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WORLD WIDE WORDS New from the last e-magazine issue In a trice Before Britannia ruled the waves, the Dutch were the dominant maritime nation of Europe and much of our seafaring vocabulary can be traced back to Dutch words, trice included. It’s from the Middle Dutch word trîsen, to hoist ... Jumentous On recently buying some well-rotted stable manure for my garden, I was naturally apprehensive lest it be too obviously jumentous. I’m glad to be able to report that my worries were unfounded. The word is usually explained as ... Read all of the last issue, including the most recent Sic! section. Randomly chosen Lippitude Various old dictionaries seek to explain this medical term through a variety of others that are at least as obscure. To equate it with blearedness, glama, or epiphora would seem, at least to us today, to be ill-judged attempts to ... Recently added pages NDM-1; Ugsome; Oxford Dictionary of English; Nine days’ wonder; Mournival; Cucumber time; Gastro-diplomacy; First, Second and Third; Nurdle; Bread-and-butter letter; Roister-doister; Dilemma; Curtain lecture; Swan-upping; Taxi; Through the Language Glass; Xeric; Boot camp; Gallivant; Divagation; Globish; Richard Snary; Taqwacore; Up the creek; Give someone the sack; Swoose; Early doors; Shemozzle; Pluck the gowans fine; Just des(s)erts; Urtication. The next website update The next update is due on 11 September. You may then be able to read about a neat word for a nosy parker, prodnose, learn the origin of the reputational sense of chops, and discover an entomological rule that says bedbug ought to be two words. |
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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