The interesting origins of a curious word
The most widely known and widely used meaning of the word ‘muggle’ is probably the one that J. K. Rowling invented for her Harry Potter series of books: namely, a person who does not possess magical skills. Normally written with a capital M, ‘Muggle’ is used, then, for those non-wizards in the world of Harry Potter. But the word’s origins can be traced back nearly eight centuries.
The origins of a blatantly curious word
The meaning of the word ‘blatant’ is, one suspects, blatantly obvious. But how it arrived at its modern meaning is not. The word has a curious history within the world of English poetry, and ‘blatant’ took its time to arrive at its modern definition. Its origin is perhaps one of the most curious in all of the English language.
The interesting origins of an elusive word
Here’s a question for you: what does the word ‘tuffet’ mean? Can you picture or describe one? The word ‘tuffet’ should be easy enough to define. Its origins, similarly, should be fairly straightforward when we look into it. How about we make it a multiple choice question? Is a tuffet:
If you answered 3. then, alas, it appears you’re wrong. Or at least you may be. It’s a tricky issue, you see.
The interesting origins of a ubiquitous word
Here’s a question for you: when did the word ‘robot’ first enter the English language? And where did it come from? There are a few misconceptions about the origins and various meanings of the term ‘robot’, so the issue is worth examining a little more closely. The most common definition of ‘robot’ is the one provided by the Oxford English Dictionary: ‘An intelligent artificial being typically made of metal and resembling in some way a human or other animal.’
But the story of how the word came to have this meaning is a curious one. Its origin, indeed, takes us back to nineteenth-century Europe.
The best words to describe language-related experiences, reading, and other related phenomena
Logos is the very first word of the Gospel of St John: ‘In the beginning was the Word’. (Logos means ‘word’.) And ‘logos’, it turns out, has given us a raft of great wordy words – word-related terms which describe our infatuation, and frustration, with language. Nomen, the Latin for ‘name’, has also given us some great terms, so we’ve included one of those here as well, in this post outlining the best words about language or related phenomena: reading, names, and the like. We hope you enjoy them.
Alogotransiphobia denotes the fear of being caught on public transport with nothing to read. The word hasn’t found its way into dictionaries yet. It was coined by a novelist in 1992, according to Paul Dickson in his informative book of word-trivia, Authorisms: Words Wrought by Writers
A logodaedalus is someone who is cunning with words; it was first used by poet and playwright Ben Jonson in 1611.