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WORLD WIDE WORDS New from the last e-magazine issue Dilemma This is very strange. A search in mailing lists showed that many other people also report they had been taught that spelling, though always told that it was pronounced as though with a double M. The error has been reported both in ... Curtain lecture Curtain lecture may be simply defined as a censorious lecture by a wife to her husband, often while in bed. It has almost, but not quite totally, vanished from the language; anyone coming across it now might wrongly ... Read all of the last issue. Randomly chosen A rose by any other name One of the things that makes us the human beings we are is a powerfully-developed pattern-matching facility. Momentarily spot a profile in half light and the person is instantly recognised; listen to someone ... Recently added pages Taxi; Swan-upping; Through the Language Glass; Xeric; Boot camp; Gallivant; Globish; Divagation; Richard Snary; Taqwacore; Up the creek; Give someone the sack; Swoose; Early doors; Shemozzle; Just des(s)erts; Pluck the gowans fine; Urtication; Come the old soldier; Hung parliament; Comeuppance; Lazy Susan; Boughten; Harum-scarum; Tacky; Nye; Souped-up; Malvertising; Wild West; Pace egg play; Cabal; 3D fatigue; Guddling; Commash; Mononymous; See-saw. The next website update The next update is due on 7 August. You ought then to be able to read about roister-doister for a swaggering roisterer and investigate the origins of bread-and-butter letter and others terms of the same meaning. |
About World Wide Words The English language is forever changing. New words appear; old ones fall out of use or change their meanings. World Wide Words tries to record at least some part of this shifting wordscape by featuring new words, word histories, the background to words in the news, and the curiosities of native English speech. This site is the archive of pieces that have appeared in the free e-magazine. Weekly issues include much more than appears here, including discussion by readers, serendipitous encounters with unfamiliar language, and tongue-in-cheek tut-tuttings at errors perpetrated by sloppy writers. Notes and comments
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