Outlier was such a useful and long-established term that, in 1865, geologists coined inlier, so that they could have a contrasting word with the opposite meaning. So why has inlier fallen into disuse today? Maybe it’s because people and things that exist outside the mainstream are inherently more interesting, and therefore are more talked about. Today, outlier can refer to a political maverick, a musical prodigy, …
When it comes to the word noble, the senses “royal” and “distinguished” are probably quite familiar, but there are many other uses of this word that might surprise you. Just as a noble person of virtue can resist manipulation, since the 14th century, stones and metals that resist corrosion are also said to be noble.
When did people shift from having a genius to being a genius? Starting in the 14th century, a genius denoted a guardian spirit, and someone with extraordinary talent was said to have a genius, because his or her gift was thought to be the result of some supernatural help.
Like Pluto’s three other moons: Charon, Nix, and Hydra, it’s newest found satellites are named for figures from Greek myth: Styx and Kerberos. But how did the IAU reach this naming conclusion? How did Pluto’s moons get their names? According to their press release, “These names were backed by voters in a recently held popular contest, aimed at allowing the public to suggest names for the …
The story of hokey shows how tangled the backstory of words can sometimes seem to be. Hokey first appeared after World War II as American slang for “overly sentimental” or “contrived. The term’s immediate predecessor seems to be hokum, a blunt American term for “nonsense,” coined earlier in the 20th century by combining hocus-pocus (or hokey-pokey) with bunkum, another word which also means “nonsense.”
New words enter English all the time. One major source of new words and senses is technological innovation. If a device is created that didn’t previously exist, it needs a name, and if the device is popular enough, that name, along with other words to describe the functions of the device, enters widespread usage. So how exactly does technological innovation change the way we talk …
Though the phrase critical thinking wasn’t coined until the early twentieth century, its principles can be traced back to Aristotle. The educator and psychologist John Dewey first used the phrase in its modern sense in his 1910 book How We Think, though there are instances of the words appearing together in texts before this time. Dewey defined critical thinking as “reflective thought,” requiring healthy skepticism, …
People have been dropping the word bomb in many different ways for years, and it’s easy to see why: because it’s such a short and evocative word, it’s perfect for slang. At times bomb has meant a large sum of money, a marijuana cigarette, a nice car, and an old beat up car.
Though synergy appears in English texts in a general sense as far back as the seventeenth century, it was not widely adopted as a medical term until the mid-nineteenth century. In medical texts from this time, it often appears in italics as a foreign word. In a revealing passage from 1827, the physician W.P. Allison wrote, “I would object to the term synergy, which some …
The Roman poet Martial who lived in first century AD had a problem: without the protection of copyright laws, he couldn’t stop the other poets of his day from circulating his poems as their own. His only recourse was to write witty verses admonishing and mocking the thieves. Of one rival he wrote, “The book you’re reciting, Fidentinus, is mine; but when you recite it …
Though today we most often think of wit as a particular kind of humor, historically it has referred more generally to mental faculty. In the time of Chaucer, for example, wit could mean a way of thinking, much as we use mind today in phrases like “we were of one mind” or “he had a mind to.” For many centuries, wit could also refer to …