Tag Archives: Etymology

In the deriv­a­tives of dormio in the vocab­u­lary sec­tion of ch. 31, Whee­lock lists ‘dor­mouse’. I gave it a quick look-up in the OED. The ety­mol­ogy was inter­est­ing, so I thought I’d post it here. [Ori­gin obscure: the sec­ond ele­ment … Con­tinue read­ing →

In the Ch. 29 vocab­u­lary list in Whee­lock, ‘fairy’ is listed as a deriv­a­tive of Lat. fatum. I hadn’t known this, so I decided to look it up quickly in the OED. The ety­mol­ogy for ‘fairy’ is: a. OF. faerie, … Con­tinue read­ing →

In The Nature of Greek Myths (p. 48), G.S. Kirk makes the fol­low­ing com­ment: ‘Typhoeus (in his alter­na­tive form Typhon the ori­gin of ‘typhoon’) suc­cumbed to Zeus, but in a later epoch Boreas, the north wind, snatched away Ore­i­thyia, daugh­ter … Con­tinue read­ing →

I didn’t real­ize until today’s Merriam-Webster Word of the Day that the name of the Athen­ian law­giver Solon had made it into Eng­lish as a (lower-case) noun. I find it even more inter­est­ing that its cur­rent use is for the … Con­tinue read­ing →

In the entry for the Latin noun caput in Whee­lock (ch. 11), sev­eral Eng­lish deriv­a­tives are listed. Here are two good ones to add to your arse­nal: occiput: the back or pos­te­rior part of the head (ob + caput)sin­ciput: the … Con­tinue read­ing →

Merriam-Webster’s word for today: doyen \DOY-un\ noun *1 : the senior or most expe­ri­enced mem­ber of a group2 : the old­est exam­ple of a cat­e­gory Exam­ple sen­tence:We watched a TV doc­u­men­tary by Jacques Cousteau, the doyen of under­sea explor­ers. Did … Con­tinue read­ing →