December’s Word for Wednesday theme is festive food and drink. Last week we looked at mulled wine and today’s chosen treat is mince pies. Whether you love them or hate them, there’s no doubt that the mince pie is a Christmas staple here in the UK. A mince pie is a round sweet pie that is filled with mincemeat (a mixture of dried fruits, fat, and spices). Originally mince pies would have contained meat, but today they are usually made without. Although early versions of this pie often went by other names – 'mutton pie', 'Christmas pie', 'shrid pie' – the name mince pie dates to around 1600. The word mincemea...
Earlier this year we celebrated National Pie Day by looking at expressions about pie in the English language. March 14th marks National Pi Day – a very different celebration indeed! Pi Day is a celebration of the mathematical constant Π (pronounced pi). Click here to learn more. Here are Spellzone, we thought it was the perfect opportunity to look at idioms featuring mathematics and numbers. How many can you think of? a million miles away – distracted, lost in thought, daydreaming a stitch in time saves nine – completing a task or solving a problem immediately may save extra work in the future as easy as one-two-three – as easy as counting at sixes a...
Not to be confused with National Pi Day (which falls on March 14th), January 23rd marks National Pie Day, which has been an annual celebration of pies since the 1970s. The celebration was started in Boulder, Colorado, by nuclear engineer, brewer, and teacher Charlie Papazian who decided his birthday would be called National Pie Day. A pie is a dish baked in a pastry-lined pan often with a pastry top. Common pie fillings include meat and vegetables in a savoury sauce or fruit. You may also have heard Americans refer to pizza as pie ñ this is because pizza is the Italian word for pie. Click here to see the full Spellzone dictionary definition of the word and here for the Spellzone...
What does each word mean? The Spellzone dictionary defines aisle as ‘a long narrow passage’. This passage is often ‘between seating areas’ in places like ‘an auditorium’ or ‘a church’. Click here for the full Spellzone dictionary definition of the word. Here is aisle used in some example sentences: As he walked his daughter down the aisle, the father of the bride shed a tear. Please make sure to keep the aisles clear so that people can pass through easily. She found the baked beans in the aisle between the pasta and the toiletries. Click here to find the Spellzone vocabulary lists featuring the word aisle. An isle is &lsq...
Is there a difference between these two words? Both may and might are used to express possibility. May comes from the Old English ‘mæg’ meaning ‘am able’, which in turn comes from the Proto-Germanic ‘mag’ (‘have power’), and the PIE ‘magh’ (‘to be able, have power’). The word was also used in Old English as a verb for making predictions. Might comes from the Old English ‘mihte’ or ‘meahte’ and was originally used as the past tense formation of may (‘mæg’). Today, traditionalists believe that may should only be used when referring to something that is currently h...
This week’s Word for Wednesday is a noun most of us will use every day. Unfortunately we can’t see it, hear it or touch it. It is in fact a phenomenon so incredibly abstract that it can easily slip out of our grasp. It seems to have the ability to bend and stretch, to fleet and vanish. Tolkien once wrote a wonderful riddle to which our word is the answer: This thing all things devours: Birds, beasts, trees, flowers; Gnaws iron, bites steel; Grinds hard stones to meal; Slays king, ruins town, And beats high mountain down. Time is constantly around us but nowhere to be seen. It is a system so deeply ingrained in our psyche that it is almost impossible to conceive a state of ...
Following the inevitably short-lived spell of wonderful weather we had in the UK this Bank Holiday, it seems only fitting that this week’s blog is weather-related! Just one slight twist, instead of looking into one just word, we’ll be looking into four… The seasons: four cyclic subdivisions of our calendar year that mark shifts in hours of sunlight, the weather and nature. But why the names 'spring', 'summer', 'autumn' and 'winter'? In the 14th century, what we now know as 'spring' was called 'springing-time', presumably a reference to the blossoming of plant life; the spring of the leaf. Through the centuries, the ...
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