Etymologie, Etimología, Étymologie, Etimologia, Etymology, (griech.) etymología, (lat.) etymologia, (esper.) etimologio - US Vereinigte Staaten von Amerika, Estados Unidos de América, États-Unis d'Amérique, Stati Uniti d'America, United States of America, (esper.) Unuigintaj Statoj de Ameriko - Zeitschrift, Revista, Revue, Rivista, Magazine, (esper.) magazinoj, presartoj, libroj

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nybooks
Etymology in The New York Review of Books

With a worldwide circulation of over 135,000, The New York Review of Books has established itself, in Esquire‘s words, as “the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language.” The New York Review began during the New York publishing strike of 1963, when its founding editors, Robert Silvers and Barbara Epstein, and their friends, decided to create a new kind of magazine — one in which the most interesting and qualified minds of our time would discuss current books and issues in depth. Just as importantly, it was determined that the Review should be an independent publication; it began life as an independent editorial voice and it remains independent today.

The New York Review’s early issues included articles by such writers as W.H. Auden, Elizabeth Hardwick, Hannah Arendt, Edmund Wilson, Susan Sontag, Robert Penn Warren, Lilian Hellman, Norman Mailer, Gore Vidal, Saul Bellow, Robert Lowell, Truman Capote, William Styron, and Mary McCarthy. The public responded by buying up practically all the copies printed and writing thousands of letters to demand that The New York Review continue publication. And Robert Silvers and Barbara Epstein continued as co-editors of the Review until Barbara’s death in 2006; Robert Silvers continues as editor.
...

(E?)(L?) http://www.nybooks.com/search/?q=etymology&origin=magazine

Feature (Excerpt)

Mary McCarthy on William S. Burroughs’s ‘The Naked Lunch’

... by a virus, and his Muse (see etymology of “mosaic”) is interested in organic processes of multiplication and duplication.The literary notion of time as simultaneous, a montage, is not original with Burroughs...

Jan 10, 2013

Review (Book review)

Is There a Jewish Gene?

Richard C. Lewontin

... part because the term is so loaded, there is considerable discussion of the Jews as a race or, using a less charged word, as a “people.”“Race” is a term of uncertain etymology and many meanings...

Dec 6, 2012

Feature (Essay)

Is Libya Cracking Up?

Nicolas Pelham

... of Tifinagh, the Amazigh language, by the new Libya. At a tribal feast in Sabha, I found him wooing the Warfalla, Libya’s largest tribe—estimated at one million strong—with an etymological lesson on the Amazigh...

Jun 21, 2012

Review (Book review)

A Wild Ride Through America

Dan Chiasson

... " first meant "a meeting," "an assembly" (this curious fact is mentioned in Pinsky's chapbook, First Things to Hand); an online etymology dictionary points out that the Icelandic parliament is called the "Althing...

Jan 12, 2012

Review (Book review)

The Rise of Sacred Song

Eamon Duffy

... , magical amulets, letters, saints' lives, charters, and monastic chronicles—and making especially effective use of Latin etymology and the neglected corpus of both Greek and Latin epigraphy, Page resurrects...

Jan 12, 2012

Review (Book review)

The Magic of Leopardi

Robert Pogue Harrison

... why Leopardi put such a premium on accessory images, lateral connotations, and etymological undertones, and why he deliberately inserted archaic constructions into his otherwise distinctly modern idiom...

Feb 10, 2011

Review (Book review)

‘Rude Ludicrous Lucrative’ Rap

Dan Chiasson

... in the word "death" (as in "to death," "done to death," overdone). Etymology was, in this instance, destiny: the word was written on a slip of paper, placed in a breadbox-sized coffin, and lowered...

Jan 13, 2011

Review (Book review)

The Unfolding Elegy

Dan Chiasson

... , etymological lore (the meanings of "history," "elegy," and "autopsy" among others), original collages and mini-paintings, poems and lines for poems. Then Carson took a notebook and made a long book- collage...

Oct 14, 2010

Letter

Knowledge vs. Pedantry

Sam Abrams, reply by Tony Judt

... is quite common, it still pains the ears of those few of us who are sensitive to the etymological resonances of English words. Didn't Professor Judt learn Latin at the fancy school he went to? > "We...

Sep 30, 2010

Review (Book review)

‘Innermost Secrets’

Mark Ford

... sickness, of something alien to my body and to my sight and to my mind, like an inoculation, and that last term is spot on etymologically, for it contains at its root the Latin "oculus," from which it comes...

May 27, 2010

Review (Book review)

The Mysterious Mythmaker of New York

Christopher Benfey

... army" assembled by Peter the Headstrong (i.e., Stuyvesant), Irving included some fanciful etymologies of his imaginary historian's name:> Lastly came the KNICKERBOCKERS of the great town of Scaghtikoke...

Apr 29, 2010

Review (Book review)

Modernizing the Marranos

J.H. Elliott

... , a word of uncertain origin but popularly believed to mean "pig." The famous Spanish dictionary of 1611 by Sebastián de Covarrubias is revealing, about both the use of the word and its etymology:> MARRANO...

Mar 11, 2010

Review (Book review)

A Very Different Pakistan

Caleb Crain

... wind and blown rain scoured it clean."The word "Pakistan" has two etymologies. It was assembled in the 1930s with letters from the names of Muslim-majority regions that the new nation was planned...

Nov 5, 2009

Review (Book review)

The Superior Civilization

Tim Flannery

... such as, for example, "gamergate," "eclosed," and "anal trophallaxis." Occasional lapses add to the lay reader's difficulties. The etymology of "gamergate" ("married worker"), for example...

Feb 26, 2009

Review (Book review)

Becoming Susan Sontag

Deborah Eisenberg

... " but as "diaries," and although the words are etymologically identical, "diary" seems the more apposite choice, suggesting, as it does, something more intimate than "journal"—a little book with a lock.The diaries...

Dec 18, 2008

Review (Book review)

‘If Shakespeare Had Been Able to Google…’

James Gleick

... —and this suggests the nature of the contents: some definition, some etymology, admonitions, jokes (see fart jokes), yarns, name-dropping, some long-remembered peeves, and some fresh comedy culled from cyberspace...

Dec 18, 2008

Review (Book review)

Rembrandt—The Jewish Connection?

Benjamin Moser

... >Germania. (For details of these etymologies, see Dovid Katz, Words on Fire: The Unfinished Story of Yiddish, Basic Books, 2004.) The term for England described the country's location at the edge...

Aug 14, 2008

Review (Book review)

Virgil Lives!

Jasper Griffin

... was called by all 'Parthenius,' that is, 'holding himself well' or 'setting in motion'": these were wild guesses at a Greek etymology, by men who knew no Greek.Virgil had studied everywhere, it seemed: Naples...

Jun 26, 2008

Review (Book review)

A Successful Defiance

Christopher Ricks

... is many things. Some of these have evolved since medieval times, but the etymology is and was there. As the Oxford English Dictionary records, "Challenge is thus originally the same word as calumny." Latin...

Mar 20, 2008

Review (Book review)

The Women and the Gods

Peter Green

... ]: Erechtheus, a mythical cult figure identified with Poseidon (his name was etymologically connected with Poseidon's seismological "earth-shaking"), was also thought to have been an early king of Athens...

Jun 28, 2007

Review (Book review)

Blacks: Damned by the Bible

David Brion Davis

... by a false etymology that identified the Hebrew name "Ham" with "black, dark, or hot." Goldenberg's exhaustive etymological research shows that contrary to longstanding belief, the original Hebrew name "Ham...

Nov 16, 2006

Review (Book review)

Beckett: Still Stirring

Tim Parks

... his clothes on and off, in quite alien surroundings.[^3] The very etymology of "novel" suggests that the form brings newness. Echoing Ecclesiastes, Beckett renounces the idea. The solar system is a prison...

Jul 13, 2006

Review (Exhibition review)

The Persian Difference

Christopher de Bellaigue

... were suspected of repatriating more finds than the government had allotted them.[^7]: In a scholarly paper on the etymological origins of the title, written in 1966, Sadegh Kia, the then deputy culture minister...

Dec 15, 2005

Review (Book review)

The Pleasure of Their Company

Peter France

... , was a discipline that could be irksome. The word itself suggests policing (a false etymology, it is true), and this is the aspect of the "civilizing process" that is highlighted in Norbert Elias's celebrated study...

Jun 23, 2005

Review (Theater review)

Victims on Broadway II

Daniel Mendelsohn

... an orchard in spring!") But the most meaningful name in the play may be the one that, unlike that of Blanche or her sister Stella—"Stella for star!"—is never parsed or etymologized by the characters themselves...

Jun 9, 2005

Review (Book review)

In Abraham’s Vineyard

Amos Elon

... and tiresome reconstructions of the etymological roots of Hebrew words from Greek, Latin, French, and Chaldaean, and by limp academic jokes:> If my mother said, for instance, that our neighbor Mr. Lemberg...

Dec 16, 2004

Review (Book review)

Backstage in the Tropics

Anita Desai

... and its etymology in his book of 1991, The Last Voyage of Somebody the Sailor. In a more realistic vein, there was Michael Ondaatje's Running in the Family, which, idiosyncratic and ultimately tragic...

Dec 2, 2004

Review (Book review)

What Was Fascism?

Adrian Lyttelton

... was something else, something new and disquieting in its ability to mobilize positive enthusiasm and dedication, a form of modern mass politics. A second problem is etymological. "Fascism" did not exist before 1919...

Oct 21, 2004

Review (Book review)

Nailed!

Daniel Mendelsohn

... about his criticism. For if criticism is, as the word's etymology suggests, essentially an act of judgment, it seems to me that Peck's critical writings, for all their intelligence and brio, focus, instead...

Jul 15, 2004

Review (Book review)

You Can Take It With You

W.S. Merwin

... and irreducibly." However subterranean and tributary that etymology (both words are presumed to come from a root, dghem, which was the source of the Greek word khthon and meant "earth"), the relation...

