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Word for Wednesday: Monster

Our Word for Wednesday theme for October is Halloween. The word Halloween likely dates to the seventeenth century but was popularised in the Burns poem ‘Halloween’ which was written in 1785. It is a Scottish abbreviation of ‘Allhallow-even’ which means ‘Eve of the All Saints’.  ‘Hallow’ means ‘holy person’ or ‘saint’.  Last week, we looked at the word pumpkin. Today’s word is monster.  A monster is a frightening imaginary creature that is usually depicted with various animal and human parts. The word is also used to describe a cruel or evil person.  Monster c...

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Word for Wednesday: Frankenstein

It’s time for our last Word for Wednesday post in October!  This month’s blog posts have been themed around all things spooky and scary. So far, we’ve looked at the origins of the words ghost, werewolf, and vampire. Today’s word is technically the name of a character from a book.  Frankenstein was written in 1818 by English author Mary Shelley. The story is about a scientist called Victor Frankenstein who, in an unusual experiment, creates a monstrous living creature out of old body parts.  Here is how the creature is described in the book:  “His limbs were in proportion, and I had selected his features as beautiful. Beautifu...

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