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Latest blog posts

Word for Wednesday: Stapler

Our Word for Wednesday theme for September is stationery.  Stationery comes from the Latin ‘stationarius’ which means ‘tradesman who sells from a station or shop’. The word was first used to describe ‘the articles sold by a stationer’ in 1727. So far we have looked at the words pencil, pen, ruler, and sharpener, and today's stationery-themed word is stapler.  A stapler is a machine that inserts staples into sheets of paper in order to fasten them together. The word dates to 1949 and comes from ‘staple’ which as a verb dates to the late fourteenth century and as a noun d...

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Word for Wednesday: Sharpener

Our Word for Wednesday theme for September is stationery.  Stationery comes from the Latin ‘stationarius’ which means ‘tradesman who sells from a station or shop’. The word was first used to describe ‘the articles sold by a stationer’ in 1727. So far we have looked at the words pencil, pen, and ruler, and today's stationery-themed word is sharpener. The word sharpener refers to any implement that is used to make something sharper. While the term sharpener dates to the 1630s, the term pencil sharpener is from 1854.  Both words come from word ‘sharpen’ which dates to the 1520s...

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