Apr 8, 2004

Review (Book review)

Dust & Daemons

Michael Chabon

... , though it is known as "anbaric power" (the terms are etymologically akin, deriving from the Greek and Arabic words for amber), produced by great river-spanning dynamos and "atom-craft" plants, but guns have no ascendancy...

Mar 25, 2004

Review (Book review)

Conspiracy of Silence

Charles Simic

... . Torture, from Latin torquere, to twist. What a visual instruction in etymology! Sebald admires the Belgian resistance fighter's detachment and understatement, which prohibits both pity and self...

Feb 27, 2003

Review (Book review)

Sweet Persuasions of the Dark

J. M. Coetzee

... where words break down and return to their etymologies, the place of anamnesis. Then travel deeper down, to the very bottom, to "the dark foundations, among the Mothers," the realm of unborn tales...

Feb 27, 2003

Feature (Essay)

Anti-Europeanism in America

Timothy Garton Ash

... [^1]: The Guardian, November 13, 2002.[^2]: Jonah Goldberg believes he coined this term, and relates it etymologically to a wiener sausage—as a metaphor for the European spine. However...

Feb 13, 2003

Review (Book review)

The Awkward Age

Brad Leithauser

... capture that stage of early adolescence when mortification is felt so acutely the word recalls its etymological sense of death; it's that awkward age when you frequently feel you really might die...

Dec 19, 2002

Review (Book review)

Brief Encounter

Gabriele Annan

... , to him the Odyssey is "the founding epic of nostalgia." Odysseus and Penelope crop up throughout the novel, and right at the start Kundera discusses the etymology of the word "nostalgia" in Spanish, Catalan, German...

Dec 5, 2002

Exchange

Priests and Boys: An Exchange

Philip Jenkins, Judith Levine, David Hirsch, and Kenneth L. Woodward, reply by Garry Wills

... .I would lament my misspelling of her last name had she not misspelled my first one.To the Editors:Garry Wills explains etymologically why there is no difference between pedophilia—sexual desire for children...

Sep 26, 2002

Review (Book review)

Did Milton Go to the Devil’s Party?

John K. Leonard

... " and "rapture" are etymologically connected.) But Fish coarsens his argument when he credits Milton with another, much feebler, pun. Addressing the Muse, Milton says: "Up led by thee/Into the Heav'n of Heav...

Jul 18, 2002

Review (Book review)

The Comedy Murder Case

Jasper Griffin

... play, Aeschylus' Persians. Comedy, tragedy's disreputable and disrespectful younger sister, becomes clearly visible forty-seven years later, with Aristophanes' Acharnians. The etymology of "comedy...

Jul 18, 2002

Feature (Essay)

In the Finger Zone

Bernard Lewis

... dura shamiyya, Syrian sorghum. All these names serve the same purpose; to indicate that this is something foreign and exotic. There are other ways in which etymology can be either misleading...

May 23, 2002

Review (Book review)

Another Country

Joseph Lelyveld

... that presumably would be instantly recognized and etymologized by those whose doctrines it echoes. Elsewhere she aptly describes this kind of political speech as "encoded.") As always happens, she then notes, the instant judgment...

Dec 20, 2001

Review (Book review)

The Art of Malice

P. N. Furbank

... , and deacon; and, as its etymology suggests, it implies a chain of authority: the bishop had authority over the priest, and the priest over the deacon. In this sense it is quite without problems...

Nov 15, 2001

Review (Book review)

Breaking Out

Daniel Mendelsohn

... seeks the "lamplit answer" to a question about the etymology of the word "carnation," which the young Gjertrud has intuitively identified as "Christ's flowers." The word is derived from the Latin...

Mar 29, 2001

Review (Book review)

The Land of Accidents

John Lanchester

... , stealing vehicles, never wearing bras") to Millat abusing Irie's picnic preparations ("'We got apples, you chief,' cut in Millat, 'chief' for some inexplicable reason hidden in the etymology of North London...

Feb 8, 2001

Review (Book review)

The Genius of Robert Walser

J. M. Coetzee

... the etymology he himself hints at for von Gunten—von unten, "from below"—suggests otherwise), as well as his pleasure in the all-male ambience of the boarding school and his delight in malicious pranks...

Nov 2, 2000

Review (Book review)

The Invented Man

Jasper Griffin

... island named Scariot." (Those convenient etymological islands!) He, too, was taken in by a royal family, played with the little prince and murdered him, and fled. He went to Pilate. Not surprisingly...

Sep 21, 2000

Review (Book review)

The West Virginian

Benjamin DeMott

... , his book contrasts "our contemporary irony," which "is a static irony, a way of staying unmoved by our neighbors, the world, ourselves," and "irony [that] is ecstatic, in the etymologically strict sense...

Mar 9, 2000

Review (Book review)

Life Itself

Helen Vendler

... "; the janitorial "orderly" is pressed into service to restore, as if by magical etymology, "order"; the impersonal "a voice" turns horribly and abjectly into "your voice"; and—in the best linguistic moment of all...

Feb 24, 2000

Review (Book review)

Lover of Lost Causes

Denis Donoghue

... and etymology which is a nature contrary to your own. You cannot extricate yourself from this "contrary nature" by some kind of philosophical fiat or gesture of spiritual withdrawal.[^7] So in different contexts...

May 20, 1999

Review (Book review)

The Doctor’s Prescription

Derek Jarrett

... the "dry crabbed rules of etymology and grammar." Changes were forcing booksellers to attend not to the whims of courtiers and noblemen but to market forces—changes which Lipking calls "the commodification...

Mar 18, 1999

Review (Book review)

Poet Beyond Borders

Fintan O’Toole

... followed the boundaries of the land. In the names of its fields and townlands, in their mixture of Scots and Irish and English etymologies, this side of the country was redolent of the histories of its owners.The force...

Mar 4, 1999

Review (Book review)

Giant

Simon Leys

... translation into modern vernacular of James's suave sarcasm: "SUBLIME WINDBAG."[^4] Windbag? Hugo would not have disliked that word. Wind—paraclete—breath—spirit—inspiration: the suggestive chain of etymologies...

Dec 17, 1998

Review (Book review)

Chopping Off the Golden Bough

Jasper Griffin

... etymology of his name from pan, "everything," often raised his seriousness and his stature; he is sometimes presented as a cosmic thinker and teacher.Arcadia, too, was turned from a crude backwater, home...

Oct 8, 1998

Review (Book review)

The Way to Grant’s Tomb

Joseph Connors

... further there is the fascination with etymology which often attracts the encyclopedic temperament. Not for nothing was Isidore of Seville's great seventh-century encyclopedia named The Etymologies. Rykwert hunts many seemingly...

Sep 24, 1998

Review (Book review)

2001

Richard Jenkyns

... had ninety-nine years?" Gould calls this an elegant solution, but it is not; it is a rotten solution, both etymologically and mathematically.A slightly better proposal is to allow the BC and AD sequences...

May 28, 1998

Letter

‘Largesse’

Jean Starobinski, reply by Ernst Gombrich

... and arbitrary, the reviewer remarks: "Such excursions into etymology are sometimes more impressive than convincing, for does not the term 'redundant' derive from the same root, a synomym for 'superfluous...

May 28, 1998

Review (Book review)

In the Giving Vein

Ernst Gombrich

... among the disciples (Matthew 5:20) and with the gift of grace.Such excursions into etymology are sometimes more impressive than convincing, for does not the term "redundant" derive from the same root, a synonym...

Apr 23, 1998

Review (Book review)

A Garland of Ibids

John Gross

... may well be disputed whether this"—the title—"be a right Reading? Ought it not rather to be spelled Dunceiad, as the Etymology evidently demands?"Pope was engaged in literary warfare:he was a writer and scholar pitching...

Mar 5, 1998

Review (Book review)

As Many Homers As You Please

Hayden N. Pelliccia

... , it will not surprise veterans of his previous works to learn that there waits in the wings an etymological proposal to render the unknown known.Nagy connects the stem deuk- seen in polydeukea with that also shown...

Nov 20, 1997

Review (Book review)

Anglo-Celtic Attitudes

Helen Vendler

... .E.D.):why, though, should one tail-light flash and flare,then flicker-fadeto an after-image of tourmalineset in a dark part-jet, part-jasper or -jade?The etymological excursion turns out to be a veiled political...

Nov 6, 1997

Review (Book review)

Maid, Man, and Jew

Peter Holland

... : not only its clear implication of someone "belonging to Caesar" but also the etymological suggestions of "cut" in the name Caesar itself (from the verb caedo by way of Caesar's Caesarian birth). The name implies, deep...

Jun 12, 1997

Review (Book review)

Entropology

Louis Menand

... makes it clear that the etymology runs the other way. When Dixon, in the Dutch colony of Cape Town, becomes addicted to a Malay sauce called "ketjap" and insists on pouring it over everything he eats...

Jun 12, 1997

Exchange

Sokal’s Hoax: An Exchange

Michael Holquist, Robert Shulman, George Levine, M. Norton Wise, and Nina Byers, et al.

... (before which all else is, in the etymological sense of the word, profane) is occupied by particle physicists. His use of the covering term "science" is deceptive, for it excludes microbiology, genetics...

Oct 3, 1996

Review (Catalog review)

Anxieties of Influence

Jasper Griffin

... . Linguistic arguments. Bernal makes extensive use of etymologies coined by himself, explaining the origin of Greek words and—especially—names, as deriving from Egyptian. These words are supposed to have entered...

Jun 20, 1996

Review (Book review)

One More Art

Simon Leys

... it "calligraphy" was a way of conceding it some sort of artistic merit. Still, the choice of this name was unfortunate and generated a deeper sort of misunderstanding. By its very etymology, "calligraphy" means...

Apr 18, 1996

Review (Book review)

On the Edge of Chaos

Timothy Ferris

... , and many other sciences. He is said to speak thirteen languages. He can discourse at length on cuisine, etymology, ethics, ornithology, South American pottery, Caucasian carpet-weaving, literature (he came across the word...

