March 21 marks World Poetry Day and to celebrate we’ve chosen poetry for this month’s Word for Wednesday theme. The word poetry dates to the late-fourteenth century and comes from the Old French ‘poetrie’, from the Latin ‘poeta’. Last week, we looked at the word sonnet, today’s word is limerick. A limerick is a humorous poem made up of five lines that follows the AABBA rhyme scheme. It is also the name of a port city in southwestern Ireland. The word, in reference to the poem, dates to 1896, but it is unclear if it is linked to Limerick in Ireland. One theory suggests that the name...
Happy St. Patrick’s Day! Every year, on March 17th, Irish people all over the world celebrate St. Patrick’s Day. St Patrick is the patron saint of Ireland, and is known for bringing Christianity to Ireland in the 5th century. According to legend, St. Patrick used the shamrock as a tool for explaining the Holy Trinity to the pagan Irish (with the leaves representing the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit), and so it has become traditional to wear the shamrock symbol on St Paddy’s day. Here are ten words with Irish roots: Banshee In Irish mythology, a ‘banshee’ is a female spirit who wails when someone is about to die. In English, the word dates back to th...
Had he had access to the elixir of life, William Shakespeare would have been 450 years old today. However it was (to be or) not to be... Known as 'The Bard' his popularity today remains immense and to illustrate this he was recently voted to be the UK's greatest cultural icon in an international survey conducted by the British Council. Where does the word bard originate? Of Celtic origin, it was a derogatory term for an itinerant musician or poet (the Scottish Gaelic 'bardos', Irish 'bard' and Welsh 'bardd') who recited verses about the exploits of their clansmen. It eventually became the word to be associated with any poet who wrote verse of a he...
This week we’ll be taking a look at one of my all-time favourite words: ‘smithereens’. But have you ever heard of a smithereen? Surely, a singular exists? Maybe not, perhaps ‘smithereens’ is a word akin to trousers or scissors, with no apparent singular equivalent but where would we find a pair of smithereens! We’ve all heard the phrase ‘blown to smithereens’; a phrase that I’ll wager is the only context in which you’ve heard the word used – me too. For me, the beauty of this word is in its onomatopoeic quality; you can almost hear something shattering into tiny, chiming fragments. The Oxford English Dictionary ...
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