By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Where does the word ‘leviathan’ come from, and what animal does it refer to? The origins of the word are to be found in the Old Testament, but we need to take a closer look at the Bible to uncover the true meaning of the word, and to discover why the seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes took the word and used it as the title for his 1651 book Leviathan.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
There are a number of myths about the word ‘marathon’ and its origins. Let’s take a closer look at the story of how an ancient battle gave us the word for a long-distance race.
A marathon is a race run over a distance of 26 miles and 385 yards. The 385 yards are a curious detail and one I’ll return to later in this article. But let’s start with the reason why such a race is known as a ‘marathon’.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
Where does the word ‘android’ come from, and what does it mean? And what does the origin of the word ‘android’ have to do with apes? And how did the word come to be used for an operating system? Let’s take a closer look at the curious etymology of a word which arose almost by mistake.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
What connects the word ‘female’ with ‘male’, etymologically speaking? How did these corresponding terms come about? The origins of the word ‘female’ are worthy of further inspection, because, as ever on this blog, there are some surprising facts to uncover in the etymology and history of ‘female’.
By Dr Oliver Tearle (Loughborough University)
What are the origins of the word ‘family’, and what does ‘family’ have to do with the word ‘familiar’, or, for that matter, with the Latin famulus? We might assume that the etymology of ‘family’ will be straightforward, denoting a group of related people, but that meaning of the term is actually surprisingly recent. Let’s take a closer look …