Sep 21, 1995

Review (Book review)

Twelve Angry Persons

Andrew Hacker

... to stop. In fact, etymology prevailed: if an officer chooses to stop you, you are then and there "arrested." This is so even if he simply signals you, without saying a word. So being under arrest requires...

Sep 21, 1995

Review (Book review)

To Keep and Bear Arms

Garry Wills

... arma explains the plural usage in English ("arms"). One does not "bear arm." Latin arma is, etymologically, war "equipment," and it has no singular forms.[^16] By legal and other channels, arma ferre...

Sep 21, 1995

Review (Book review)

Sex for Thought

Robert Darnton

... to its etymological root, meaning writing about prostitutes, as distinct from eroticism in general. For others, it involves descriptions of sexual activity that are meant to arouse the reader or beholder...

Dec 22, 1994

Review (Book review)

Vico for Now

Stuart Hampshire

... in its insights and its imagery, with absurd excursions into etymology and into fanciful ancient history, and lacking the ordinary constraints of evidence and scholarship. The style of the book...

Nov 3, 1994

Review (Book review)

‘Where Late the Sweet Birds Sang’

W.S. Merwin

... of them that is with us still has become a kind of indication of what hope there is. Besides the good fortune that their presence has brought to our lives, in our literature, arts, dreams, traditions, and etymologies, what they continue...

Aug 11, 1994

Review (Book review)

On the Waterfront

Jonathan Raban

... , equips it with a deeply suspect etymology, and uses it, on average, once every eighty-five words for the next ten pages. When he writes of "explorers and mariners gunkholing their way [from Europe...

Jul 14, 1994

Review (Book review)

Sacred Woods

Anne Barton

... and glutted offal." Etymologies may have assisted him here. The Hebrew word pardes had become complexly entangled during the Renaissance with the Greek paradeisos, signifying both Heaven and the Garden of Eden...

May 26, 1994

Review (Book review)

Stop the World, I Want to Get Off

Cathleen Schine

... than most utopias," Marcus wrote in The Other Victorians, "pornography takes the injunction of its etymology literally—it may be said largely to exist at no place, and to take place in nowhere…. Time in pornotopia...

Apr 7, 1994

Letter

The Oed Revised

John Simpson and Edmund Weiner

... of the First Edition of the OED. The early editors drew on a substantial body of learning in compiling the text, but in the light of current knowledge many of their etymologies, definitions, register labels...

Mar 3, 1994

Review (Book review)

Prophets With Honor

Avishai Margalit

... are etymologically connected in Hebrew) has a symbolic meaning which Buber locates in the Bible. In Buber's view, Zionism is justified only if it leads to a renewal of Judaism within the setting of an "organic nation...

Nov 4, 1993

Feature (Reportage)

Murder of the City

Bogdan Bogdanovic, translated from the Serbian by Michael Henry Heim

... "city" and "civilization," associating them even on an etymological level. It therefore has no choice but to view the destruction of cities as flagrant, wanton opposition to the highest values...

May 27, 1993

Letter

‘Not So Free at Last’

Michael S. Flier

... to eastern Ukraine alone, the term was adopted only gradually by western Ukrainians. (Incidentally, Brumberg's derivation of Ukraine from okraina instead of ukraina reflects a long discredited etymology...

Jan 14, 1993

Review (Book review)

Book of Books Books

Denis Donoghue

... word is, which is explicitly male, lets Adam etymologize the word issa as meaning "drawn out of a man." So the ideology of male supremacy began. But Brisman thinks Jacob's intervention quite wonderful...

Nov 5, 1992

Review (Book review)

The World Turned Upside Down

Emily Vermeule

... in the early 4th century." The stressed, repeated use of "I" is characteristic of many sentences in this book.)This indiscriminate use of ancient languages offers to Bernal multiple sources for the etymology...

Mar 26, 1992

Review (Book review)

The Birth of the Two-Sex World

Stephen Jay Gould

... . The new criteria are embodied in the etymology and practice of the experimentalist's favorite term, "analysis"—breaking down, discovery of difference, separation, rendering of overt distinction by disparate...

Jun 13, 1991

Review (Book review)

The ‘We’ Generation

Ian Buruma

... sensibility himself. He is often at his most amusing in cultivated asides, uttered sotto voce, as it were, as the port goes round. Thus we are treated to a scholarly discourse on the etymology of spanking...

May 30, 1991

Feature (Essay)

A Handful of Dust: Return to Guiana

V.S. Naipaul

... after independence in this new way, for no good historical or etymological reason)—Cheddi Jagan has sat waiting for his moment.Almost from the start he had "the oppressed sugar workers as his base"—to use words...

Apr 11, 1991

Review (Book review)

Was Cratylus Kidding?

Robert M. Adams

... or schools of thought long since passed out of our cognizance.During his lecture, Socrates propounds a great many etymologies and interpretations of names that are, and have long been recognized as, childish...

Dec 6, 1990

Review (Book review)

Escaped Slaves of the Forest

E.J. Hobsbawm

... Shortly after settling in the conquered New World, Spaniards began to use the word cimarrón, of debated etymology, to describe imported European domestic animals that had escaped from control...

Dec 6, 1990

Review (Book review)

Neurology and the Soul

Oliver Sacks

... , the active powers of a self, from the abyss of pathology, can be given by music, by art of all kinds. In Parkinsonism, in postencephalitic syndromes, patients become deeply inert. Inert, etymologically...

Nov 22, 1990

Feature (Lecture)

Words on Words

Václav Havel

... the word "word" here—comprises only the meaning assigned to it by an etymological dictionary. The meaning of every word also reflects the person who utters it, the situation in which it is uttered...

Jan 18, 1990

Feature (Essay)

A Dictionary for Deconstructors

Alison Lurie

... etymologically. Criticism and critic derive from the Greek kritikos, "skillful in judging, decisive."[^2] Deconstruction (Latin construere, "to pile up, build"), on the other hand, has no overtones of skill...

Nov 23, 1989

Review (Book review)

Who Are These Coming to the Sacrifice?

Jasper Griffin

... in a society which had had the alphabet for centuries.A number of etymologies are offered of Greek words and place-names that are said to derive from Egyptian and Semitic roots: Mycenae comes from Mahanayim...

Jun 15, 1989

Review (Book review)

Rules of the Game

Gabriele Annan

... Utz is the hero of Utz. "In Grimm's Etymological Word Book," Bruce Chatwin explains on page 16 of his 150-page novella, "'utz' carries any number of negative connotations: 'drunk,' 'dimwit...

Feb 2, 1989

Feature (Essay)

Jamming the Jazz Section

Josef Skvorecky

... . The explanation of this peculiar phenomenon is in the etymology of the word itself: "popular" derives from the Latin populus, "the people." It suggests that popular music is originally created by ordinary people...

Jun 30, 1988

Review (Book review)

The Polemical Philosopher

William H. Gass

... his intellectual superiority as a medal. It became difficult, in Nietzsche's eyes, for a social form or a system of ideas to escape its origins, however hard it struggled, and this allegedly scientific, etymological...

Feb 4, 1988

Review (Book review)

Indian English

Jug Suraiya

... by Col. Henry Yule and A.C. Burnell in A Glossary of Colloquial Anglo-Indian Words and Phrases, and of Kindred Terms, Etymological, Historical, Geographical and Discursive. The book was popularly called...

Nov 19, 1987

Review (Book review)

Animals and Us

Stephen Jay Gould

... in pain for the virtue (so manly in its etymology) of philosophical consistency.Since supposed opposites often curve around to meet each other, Hearne's notion of partnership in training has its counterpart...

Jun 25, 1987

Review (Book review)

Leviathan’s Program

Bernard Williams

... be "polymneme," since its suffix is said to indicate a connection with memory; it is not clear whether etymology has been overridden or overlooked.)Polynemes are connected, indirectly, to items in the mind Minsky...

Jun 11, 1987

Review (Book review)

Thoreau’s Book of Life

Geoffrey O’Brien

... of a leaf or lobe or globe, Thoreau proceeds to enter those words, or rather the root word from which they all derive, on the principle that etymology recapitulates cosmology: "The radicals of lobe are lb...

Jan 15, 1987

Review (Book review)

The Birth of a Tragedy

Avishai Margalit

... of the Bible into Zulu, complains that the natives cannot be bothered to learn to read the Bible in the divine language of God, namely English. Avishai's etymology does not end here. He also finds...

Oct 23, 1986

Review (Book review)

Puffs

Josh Rubins

... -so-vegetal yellow kind—on the island of Cuba. After a small orgy of etymology. Cabrera Infante is at his most plainspoken, even a trifle solemn, in following the Cuban cigar from weed to humidor: how a cigar...

May 8, 1986

Review (Book review)

The Taming of D. H. Lawrence

J. M. Coetzee

... . "Demystification is not always a good thing," he suggests, apropos Lawrence's use of taboo words, and buttresses his disapproval with an etymological excursus on "fuck" to prove that the word has always stood...

Jan 16, 1986

Review (Book review)

A Musicological Offering

Robert Winter

... ### 1.By some etymological quirk music is the only art that adds the suffix "-ologist" to identify some of its professional students. We encounter biologists, physiologists, and entomologists...

Jul 18, 1985

Review (Book review)

Living Theater

Robert Brustein

... at all, and one of them is not even about theater. "The Serpent's Sting," which he calls an introduction to his autobiography, uses etymology as a way of discussing religion and history. Kott...

Mar 14, 1985

Review (Book review)

Betwixt, Bothered & Bewildered

Mary Douglas

... . For he does not read Hebrew and does not pretend to be a Hebrew scholar, still less an Egyptologist. Indeed, his bold etymologies have made many an Ancient Near Eastern scholar shudder. Evidently Leach places...

Dec 20, 1984

Review (Book review)

Cracks in the Universe

D.J. Enright

... We know what an "Oxford Book" is, but what exactly is an "aphorism"? Etymologically the word is traced to the Greek for "setting a boundary," "defining." It is impossible to set precise boundaries...

