Happy New Year! Our Word for Wednesday theme for January is colours. The word colour entered English via Old French and comes from the Latin ‘color’, from the Old Latin ‘colos’ meaning ‘a covering’, from the PIE root ‘kel-’ meaning ‘to conceal’. The word has been used in reference to skin colour since the early-thirteenth century and in reference to pigments and dye since the fourteenth century. The spelling colour became the common English spelling from the fourteenth century, but a classical correction made color an alternative from the fifteenth century. Color is now the common American English spelling...
The English language is constantly evolving in creative ways and this has always been the case. This month we started a new blog feature on slang words and their plain English meanings. Our first post in this new series looks at Cockney rhyming slang. We returned to our Commonly Confused Words series with a very similar-sounding pair of words—allusion and illusion. Do you know when to use which word? Visit the blog for memory devices to help you tell them apart. For our Idioms article we looked at figurative expressions about fruit. We continued with the fruit theme in July’s Word for Wednesday posts. Did you know the word ...
Our Word for Wednesday theme for July is fruit. The word fruit dates back to the late-twelfth century when it was used to mean ‘any vegetable product useful to humans or animals’. It entered English via Old French and comes from the Latin ‘fructus’ meaning ‘an enjoyment, delight, or satisfaction’ as well as ‘proceeds, produce, fruit, and crops’. The word took on its modern meaning in the early thirteenth century. So far we’ve looked at the words banana, pineapple, plum, and pomegranate —today’s word is cherry. A cherry is a small round fruit with a si...
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