Our chosen theme for April's Word for Wednesday posts is animals. The word animal has been used in English to describe sentient living creatures since the early fourteenth century, before which the word beast was more common. It comes from the Latin 'animale' meaning ‘being which breathes’, from ‘anima’ which means ‘breath’ or ‘soul’. So far we’ve looked at the rhinoceros and the ostrich. Today’s animal is the python. A python is a large non-venomous snake known for killing its prey by constriction and asphyxiation. Pythons have flecked skin and long for...
The recent bad weather in England has got us thinking about the word flood. A flood is when water overflows and submerges land that is normally dry. While the word is normally used in reference to the weather, it can also be used to describe an overwhelming amount of something fluid or intangible (for example, memories, information, or tears). Flood comes from the Old English ‘flōd’ which in turn comes from the Proto-Germanic ‘floduz’ meaning ‘flowing water or deluge’. The word has been used metaphorically to mean ‘sudden abundance’ since the mid-fourteenth century. From floods of tears, to being flooded with memories, to o...
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 Spellzone dictionary defines the word clue as 'evidence that helps solve a problem'. Indeed, your first association with the word is possibly in the context of playing games. Here is clue used in some example sentences: He begged the quizmaster for a clue. The detective hoped to find a clue that would unlock the case. She hoped a genetic test would give her a clue about her ancestry. Clue is a spelling variant of the word ‘clew’ which also means ‘a ball of thread’. If you’re wondering what a ball of string has in common with a hint, here’s a clue: the answer lies in Greek...
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