Jun 30, 1983

Feature (Lecture)

The Written and the Unwritten Word

Italo Calvino, translated by William Weaver

... , and the pages I am holding in my hands are the text I have written. Being unable to improvise, I am obliged to read, comforted by the Latin etymology of the word "lecture" also given by Webster. In any case...

May 12, 1983

Feature (Essay)

Novel, Tale, Romance

Mary McCarthy

... , you could go on indefinitely, with infinite regression as in the picture on the old Quaker Oats box.A strange light on the secret nature of the tale is cast by etymology. "Tale" in French is conte, in Italian conto, in Spanish...

May 12, 1983

Feature (Essay)

Ruins and Poetry

Czeslaw Milosz

... a whole community are perceived by a poet as touching him in a most personal manner. Then poetry is no longer "alienated." As the etymology of the term suggests, poetry is no longer a foreigner in society...

Mar 17, 1983

Review (Book review)

Is Locke the Key?

Ian Hacking

... , and an important vignette of Leibniz, the world's greatest all-purpose thinker, doing etymology. The chief topic of these essays, however, concerns a later period. Aarsleff is fascinated by the French eighteenth...

Jun 10, 1982

Review (Book review)

Digging In

Irvin Ehrenpreis

... and etymologies (sometimes fanciful) have their ground. For softness and hardness belong to the landscape of the poet's childhood, to its bogs and farms, its rivers and mountains. Consequently, we hear lines...

Oct 8, 1981

Letter

The Heidegger Question

Willis Domingo, reply by Thomas Sheehan

... necessary in philosophical writing in general and Heidegger scholarship in particular. I said Ereignis means "event" through much of Heidegger's work, not at all. Indeed, certain texts speculate on its etymology...

Jun 11, 1981

Letter

Being True to Heidegger

Willis Domingo, reply by Thomas Sheehan

... , Ereignis means "event" through much of Heidegger's writing, as it does in normal German. To cite it as an example of arcane terminology on the basis of Heidegger's speculations about its etymology (eignen...

Apr 2, 1981

Review (Book review)

Thin Ice

Patricia Craig

... , as always, for narrative assurance and deftness of touch. We can only admire an author who is bold enough, or playful enough, to indicate so clearly his awareness of the etymological link between fiction...

Mar 19, 1981

Review (Book review)

In the Cards

Frances A. Yates

... the invention and progress of the arts and sciences. For his linguistic studies he collected the alphabets, grammars, vocabularies and their etymologies of many languages, seeking to establish their common origin...

Feb 19, 1981

Review (Book review)

The Gentle Slope of Castalia

Clive James

... . Etymology, philology, mathematics, crystallography—his interests were endless, and all pursued at the highest level. On top of all that, he set the standards for the intelligent use of his invention...

Dec 18, 1980

Review (Book review)

Caveat Lector: The New Heidegger

Thomas Sheehan

... with etymologies of Old High German words. At his best he was a brilliant reader of the history of philosophy and a creative and revolutionary interpreter of man's relation to what he called "the presence of things...

Dec 4, 1980

Exchange

Deconstruction: An Exchange

Dorothea Tanning, Paul Alpers, and Robert C. Solomon, reply by Denis Donoghue

... ") and psychic automatism (Crevel, Desnos).As early as 1926 Michel Leiris wrote:> By dissecting the words we love, without concern for etymology or accepted signification, we discover their most hidden virtues...

Dec 4, 1980

Review (Book review)

Fierce Games

Richard Murphy

... about the ambiguous meaning of that word; a moral assault on the idea of goodness enshrined in its etymology; and an attack on the myth of the fall of man. Gunn's strategy here is to encourage us to identify...

Mar 20, 1980

Review (Book review)

Una Grande Calamità

Luigi Barzini

... in disgrace because he had killed a French general in a duel. The French general had dared call Neapolitans "bougres" in his presence. The word, while etymologically equivalent to the English "bugger...

Feb 7, 1980

Review (Book review)

The Heart in Hiding

Denis Donoghue

... !Hopkins's earliest notebooks are full of etymologies, dialect-words, lost sounds. Until he died he kept up correspondence with Baillie and others on linguistic problems. He pestered W.W. Skeat until Skeat told...

Sep 27, 1979

Review (Book review)

Exultation and Explanation

Stephen Jay Gould

... for its own sake pervades both books. The textbook on population ecology is adorned with historical footnotes and tangential wanderings on etymology and minutiae of natural history. Some pages even attain...

May 17, 1979

Review (Book review)

Neighing in the Wind

Christopher Middleton

... of etymology. Thus: "crisis in the poet's eye found its resonance in the minds and hearts of his readers" (p. 6: two stock metaphors clumsily mixed). And this: "the figurative mole…dug beneath the well...

Mar 8, 1979

Review (Book review)

To the Sideshow

Alison Lurie

... his attention and support his most extravagant theories and most intimate self-revelations. Freaks is Fiedler's Anatomy of Melancholy, crammed with out-of-the-way information about etymology, history, biology...

Mar 23, 1978

Letter

Cranberry Jello

Leonid Tarassuk, reply by Nicolas Nabokov

... . T. consulted an etymological dictionary of the Russian language[^1] he would have discovered that the noun strela'—arrow—and its correlative verb strelet'—to shoot—(in its

seventeenth-century spelling...

Mar 23, 1978

Feature (Essay)

Illness as Metaphor

Susan Sontag

... , because a metastatic disease crawls or creeps like a crab.) And etymology indicates that tuberculosis—from the Latin tuber, meaning bump, swelling—was also once considered a type of abnormal extrusion; the word...

Jan 26, 1978

Review (Book review)

Malraux and Death

Jean-Marie Domenach, translated by Peter France

... , becomes the supreme act of charity. But it can seem easy to die in war or revolution. Death is indeed a gift, rather than something to be endured, when the militant or the soldier (etymologically the same person...

Dec 8, 1977

Feature (Essay)

Robert Lowell 1917-1977

John Thompson

... everywhere as if in some huge magnifying lens of etymology and idiom and sound—and yet were always in the stream of English speech.Lowell's genius and his grinding labor brought to verse in English not only technical mastery...

Oct 27, 1977

Review (Book review)

The Society of Friends

Luigi Barzini

... or take the few details she had to reconstruct.Exemplary, too, are her chapters on the remote origins of the Mafia. Her exploration of the name's probable etymologies is precise. She excludes all previous fanciful...

Feb 17, 1977

Review (Book review)

Imprisoned in the Sixties

Garry Wills

... to explain behavior in linguistic metaphors, drawing heavily on rhetorical devices. But he defines epanadiplosis incorrectly as the equivalent of chiasmus. He supplies us with the etymology for charismatic...

Jan 20, 1977

Review (Book review)

The Dress Code

Alison Lurie

... . Etymological rules remain to be worked out, but it has already been suggested that foreign "words" become and remain popular in rough relation to the international power of their native land. So Madison Avenue...

Nov 25, 1976

Review (Book review)

Sylvia Plath’s Apotheosis

Karl Miller

... , and about its etymology.But that is not the end of Judith Kroll's contentions. She affirms that in her last days Sylvia Plath passed beyond such conceptions of mythic rebirth, by experiencing a religious crisis...

Jun 24, 1976

Letter

Absolutely Yours, Hegel

Richard Gram

... itself." The etymological connection is lost, but Heidegger's meaning is retained, and the sentence is dark only for those who know nothing of Hegel….Richard GramUniversity Park, Pennsylvania...

Oct 2, 1975

Review (Book review)

The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie

Robert Craft

... of a half-playful etymology of convenience.Aside from the Freud question, it is evident from Kerényi's reaction to The Transposed Heads—which will interest readers of Dumézil's Mythe et épopée...

Jun 12, 1975

Poem

The Poet Crowned

Seamus Heaney

... Of memory, etymologiesSuperb as nations risen off their knees:Our name is shouted and the influence comes.While somewhere in the monotonous fieldsThe herdsman and his wife who kept the boy...

May 15, 1975

Feature (Essay)

Freud and the Imagination

Charles Rycroft

... , to anthropology, to etymology, to dirty jokes, all "soft" subjects from a natural-scientific point of view.If Freud had lived today, he would not, I think, have had to be embarrassed by the apparently nonscientific...

Apr 3, 1975

Review (Book review)

The Curious Case of Max Müller

Hugh Lloyd-Jones

... and deified; this kind of religion Müller described as "a disease of language." He explained all myths in terms of this theory, and the absurd etymologies by which he buttressed his explanations were greatly...

Mar 20, 1975

Feature (Essay)

Taking the Wagner Cure

Robert Craft

... as the etymological origins of "Frigg," Goddess of Marriage. But in fact linguistic analyses of any kind have been lacking. Nor is it generally known that Saussure amassed a considerable body of notes on the Nibelungen...

Oct 17, 1974

Feature (Essay)

An Appeal for Vladimir Maramzin

Joseph Brodsky

... .What is frightening in the case of Maramzin is precisely that he is a writer. In no sense is he a dissident. (The word "dissident" is itself a deluding word, by its etymology as if calling for negative reaction...

Sep 19, 1974

Feature (Essay)

Stravinsky in the Twenties

Robert Craft

... ) was useless. Criticism, it goes without saying, was neither enlightened nor disarmed.The composer's pre-curtain briefing on his Concerto for Two Pianos is typical of his etymological obsessions...

May 2, 1974

Review (Book review)

Joyce and Vico: The Middle Way

Stuart Hampshire

... and etymological coincidences have explosive meanings that are independent of anyone's intentions. In Joyce coincidences in language are to be treated like natural portents. One stumbles across the coincidences...

Oct 18, 1973

Review (Book review)

Object Lessons

James Merrill

... ," said Stevens. Two are needed to get off the ground.Ponge, to be sure, forfeits no resource of language, natural or unnatural. He positively dines upon the etymological root, seasoning it with fantastic gaiety...

