origin of the word fiat in English is connected to the origin of the world itself. Taken from the Latin meaning “let it be done,” this word appears in the Latin translation of Genesis, the first book of the bible, when God proclaimed “let there be light” (fiat lux). As a result, many early uses of fiat were biblical allusions, as in John Donne’s …
Over the last few years, lovers of language have casually observed an increase in speakers beginning sentences with the word so. What are some new ways in which so is being used in colloquial speech, and what cues do these utterances send to listeners? Consider the following example: Speaker 1: Dr. Johnson, when did you start studying this disorder?Speaker 2: So, I had noticed certain …
As a noun and a verb, the word stuff has had many lives, dating all the way back to the 1300s. The sense of wool and cloth is chiefly British. In the nineteenth century, a junior barrister was called a “stuff gownsman,” because his robes were made of wool, unlike a barrister appointed to the Queen’s Council, who was called a “silk gownsman,” and whose promotion …
In 2013, the Sunday Times outed J.K. Rowling as the author of the detective novel The Cuckoo’s Calling, published under her nom de plume Robert Galbraith. While devotees of Rowling quickly procured and binge-read her latest work, linguists and language lovers worldwide celebrated the computational analysis of the two scholars who helped reveal the true author of the book in question. How did experts figure …