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’. Our first word for the month is witch. A witch is a (usually female) being who practises sorcery or magic known as witchcraft. In medieval and early modern Europe, witches were thought to have supernatural powers from communing with the devil and other evil be...
How strange that, in all our years of writing Word for Wednesday posts, we’ve never featured the word spelling. A few years ago, we discovered that the word grammar has links to magic – and of course the word spelling does too (magic spell, anyone?). The word dates to the 1660s when it meant ‘manner of forming words with letters’ and came from the Old English spell- and the suffix -ing. The word evolved to mean 'the way a word has been spelled' by the 1730s. In Old English, spell meant ‘story’ and came from the Proto Germanic ‘spellam’. Around 1200 the word spell took on the meaning ‘utterance’ and late...
Today is the birthday of one of the most successful authors in history. Her books have brought delight to children and parents around the world (myself included) and are now available in over 60 languages. The novels captivated audiences and took us to a world of fantasy parallel to our own everywhere. I’m of course talking about J. K. Rowling and her Harry Potter series. Through the Harry Potter universe, J. K. Rowling innovated dozens of words or terms either borrowing from Latin or creating a new word entirely – some even making it into the dictionary as can be seen our recent blog! Aside from this, Rowling refreshed many older words, bringing them into popular culture. These words have...
American vs. British English
Common Mistakes
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English Idioms Explained
English Literature
Exams & Tests
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Mindful Spelling
Spelling at School
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