Nov 30, 1972

Review (Book review)

You Makin’ Sense

Monroe K. Spears

... ," which seems to mean ethnic slang. No etymologies are given, only rough definitions or synonyms; and the choice of words for inclusion seems to be casual and uncritical. Many of the words are certainly not now peculiar...

Nov 16, 1972

Review (Book review)

Zebra Crossings

Ernst Gombrich

... . It used to be said in old-fashioned schools that geography was about maps and history about chaps. If we are to trust etymology, anthropology, the science of man, should also be about people, but an increasing number...

May 4, 1972

Review (Book review)

Sleeper Awake!

Patrick Gardiner

... , was an invaluable means to the recovery of the past, and so too (according to Vico) was etymology. By tracing the history of words, and by tracking down metaphors which now lie fossilized in the terms of current...

May 20, 1971

Review (Book review)

It’s About Time

Jack Richardson

... . By this definition, of course, Nabokov is one of our more revealing authors. Through the intimacies of etymology, he creates around the data of the world a glow of stylistic egotism which some find arch...

Mar 25, 1971

Feature (Essay)

Up from Ultraism

Jorge Luis Borges

... #### On the ClassicsOwing to unpredictable changes in the original meanings of words down through time, few disciplines are of greater interest than etymology. Given such changes, which in many cases...

Aug 13, 1970

Review (Book review)

Mystic - Making

L.P. Elwell-Sutton

... ." Greek influence on the movement was surely of a later date, and the fact that this popular etymology was favored by the Sufis of the tenth and eleventh centuries is evidence of little more than a desire...

Jul 2, 1970

Review (Book review)

Number One

Gore Vidal

... ) and etymology Dr. Reuben is usually wrong. He tells us that the word pornography "comes from two Greek words, pornos, meaning dirty, and graphos, meaning words." Graphos of course means "writing" not "words...

Jun 4, 1970

Review (Book review)

Words Enough

W.V. Quine

... not only to education but to scholarship; linguists of my acquaintance are finding it a more useful source than what had been available. Moreover the etymologies in the body of the dictionary are full and ubiquitous...

Dec 4, 1969

Feature (Essay)

An Open Letter to Michael Harrington

Dwight Macdonald

... them in professional style. Ocean Hill reinforced the prejudice I've always had in favor of amateurs who don't know how to do it but, as the etymology suggests, love doing it. I was allowed, by the way, to wander...

Dec 5, 1968

Feature (Essay)

On Being Indicted

Michael Ferber

... , but that is because they have not been indicted for "conspiring" to do something in broad daylight. Newly educated, I searched my etymological dictionary for proof, and found that a "conspiracy" was originally a "breathing together." Two people...

Apr 25, 1968

Review (Book review)

Free Fall

Frank Kermode

... and the incarnated God. Ong's habit of interpreting words as carrying primarily the sense of their root etymology is indeed a way of arguing by pun. Logos, no matter what else it means, means primarily the spoken Word...

Mar 14, 1968

Letter

The Crane Bag

Alan Tucker, reply by Robert Graves

... ), the finding of collars of Irish gold in Greece (Irish gold was known in Europe long before there were Celtic Irishmen), a (possibly) Mycenaean dagger engraved at Stonehenge, a totally uncertain etymology...

Oct 26, 1967

Review (Book review)

Total Recall

Bernard Bergonzi

... her book makes is one of manner rather than matter, as will be apparent if I continue quoting its opening paragraphs:> …followed by a brief etymological rapprochement of ceased and deceased. Had the deceased...

Aug 24, 1967

Review (Book review)

The American University: Part I

Henry David Aiken

... , can one appreciate the sense of divided loyalties and aspirations, and the feeling of attenuation and loss which pervade the contemporary university college. Plainly, the task is, in the full etymological sense of the term...

Oct 20, 1966

Review (Book review)

Smothered in Onions

Alan Pryce-Jones

... completed his work in time. Not that other etymological dictionaries are to seek. There is the great dictionary of Skeat, and, more recently, Eric Partridge, in various books, has given a fillip to the study...

Oct 6, 1966

Letter

Pornography

Maurice Girodias, reply by Gore Vidal

... is one of those words. It means nothing, its etymology does not make sense, but it has that grinding, horrible quality which is so much more effective than loads of common sense. To call a work of art pornographic...

May 12, 1966

Review (Book review)

The City

James Marston Fitch

... , as the very etymology of the word suggests, is the generator of civilization, not merely one of a putative number of its containers. As a center of human activity, it generates the special climate required for social...

Jun 3, 1965

Review (Book review)

On Linguistics

Paul Goodman

... , inevitably but boringly, for a sensible but uninspired critique of "correct usage" and the theory of dictionaries. And the last chapter is a repository for vocabulary counts, etymologies, borrowings...

May 14, 1964

Review (Book review)

Graves’s Mythology

H.H. Rowley

... that the etymological connection of tohu and tehom and of bohu and Behemoth is, to say the least, extremely hazardous. Similarly, the equation of Eve with Hebe on the ground of the distant similarity of the names...

Apr 16, 1964

Review (Book review)

Answering Service

Irving Kristol

... , as well be described as complicity.The word "encyclopedia" etymologically refers back to the circle of learning (enkiklios paidein) that the Greeks—and the greater part of Western civilization after them—thought to be essential...

Jan 23, 1964

Review (Book review)

Mencken

W.V. Quine

... (p. 325); surely folk etymology is more to the point. In each case better judgment has now prevailed—not by substitution, just by deletion of the injudicious passage.Cases of bad judgment...

Jan 9, 1964

Review (Book review)

The Harlot’s Progress

V.S. Pritchett

... were esoteric and solemn. His hobby-horse was not sex but philology. He sought to found a universal language and wrote a Specimen of an Etymological Vocabulary or Essay by means of the Analytic Method...

Oct 31, 1963

Review (Book review)

Dejeuner sur l’Herbe

Mary McCarthy

... each of which wriggles off as an independent worm. Or a nine-lived cat. Or a cancer. He is fond of the word "mosaic," especially in its scientific sense of a plant-mottling caused by a virus, and his Muse (see etymology...

Feb 1, 1963

Erstellt: 2012-12

"§"
theweek.com
etymology

(E?)(L?) http://theweek.com/search/etymology

76 RESULTS:

Damon Linker

'Government is the problem' and other Republican delusions

It was the kind of joke you might hear from any Republican on the campaign trail in 2016 — from Donald Trump or Rand Paul, Chris Christie or Marco Rubio, or just about any GOP senator or House membe...

January 14, 2016

Angela Tung

A brief history of lavatory language

Thomas Crapper, born this week in 1836, is often credited with the invention of the flush toilet. However, according to Nick Valéry at More Intelligent Life, that honor officially belongs to Alexand...

September 30, 2015

Annabel Monaghan

My teenage sons are the smartest people I know. And sometimes the dumbest, too.

Teenagers fool us with their size, vocabulary, and swift mastery of new devices. They seem to be about the right shape to fit into the adult world. They drive cars. They know algebra. So it's always...

September 4, 2015

Angela Tung

10 words coined by Herman Melville

American writer Herman Melville's experience as a sailor on a merchant ship and on an 18-month whaling voyage provided fodder for his most famous novels, including Typee, Omoo, and of course Moby Di...

August 18, 2015

Angela Tung

10 terms coined by Ernest Hemingway

byline "I sorted out the carbons, stamped on a by-line." The Sun Also Rises, 1926 While Hemingway's use is the earliest recorded in English, it's unclear if he actually coined byline. In his early ...

August 2, 2015

Arika Okrent

15 common expressions younger generations won't understand

Etymology is fun! It's especially fun to learn about the quaint old-fashioned practices that gave rise to some of the words we use. Stereotype comes from printing, hard-up comes from sailing, pipe d...

June 14, 2015

Jessica Hullinger

5 cool apps that will help you learn a new language

If you're hoping to finally get around to learning Italian this year, you're in luck. Learning a new language is arguably easier now than it's ever been before. What was once only obtained by immers...

June 10, 2015

Angela Tung

The language of taste

Recently the 2015 nominees for the James Beard awards were announced. Among the nominated are mostly chefs and restaurants, but also included are food writers. Food plus words, what's not to love? I...

April 14, 2015

The Week Staff

4 stories: On bizarre sounds and curious words

In this week's podcast, we learn the surprising origins of the word, "dude" and that ridiculous nonsensical phrase, "I know, right?" Plus, linguist James Harbeck explains why it's time to stop makin...

March 19, 2015

Luke Malone

What life is like in a polyamorous family

Cliff greets me at the door of his family's apartment in Tacoma, Washington, trying to contain an excited golden Labrador mix that has managed to wriggle between his legs. Behind him stands his wife...

March 18, 2015

Arika Okrent

15 pairs of words that seem etymologically related but aren't

A crayfish is not a fish, an outrage is not a rage, and there's no bomb in bombast. Words suggest one thing, but their histories tell us another. 1. PEN AND PENCIL Pencil originally referred to a pa...

March 10, 2015

Arika Okrent

6 places where lexicographers find old slang

Slang lexicographer Jonathon Green's massive, three-volume Dictionary of Slang is the most authoritative work on the back roads and byways of the English language. His database of slang contains abo...

February 15, 2015

Angela Tung

The true origin stories of our favorite airport lingo

apron "The airport doesn't completely have all of the funding needed to pay for the project, which also includes a bit of paving, specifically in an area where planes are parked — the apron." Josh ...

January 1, 2015

Angela Tung

10 serious-sounding medical conditions that aren't so serious

Your doctor just broke the news to you: you have a bad case of rhinorrhea. Not only that, you've a touch of oscitancy and a bit of sudation, too. Prognosis? You have a runny nose, you're yawning, a...

December 4, 2014

Angela Tung

8 words coined and popularized by Jonathan Swift

Three hundred and forty seven years ago today, Jonathan Swift was born. A poet and cleric, Swift published many satirical works under various pseudonyms. Best known are his essay, "A Modest Proposal...

November 30, 2014

Arika Okrent

The bizarre syntax of 'sexiest man alive'

In the wake of People magazine's announcement last week of its choice for this year's "Sexiest Man Alive," our thoughts, naturally, turned to the unusual syntax of this phrase. Why "alive"? Isn't t...

