Today I found out the “ye” as in “Ye Olde Coffee Shoppe” should be pronounced “the”. The “Ye” here is not the “ye” as in “Judge not, that ye (you) be not judged”, but is rather a remnant of the letter “thorn” or “þorn” (Þ, þ). The letter thorn was used in Old Norse, Old English-Middle English, Gothic, and Icelandic […]

You are most likely aware that a palindrome is a word or phrase that is spelled the same regardless of whether it’s read forward or backward. A few simple examples are noon, race car, dad, mom, and wow. But what happens when a word read backward creates a different word altogether? Welcome to the wonderful world of the semordnilap. One […]

Mark R. asks: Why do we call people who scam other people out of something a con man? “Have you confidence in me to trust me with your watch until tomorrow?” With these 13 words politely expressed, as often as not William Thompson would acquire another watch. Of course, Thompson wasn’t even close to the first to run such a […]

At the turn of the 20th century in the isolated little town of Boonville, California, local residents became so enamored with creating and using their unique slang that they essentially developed an entire language. Called Boontling after the town, due to the way the language was formed, it is relatively incomprehensible to all except the initiated. About 50 miles southeast […]

The English word vandalism derives from the French word, vandalisme, and was first seen in print in 1794 when the Bishop of Blois, Henri Grégoire, included the term in a report of the mayhem, and in particular the destruction of art, that occurred during the French Revolution. Vandalism itself was a modification of vandal, a word that in English dates […]

Kerrey23 asks: Where did the expression “dollars to donuts” come from? The word “doughnut” is American in origin and traces its roots to the early 19th century. It is presumed to have been a combination of the words dough and nut. It first appeared in print in Washington Irving’s 1809 Knickerbocker’s History of New York Sometimes the table was graced […]

Oakley420 asks: Why is a lap called a lap? Used as a noun, verb and adjective, most with several distinct meanings, lap is a prominent word in the English language. One of its most common meanings denotes the upper part of the legs when seated. Derived from a Proto-Germanic word *lapp, meaning the “skirt or flap of a garment,” or […]

Meaning a complete collection of a set of related things, the curious expression the “whole kit and caboodle” has part of its origin in military life. In the 1785 version of his A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, Francis Grose gives us the first mention of the word “kit” with this meaning, as well as the phrase “the whole […]