May 4th the marked Star Wars Day and to celebrate we chose Star Wars as this month’s Word for Wednesday theme. The date of this commemorative celebration comes from the pun on the Star Wars catchphrase ‘May the Force be with you’. Though the first recorded use of ‘May the 4th be with you’ dates to 1979, the first organised commemorative event for Star Wars Day wasn’t until 2011 when an event was hosted at the Toronto Underground Cinema. Today, Star Wars Day is observed by fans all over the world. Over the last few weeks, we’ve looked at the words force, Jedi, and droid. Our final Star-Wars-them...
It’s back-to-school season! To celebrate, we’ve chosen school as our Word for Wednesday theme for September. The word school comes from the Old English ‘scol’ meaning ‘place of instruction’, from the Latin ‘schola’ meaning ‘intermission of work’ and ‘leisure for learning’. The idea of children attending a school is from around 1300 and the idea of a school building is from the 1590s. Our first word of the month is semester. A semester is one of two divisions of a school year. The word is common in North American schools where the academic year is usually split into two eighteen-week semesters. Here i...
It’s ten days until Halloween and our October Word for Wednesday theme is all things spooky and scary. Have you had a chance to try out our Spooky Spelling game? Click here for five spooky spelling lists to play the game with. So far this month we’ve looked at the words ghost and werewolf. Today’s scary word is vampire! From Dracula to Buffy the Vampire Slayer to Twilight, there’s no doubt that the vampiric figure is popular when it comes to scary stories. The word is used to describe a corpse that rises at night to drink the blood of the living. Folk tales about vampires exist all over the world and details from how to create a vampire to how ...
Our Word for Wednesday theme for August is flowers. The word flower entered English around 1200 as ‘flour’ (with spelling variants including ‘flur’, ‘flor’, ‘floer’, ‘flor’, ‘floyer’, and ‘flowre’). It comes from the Old French ‘flor’, from the Latin ‘florem’. The word was used in reference to both blooms and grain until the late fourteenth century, after which the spellings ‘flower’ and ‘flour’ were used to differentiate between the two. Last week we looked at the word daisy, and today’s word is tulip. A tulip is ...
It doesn’t seem like such a stretch to assume the word nightmare is related to the English word mare which means 'female horse'. With ghost stories like that of the headless horseman, it doesn’t seem implausible that among the many weird connections and quirks in the English language there might be one about horses and sleeping. The mare in nightmare actually comes from the Proto-Germanic ‘maron’ meaning ‘goblin’. In German folklore a mare was an evil female spirit or goblin-like creature who suffocated men in their sleep. Another archaic word for nightmare is incubus which is also the name of a mythological male demon who was believ...
The word ‘health’ is a derivative of the old English word ‘hælþ’ and is German in origin. Health refers to the condition of someone’s body or mind; it is used to identify if we are in state of disease and pain (bad health) or free from disease and pain (good health). Traditionally, health was seemingly a game of luck, as successful medical remedies were sparse. However, medicine and research into health has luckily advanced; today’s society is obsessed with maintaining health and following a life style that could prevent disease. Diet, exercise and vitamin pills are part of a daily health routine to many individuals in the western world. But unfortunately, despite medical advances and healt...
The word for today is ‘referendum’. Used in 1847 with reference to Switzerland, from French or German, meaning "a submitting of a question to the voters as a whole" and the Latin referendum "that which must be referred". It is perhaps the most effective type of vote, yes or no. Tomorrow, the people of Scotland will vote to determine whether Scotland will remain part of The United Kingdom after a union of 307 years. The debate is viciously divisive, even tearing apart families, and recent polls have been incredibly close. The United Kingdom faces uncertainty, and if Scotland votes ‘Yes’ there will be massive change in the UK, which is de...
Due to the global economic crisis over the past few years the word stock has been in the news many times and every day millions of stocks and shares are exchanged, often via a virtual listed stock exchange where all of the trading is done over a computer network. The more I thought about the word stock the more it became a curiosity. Simply by sitting down with a pen and paper I was able to note ten uses of the word: The goods kept in a shop or business for sale or distribution. A supply of something collected or available for future use. Railway trains, carriages and wagons (rolling stock) A liquid made by cooking bones, meat, fish, or vegetables in water A plant with fragr...
Everybody needs a little bit of luck sometime. The word itself originates from the 15th century Dutch ‘gheluc’: ‘happiness, good fortune’(Online Etymology Dictionary). Eventually, this shortened to ‘luc’. The modern German descendant, ‘Glük’ means prosperity. It is suggested that the word made its way into English via the gambling scene. Also worth noting is that fifteenth century Middle English featured a verb, ‘lukken’ meaning ‘chance’. Perhaps today’s ‘luck’ is a merging of its two ancestors: ‘Gheluc’ and ‘Lukken’ combined to mean the ‘chance of good fortune&r...
Bless you! In English, we say ‘Bless You!’ after someone sneezes. It seems like a nice thought to bless someone with good health when they are coming down with something, doesn’t it? Indeed, the response to sneezing in other languages often translates to ‘Health’, such as ‘Gesundheit!’ in German, or ‘Salute!’ in Italian. One suggested origin of the phrase ‘Bless You!’, though, comes from an old belief that the soul could be ejected from someone’s body when they sneezed, leaving the body unprotected from the devil and other evil spirits. Another theory suggests that sneezing may have been thought of as the body’...
This week is all about freedom. On Tuesday we had International Jazz Day, a celebration of music breaking racial boundaries through music. Angelique Kidjo describes music as having ‘no nationality, no boundary no colour; jazz belongs as much to you as it belongs to me’. On Wednesday, we have International Worker’s day, which represents the right to fair employment. Finally, on Friday, it is Press Freedom Day. A day to celebrate, promote and encourage freedom of the media. It’s always nice to have a word for Wednesday choose itself and I couldn’t think of a more fitting one for this week! Freedom is a word that has strong emotional connotations for...
Does it sometimes feel like just as you’ve got to grips with a spelling rule, you are faced with a number of situations where that rule doesn’t apply? You’re not alone. Here are five reasons why English is such a hard language to learn… English words are from all over the place The English language has been heavily influenced by European invaders; art, music and literature; the colonisation of other countries; and immigration. Even common-sounding words can originate from far-away places, such as: ‘rucksack’ (borrowed from German) or ‘pyjamas’ (borrowed from Hindi). There are different ways of spelling the same sound Bec...
The word for this week is another that has evolved from Old Norse ‘thekja’ meaning to cover, the high German equivalent ‘decchen’ was borrowed to create the old English ‘theccan’ later culminating in the word ‘thatcher’. A ‘thatcher’ is someone whose trade is to apply thatch roofs (a roofing material consisting of straw, reed, twigs etc.). To ‘thatch’ is the act of applying such roofing. A roof can be described as ‘thatched’ It can even be used to describe anything that resembles thatching, so one could have ‘thatched’ hair. So ‘thatcher’ is yet another example of the English language taking influence from a mish-mash of cultures to create its own words - a ‘thatched’ word, if you will....
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