November 27, 2014

Angela Tung

8 delightfully strange beard and mustache words

1. dasiberdAn insult of the 15th century variety, a dasiberd is a fool or simpleton. Another form is dasybead, says the Oxford English Dictionary, as formed by combining dazy, "in a dazed condition,...

November 12, 2014

Arika Okrent

5 words that are spelled weirdly because someone got the etymology wrong

English spelling is complicated, but it has its reasons for being that way. Given that it borrowed from other languages, pronunciation changes over time, and peculiarities in the evolution of printi...

October 20, 2014

Arika Okrent

How an awesomesauce new suffix came to be

In the beginning (as far back as the '80s), there was weak sauce. Laid back California dudes and college jocks alike wielded it in judgment of the uninspiring. Weak sauce at first hovered between no...

October 13, 2014

Arika Okrent

10 words with difficult-to-remember meanings

Sometimes there are words that you've seen, read, and maybe even used in conversation whose meaning you can never keep straight. Even after looking it up, the right definition doesn't stick. From ou...

September 20, 2014

Arika Okrent

26 fancy, unusual plurals that work like 'attorneys general'

The usual way to modify a noun in English is to put an adjective before the noun: nice view, tasty treat, hot day. But every once in a while, we put the adjective after the noun. Often this is becau...

September 9, 2014

Arika Okrent

Why is 'colonel' spelled that way?

English spelling is bizarre. We know that. From the moment we learn about silent "e" in school, our innocent expectations that sound and spelling should neatly match up begin to fade away, and soon ...

September 8, 2014

Angela Tung

Our 12 favorite World Cup words

We wouldn't call ourselves rabid fans of soccer (or football, depending on your side of the Atlantic), but then that guy bit that other guy (and gave us Suarezing), the Colombia team danced after e...

July 9, 2014

James Harbeck

10 words that are badly broken

Think about when you were a kid discovering the wonder of glue. Hey, why not glue Barbie to this teacup? Let's glue Daddy's fancy pen to Mommy's ceramic figurine! But when you try to unglue them, yo...

June 20, 2014

Angela Tung

Our favorite words from Mad Men season 7

brunch Margaret: "I'd like to have brunch Sunday morning."Roger: "Sure, that'd be nice. I'll bring vodka." "Time Zones," April 13, 2014 While brunch, a combo of breakfast and lunch, may seem like a...

May 29, 2014

Angela Tung

10 of our favorite phrases that come from horse racing

1. Across the board Across the board, meaning "pertaining to all categories or things," originated around 1903 as a betting term in horse racing. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, wagerin...

May 17, 2014

James Harbeck

Why is the 'mor' in 'Voldemort' so evil-sounding?

Sherlock Holmes's mortal nemesis was Professor Moriarty. Harry Potter's nemesis was Voldemort. Doctor Who had a nemesis named Morbius. So did Spider-Man. Morbius was also the name of the antagonist ...

March 12, 2014

Arika Okrent

12 animals whose names etymologically describe them

1. PORPOISE, "PIG FISH" The word porpoise can be traced to Latin porcopiscis, from the combination of porcus (pig) with piscis (fish). Round body, flat nose — sure, that makes sense. 2. AARDVARK, "...

March 2, 2014

Angela Tung

Our favorite Sochi slang

We can hardly believe it but the Olympics are almost over. In addition to keeping up with the latest on problems in Sochi, Olympic fashion (our favorites include the Norwegian curling team's pants,...

February 21, 2014

Angela Tung

8 of our favorite words coined by Mark Twain

1. bicentennialUsage of the word bicentennial, meaning occurring every 200 years, has been steadily increasing since the 1880s. The usage rose sharply in the 1970s, probably due to the United State...

December 13, 2013

Arika Okrent

15 words etymologically inspired by animals

1. BAWLComes from the sound that a dog makes. In Latin, the dog says bau bau, and bawl originated in the verb baulare, to bark like a dog. Bawl was first used in English for the cries of dogs, and w...

November 24, 2013

Angela Tung

Our 13 favorite words from Boardwalk Empire

The season finale of Boardwalk Empire airs this Sunday, and we thought we'd honor it with, what else, our favorite words from the season. Taking place in Prohibition Era Atlantic City, the show fea...

November 22, 2013

Arika Okrent

Where did the word 'dude' come from?

For some time now, we have known the basic outline of the story of "dude." The word was first used in the late 1800s as a term of mockery for young men who were overly concerned with keeping up with...

October 28, 2013

Angela Tung

Our favorite hacker slang

1. bikesheddingBikeshedding refers to the "futile investment of time and energy in marginal technical issues," and "implies technical disputes over minor, marginal issues conducted while more serio...

October 22, 2013

Angela Tung

Our favorite witchy words

A coven, if you didn't already know, is an assembly of witches, often 13. The word is a variant of covent, which is another word for convent, a community especially of nuns, which some might say is...

October 10, 2013

James Harbeck

6 quests to fix English's messed-up spelling

You've probably noticed that English spelling is not as consistent or phonetically reliable as the spelling of many other languages. Writing English is sort of like one of those computer games where...

October 1, 2013

Angela Tung

Breaking Bad: Our favorite words from the final season

We're just days away from the series finale of the brilliant Breaking Bad. While we've been on the edges of our seats all season, we've also been listening for interesting terms. We've collected th...

September 26, 2013

Angela Tung

12 common words with nautical origins

1. aloofAloof, meaning distant physically or emotionally, was originally a nautical word. When a captain wanted to "keep the ship's head to the wind," therefore staying "clear of a lee-shore or som...

September 20, 2013

Angela Tung

A brief history of newspaper lingo

The first issue of The New York Times was published 162 years today, and to celebrate we're taking look at a brief history of some of our favorite newspaper words and slang. Before newspapers, ther...

September 18, 2013

Angela Tung

9 common words with surprising aviation origins

Earlier this week was National Aviation Day, which celebrates the field of aviation and the birthday of airplane innovator Orville Wright. Inspired by this we decided to explore some common words a...

August 22, 2013

Barbara Ann Kipfer

How to make a newly learned word 'stick'

We've all had this experience: You hear a new word (say, skoosh or spim), kinda-sorta think you know what it means, but then forget it nearly as soon as you've heard it. Why can't you make that newl...

July 25, 2013

Angela Tung

10 words we learned from TV

1. anxietAnxiet is a combination of anxiety and diet. Other bizarre diets include the vinegar and water diet popularized by poet Lord Byron; the grapefruit diet, also known as the Hollywood Diet; a...

July 5, 2013

Barbara Ann Kipfer

9 reasons why print dictionaries are better than online dictionaries

1. When you open a dictionary to any two-page spread, you are usually looking up a word. It is usually the case, though, that your eye wanders. Words are tantalizing, and a dictionary page holds so ...

July 3, 2013

Neal Whitman

The humble spatula's linguistic origins

In his 1989 movie UHF, Weird Al Yankovic has a fake advertisement for a spatula warehouse calling itself Spatula City, which has "thousands to choose from, in every shape, size, and color!" Really, ...

July 2, 2013

Arika Okrent

Why are there two pronunciations for the letter 'G'?

At the Webby Awards on Tuesday, Steve Wilhite, creator of the Graphics Interchange Format, asserted his authority in the controversial matter of the proper pronunciation of GIF. His five word accept...

May 25, 2013

Angela Tung

Our favorite bits of 1920s slang

No doubt: The 1920s were the bee's knees. But the ads banking on the latest film adaptation of The Great Gatsby would have you believe the Jazz Age was all about flappers, fashion, and parties. It ...

May 8, 2013

Arika Okrent

11 spam comments that look like drunk thesauruses

In general, spam comments are not designed to make you click on a link, but to have that link left sitting somewhere on your page. The idea is that in searches, Google will rank the spammer's site h...

May 6, 2013

Angela Tung

The week in words

Welcome to this week's Language Blog Roundup, in which we bring you the highlights from our favorite language blogs and the latest in word news and culture. Ben Zimmer took a look at a surreal week...

April 27, 2013

Angela Tung

A short history of Shakespearean insults

1. AssinegoAssinego, also spelled asinego, is "a little ass" or "foolish fellow." The word comes from the Spanish asnico, diminutive of asno, "ass." Example: Thersites: "Ay, do, do; thou sodden-wit...

April 26, 2013

Arika Okrent

9 extremely pretentious Latin and Greek plurals

English is full of irregular plural forms based on Latin and Greek. They can be confusing (apparatus? apparati? apparatuses?). They can be fun (the brothers Winklevii! and the flying Elvii! all clea...

April 18, 2013

Angela Tung

The week in words

Welcome to this week's Language Blog Roundup, in which we bring you the highlights from our favorite language blogs and the latest in word news and culture. Earlier this week we celebrated what wou...

March 16, 2013

Arika Okrent

Why English spelling is so messed up

If you're a kid learning how to write, or an adult speaker of a language with sensible spelling, English spelling can seem like a cruel prank. And even if you're a completely literate adult native s...

March 14, 2013

Chris Gayomali

Digital etiquette: What your email sign-off says about you

In descending order of our favorites... 10. "Cordially,"What it means: Cordial comes from the Latin cordialis, and means "of or for the heart." Some etymology manuals suggest it means something clos...

March 12, 2013

Ben Yagoda

7 bogus grammar 'errors' you don't need to worry about

When it comes to the English language, I'm not an anything-goes kind of guy. If I were, I wouldn't have written a book called How to Not Write Bad: The Most Common Writing Errors and the Best Ways t...

March 5, 2013

Angela Tung

12 weird words we learned from TV this week

1. catfishCatfish "refers to a person who creates a fake online profile in order to fraudulently seduce someone," and comes from the movie of the same name in which a man discovers the woman with w...

February 27, 2013

Bruce Price

18 ordinary English words that Julius Caesar spoke

Latin teachers talk a lot about roots, etymologies, and derivatives. But they often neglect to mention the really exciting news: Every day, we speak a whole bunch of words that Julius Caesar spoke. ...

