WORLD WIDE WORDS
New this week
Crosspatch A recent article about Mark Haddon, who wrote The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time, reminded me of this pejorative term: “Haddon is sometimes described as a crosspatch. “Our defining connection was that we ...
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Cli-fi This suddenly fashionable term, a shortening of climate fiction, is obviously based on sci-fi, an abbreviation for science fiction used mainly by those who are unfamiliar with it (fans and writers hate it and insist on SF, so perhaps we ...
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Handicap Some people with disabilities dislike handicapped because they believe it refers to a person having to beg for alms or go cap in hand for assistance. In fact, it has nothing to do with having your cap in your hand but a great deal with having ...
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Randomly chosen
Let the cat out of the bag A theory that is indeed sometimes bruited about is that this phrase refers to the removal of the infamous tool of punishment, the cat o’ nine tails, from its canvas bag in preparation for shipboard punishment. But this ...
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The next website update
The next update to this site is due on 22 June. You should then be able to read about hippodroming, meet the new term plasticarian and uncover the origin of French fries. If you had subscribed to my newsletter, you would already have seen them, and more besides.
Recently added pages
Argosy; Possessives with verbal nouns; Barber’s cat; Hedonometer; Adoxography; Wrong end of the stick; Rotate versus revolve; Palpebrous; Banausic; Spill the beans; Austerian; Earl Grey tea; Hoyden; Theranostics; Piggy bank; Facinorous; Umpty; Carbon bubble; Career versus careen; Ignoramus; Profician; Cooking one's goose; Allision; Scrumptious; Pull devil, pull baker; Thatcher's linguistic legacy; Fib; Vulcan; Don’t throw the baby out with the bathwater; Fender; Catchpole.
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 newsletter. 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.
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