February 25, 2013

Angela Tung

The week in words

Earlier in the week, the Oxford Dictionaries blog celebrated Presidents' Day by comparing the language of President Obama's inaugural address to that of Abraham Lincoln's time. Slate showed us the ...

February 22, 2013

James Harbeck

A herstory (or mansplanation) of portpersonteau words

So you had a bromance? And now he wants a dudevorce? Well, don't streak your manscara and guyliner crying about it. Your girlfriend may not want to hear your mansplanation — especially not if she's ...

February 19, 2013

Angela Tung

13 words and phrases we learned from Downton Abbey's third season

If you're like us, you've been closely following the trials and tribulations of the Granthams and those who serve them. Like last season, Ben Zimmer and Ben Schmidt have been busy catching the anac...

February 15, 2013

Angela Tung

11 words coined by Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens has been credited with the coining of dozens of words. While some of these words have been antedated — for example, an earlier citation of boredom, long credited to Dickens, has bee...

February 8, 2013

Angela Tung

11 words we learned from TV this week

1. ballerBaller has two meanings: "one who plays basketball," and "one who lives an extravagant, money-driven lifestyle." The first meaning originated around 1867, says the Oxford English Dictionar...

February 1, 2013

Angela Tung

A short-tempered history of the 'curmudgeon'

The word curmudgeon is an old one, originating in the 1570s, but where it comes from is unknown. The most famous suggestion, says World Wide Words, "is that of Dr. Samuel Johnson in his Dictionary ...

January 31, 2013

Angela Tung

10 whimsical words coined by Lewis Carroll

This Sunday is the birthday of Charles Lutwidge Dodgson, better known as Lewis Carroll, the English mathematician and writer whose most famous works include Alice's Adventures in Wonderland, Throug...

January 25, 2013

Angela Tung

10 sneaky pieces of thief slang

A recent New Yorker piece, "A Pickpocket's Tale", gives a fascinating portrait of Apollo Robbins, an expert in "theatrical pickpocketing." The article is also chock-full of equally fascinating pick...

January 22, 2013

The Week Staff

How do hurricanes get their names?

Since Europeans first came to the Americas and the Caribbean, hurricanes have been named using a variety of systems. First they were named after Catholic saints. Later on, the latitude-longitude po...

October 30, 2012

The Week Staff

7 peculiar new Groupon offers

Seemingly bored of its usual spa, restaurant, and bar offerings, the daily deals site Groupon is branching out into stranger areas of commerce. In recent months, the company has promoted a number of...

June 13, 2012

The Week Staff

How Apple's Siri got her name

It may be a household name now, but the first time Steve Jobs heard the word "Siri," he wasn't sold. That's according to Dag Kittalaus, the Norwegian cocreator of the iPhone 4S' famed virtual assist...

March 29, 2012

The Week Staff

Also of interest...new work from old literary favorites

The Cat’s Tableby Michael Ondaatje (Knopf, $26)Michael Ondaatje’s latest “is, in the most etymological way, a wonderful novel,” said Philip Hensher in the London Telegraph. Set on a cruise ship in t...

October 6, 2011

The Week Staff

The last word: Hidden namesakes

John Montagu, the fourth Earl of Sandwich, is famous for a particular type of obscurity. You may know nothing about him other than that he was saved from oblivion by the way he liked to snack—with a...

November 27, 2009

The Week Staff

Briefing: Holding on to happiness in hard times

With economists projecting a gloomy Christmas and an even gloomier 2009, new research offers clues into how a dispirited nation can hold on to some optimism. Is there a cure for the blues? When did ...

November 25, 2008

Erstellt: 2016-02

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Search Results for etymology

(E?)(L?) http://search.time.com/results.html?src=vault&Ntt=etymology

From: Jan 1925 To: Jan 2015

84 results

Sort by: Newest

Panathenaic Way to Fitness

By Eric Chaline Jan 21, 2015

The Ancient Greek gymnasion was a place to perfect the body for future festivals rather than somewhere to assuage the guilt of excess

A Short and Sweet History of Winter Boozing

By Tristan Stephenson Dez 23, 2014

And the unexpected origins of eggnog

11 Google Tricks That Will Change the Way You Search

By Jack Linshi Dez 08, 2014

From Googlers themselves

How the U.N. Watches the World Cup

By Ben Reiter Jun 18, 2014

The world's game seen from the bar at the center of world diplomacy

Play

James Franco and Seth Rogen Are In a Movie That Totally Isn’t a Pineapple Express Sequel

By Eric Dodds Jun 12, 2014

The trailer for The Interview has arrived

How Mad Men Gets the Writing Right: Q&A

By Katy Steinmetz Apr 10, 2014

TIME talks to the show's head of research and a seasoned writer about the painstaking process of crafting dialogue from the 1960s

Ukraine, Not the Ukraine: The Significance of Three Little Letters

By Katy Steinmetz Mrz 05, 2014

U.S. President Barack Obama stood at a local elementary school in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to tout his new budget proposal. But after his opening remarks, the first question was inevitably about foreign affairs. In response to a reporter who asked about Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Obama eventually said this: “It is important that Congress stand…

Ukraine, Not the Ukraine: The Significance of Three Little Letters

By Katy Steinmetz Mrz 05, 2014

U.S. President Barack Obama stood at a local elementary school in Washington, D.C., on Tuesday to tout his new budget proposal. But after his opening remarks, the first question was inevitably about foreign affairs. In response to a reporter who asked about Russia’s Vladimir Putin, Obama eventually said this: “It is...

Twitter Was Almost Called “Friendstalker” And Other Fun Facts About The Tech Giant

By Laura Stampler Okt 09, 2013

Oh, and Jack Dorsey used to have a nose ring and wear novelty tee-shirts.

What You Missed While Not Watching the National Spelling Bee Finals

By Katy Steinmetz Mai 31, 2013

There were 11. And then there was one. O-N-E.

‘French Kiss’ is Finally a Real Word in France

By Mackenzie Yang Mai 30, 2013

Why'd it take so long? Perhaps because the etymology of this sensual oral technique is grounded in English

Natalie Portman, Emma Stone, Jon Hamm and More: Casting News

By Lily Rothman Mai 01, 2013

This week's biggest casting news from the world of movies and television

30 Rock Finale: I Lizzed, I Cried

By James Poniewozik Jan 31, 2013

Back in 2006, I would not have described 30 Rock as a love story. But the funny, sweet finale confirmed that, in many ways, that is exactly what it was.

Back Off, Boss: Cute Kitten Videos May Improve Work Performance

By Maia Szalavitz Okt 02, 2012

The power of cuteness is deeper and more compelling than it seems

Reading While Eating for Sept. 13: The Day After

By Tim Morrison Sep 13, 2012

Great iXpectations: Well, it's finally here: Apple unveiled its new iPhone 5, to massive media fanfare, overhyped analysts' expectations and what seems to be a collective 'meh' from the phone-buying public. Sure, we like it, and we'll probably buy one. But why don't we love the iPhone 5? (Or, as Jimmy Kimmel pointed out...

Wednesday Words: Czarinas, Derecho Storms and More

By Katy Steinmetz Jul 04, 2012

NewsFeed's weekly highlight of our vocabulary includes useful, new, hilarious and surprising words (as well as some that are just fun to roll off the old tongue).

The American Dream: A Perfect Idea for Dark Times?

By Jon Meacham Jun 21, 2012

"The American Dream" is one of those phrases that's so familiar that it's borderline embarrassing to realize one doesn't quite know where it came from. Yet there I was, a few months ago, crossing the border into embarrassment as I realized that I could not call the etymology of the phrase to mind. The meaning I knew...

Insight from the Blind: A Chinese Activist Speaks His Mind from New York City Exile

By Ishaan Tharoor Mai 31, 2012

A long, sustained applause greeted blind Chinese legal activist Chen Guangcheng when he approached the dais at the tony New York City headquarters of the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR). Assembled before him, awaiting his first public address since arriving in the U.S. two weeks ago, were the cognoscenti of the...

A Brief History of Eggnog

By Elizabeth Dias Dez 21, 2011

Eggnog really makes you wonder: How did humans first think chugging a spiced and spiked egg-yolk-and-milk mixture was a good idea? It’s a bit like Gaston from Beauty and the Beast: “Now that I'm grown, I eat five dozen eggs, so I'm roughly the size of a barge!” Yet despite its “love it or hate it” fame, eggnog...

True Meaning of Harry Potter Term ‘Muggle’? Marijuana

By Zander Sharp Jul 15, 2011

Here's a question you probably weren't expecting to hear: What do burnouts and Harry Potter fans have in common? To all of you fans camping outside your local cinemas to watch the first showing of Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part Two, the term "muggle" will conjure images of cruel aunts and uncles and a nasty...

Word Up

By Katy Steinmetz Mrz 21, 2011

Lowbrow language gets a highbrow dictionary

440 words | view cover

Overreading the Elections

By Joe Klein Dez 28, 2010

The Weekly Standard's reliably pedestrian Noemie Emerie has a fabulous piece --in the sense that, say, Pinocchio, is a fable--detailing the tsunami of bad news that will ensue for Democrats because of the American people's rejection of health care legislation as manifested in the midterm elections of 2010. I agree, in a...

LeBron's Return to Cleveland: Why They Boo

By Sean Gregory Dez 02, 2010

When LeBron James takes the court with the Miami Heat against the Cleveland Cavaliers, the jeers will be louder than ever. But really, what's the point of booing?

1173 words

Why the Media (Over)Covers Sarah Palin

By James Poniewozik Jul 19, 2010

Or: An Explanation, and Example, of the Very Phenomenon The Author Is Discussing: Today the Washington Post published a sprawling, two-year investigation into America's huge, complex and hard-to-fathom system of national security and intelligence. What, as of this afternoon, was the most-read article at the Post's...

Bro Culture: Icing on the Social-Marketing Cake?

By Ella Quittner Jun 17, 2010

The "icing" craze, a drinking game centered on Smirnoff Ice, might seem like the Holy Grail of Internet marketing. So why isn't Diageo, Smirnoff's parent company, smiling?

1108 words

A New Name in American Paranoia: Hutaree

By Steven Gray Mrz 29, 2010

Raids in the Midwest brought in seven members of an extremist Christian group suspected of plotting against police and the federal government

418 words | view cover

A New Name in American Paranoia: The Hutaree Militia

By Steven Gray Mrz 29, 2010

No one quite knows why the group in the middle of the latest armed militia controversy calls itself the Hutaree. Even the Southern Poverty Law Center, a Montgomery, Ala., group that monitors militias and extremists groups, knows little about the Hutaree. Bloggers following the raids on Hutaree camps in Michigan, Indiana and Ohio over the […]

Re Re: What’s A Natural Disaster Without Pat Robertson To Explain?

By Karen Tumulty Jan 13, 2010

Amy: Per your post below, Swampland commenter Trifecta55 has a proposal for how we should deal with this: Don't you mean "radical cleric" Pat Robertson Michael? . I am semi serious. When crazy muslim preachers get that title, why don't those of you in the media use that on Pat Robertson. I am serious, and...

The Penny's British Heritage - Top 10 Things You Didn't Know About the Penny

Jul 31, 2009

Like so much else American, the name penny comes from England. The first modern English coin was the silver penny of Offa, the 8th century king of Mercia. By the 18th century — when the first U.S. coins went into circulation — Brits still used the word penny as the singular for pence , just ...

Codename POTUS

By Michael Scherer Nov 14, 2008

Joel Stein is looking for a name for his unborn baby. My suggestion: Go ask the Secret Service, by way of the White House Communications Agency. Is there any organization, let alone a government bureaucracy, better at naming? Current company excluded, that is. A few days back, we got word of the Obama family's Secret...

Craps

By Joe Klein Sep 28, 2008

Admittedly, the opening image of today's New York Times story about John McCain as "one of the founding fathers of Indian gaming" is striking: McCain in a private room at the Mohegan Sun casino in Connecticut, an institution over which his Indian Affairs Subcommittee has oversight, playing craps with lobbyists who try to...

Politics

By Alexandra Silver Dez 10, 2007

ETYMOLOGY What's in a Name? Football and Hotels Raise your hand if you knew that Mitt Romney's given name was actually Willard Milton. Anyone? Both names honor men close to Romney's father, former Michigan Governor George W. Romney. Mitt--short for Milton--comes from a cousin who played quarterback for the Chicago Bears from 1925 to '29. ...

556 words | view cover

At least my marriage is green

By lisacullen Dez 05, 2007

Figures; I finally get an illo of me in the mag, and I'm holding a roll of TP. Okay, so I'm a little eco-anxious. As I put it in an essay in last week's TIME: I am not particularly eco-conscious. But I am increasingly eco-anxious. Every day, it seems, I hear of some new way the world around me is going aggressively...

It's Inconvenient Being Green

By Lisa Takeuchi Cullen Nov 21, 2007

Help! My wasteful habits are giving me a severe case of eco-anxiety

844 words | view cover

LIVEBLOGGING: Debating the Tubes

By anamariecox Jul 23, 2007

Where I'm not: 7:00 PM: That man's facial hair does not represent my view. 7:01 PM: "We're not sure how this is going to work," says Anderson. CNN, your home for breaking news. 7:02 PM: Using kids to ask "adult questions" -- I believe that's someone on the Giuliani campaign's job. 7:04 PM: FIRST QUESTION. "The issues...

JPTV: What I'm Watching Tonight

By James Poniewozik Mai 31, 2007

Competing at the 2006 bee, Finola Hackett and winner Katharine Close (seated). ESPN Photo: Mark Bowen The 2007 Scripps National Spelling Bee, baby! I can't even do this event justice in a small blog post. American kids of far-flung nationalities puzzling over the etymologies of the same dead languages. The dissonance of...

Lostwatch: No Island is All Man

By James Poniewozik Mrz 02, 2006

SPOILER ALERT: If you haven't watched Lost yet, avert thine eyes. Besides, aren't you supposed to be working? I don't think I realized until watching last night's episode how masculine Lost has been this season. Lots of Locke, lots of Jack, lots of Sawyer and Charlie â€” mucho testosterone-y bluster and bighorn-ram...

Business Class: Cuba Chic

By Kathleen Parker Aug 13, 2001

A business trip to Castro's embargoed isle is the latest executive status symbol. Here's what savvy visitors are doing after hours

1004 words | view cover

Does X Mark the Spot?

By Andrew D. Arnold Apr 05, 2001

Andrew Arnold examines the etymology of 'comix' versus 'comics'

606 words

A Refuge For Throwaways

By Timothy Roche Feb 21, 2000

The spate of Dumpster babies stirs a movement to provide a safe space for unwanted newborns

1362 words | view cover

Beware of the Poke Mania

By Howard Chua-Eoan Nov 22, 1999

Can such cute critters be bad influences? How one misfit's quest turned into a global bonanza

3340 words | view cover

Pokemania! Crazy for Pokemon

By Time Staff Nov 22, 1999

Can such cute critters be bad influences? How one misfit's quest turned into a global bonanza

1366 words

People: Jun. 14, 1999

By David Spitz Jun 14, 1999

Adventures in Fatherhood Maybe something was lost in the translation, but a crowd of concertgoers in Modena, Italy, heard Luciano Pavarotti say that MICHAEL JACKSON couldn't make it to the charity concert because Jackson's son "may be dying." It was shocking news, especially to the two-year-old's mother Deborah Rowe Jackson. "To hear that your child ...

567 words | view cover

BOOKS: MOSH! BORK!

By Jesse Birnbaum Jul 08, 1996

WORDSMITHING IN POST-CONTEMPORARY ENGLISH

274 words | view cover

BOOKS: Substandard-Bearer

By Jesse Birnbaum Jul 04, 1994

The first of a three-volume lexicon of U.S. slang is a killer

913 words | view cover

Germany: And Now for Sprachvergnugen

By Daniel Benjamin Jul 09, 1990

A TIME correspondent muses about a much maligned language that suddenly many feel they should learn

750 words | view cover

Essay: An Idea Whose Time Is Fading

By Wade Greene Mai 28, 1990

The etymology can be traced, with rare nicety, to the last Big Bang in world affairs before the current one -- the pivotal autumn of 1945, just after the end of World War II and before the beginning of the cold war. "Our national security can only be assured on a very broad and comprehensive ...

939 words | view cover

Books: A Scholarly Everest Gets Bigger

By Paul Gray Mrz 27, 1989

The Oxford English Dictionary updates and goes electronic

1126 words | view cover

Education: Getting Tough

By Ezra Bowen Feb 01, 1988

New Jersey Principal Joe Clark kicks up a storm about discipline in city schools

4595 words | view cover

Video: A Raisin in the Fun: Fresno

By Richard Zoglin Nov 17, 1986

Sunday, Nov. 16, through Thursday, Nov. 20

797 words | view cover

Press: Wrestling with Defamation and Truth

By James Kelly Jan 28, 1985

The jury in the Sharon trial reaches a partial verdict

2022 words | view cover

Letters: Jul. 30, 1984

Jul 30, 1984

Changing Israel To the Editors: I am an American Jew who is an ardent supporter of Israel and at the same time a proud and thankful American. So long as Israel remains a democracy, those problems you so correctly reported [WORLD, July 9] will be resolved. Eric O. Harpman New York City I have just ...

1724 words | view cover

Books: Private Relations, Public Parts

By Eve Auchincloss Mrz 03, 1980

SEX IN HISTORY by Reay Tannahill; Stein & Day; 480 pages; $17.95 The human animal is goaded by twin appetites so similar that they serve as metaphors for each other—as food writers and Freudians are well aware. Reay Tannahill, a worldly and well-informed Scotswoman, has explored what recorded history tells about both, following Food in ...

879 words | view cover

Behavior: The Lost Voices of the Gods

Mrz 14, 1977

Julian Jaynes was six years old and staring at a yellow forsythia bush when the problem first entered his mind: "I thought, 'How do I know that other people see the same yellow I see?' I had the idea that there was a space in everyone else's head that I couldn't get to. How did ...

1386 words | view cover

Books: American Gothic

By Paul Gray Dez 30, 1974

THE KING'S INDIAN by JOHN GARDNER Illustrations by HERBERT L FINK 323 page With seven books published in the past five years, Novelist John Gardner, has confounded the theory that quality can only come slowly, and in small doses. Gardner is a professor of English who has managed to lob serious, stylistically adventuresome fiction over ...

639 words | view cover

Education: Gazoomphing Gyver

Nov 13, 1972

The original version of the Oxford English Dictionary is composed of 15,487 pages parceled into ten volumes containing the history of more unusual words than even William F. Buckley Jr. could ever use. From 1884 to 1928, the contents of the O.E.D. had accreted with the steady persistence of stalactites. The aim was to list ...

827 words | view cover

Modern Living: Ah, Sweet Ms-ery

Mrz 20, 1972

"The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master—that's all." —Through the Looking-Glass The real question, according to the Women's Liberation movement, is whether males have used language to help perpetuate their roles as masters. The answer, say the feminists, ...

653 words | view cover

Books: A Christmas Shelf: Bigness and Beauty

Nov 29, 1968

A Christmas Shelf More of everything—particularly 'big, rich, fat, square Christmas books—seems to be the order of the season. Many are bought at the Frankfurt Book Fair from enterprising European publishers and imported wholesale. Several contain perfunctory yet prolix texts by scholars who take the money but regard the work as intellectual slumming; and the ...

2726 words | view cover

Books: Retroactive Iconoclasm

Apr 05, 1968

VICTORIAN MINDS by Gertrude Himmelfarb. 397 pages. Knopf. $8.95. The history of ideas, like etymology, is often regarded as just a game. Most of the time, the concerned man is satisfied to understand current meaning and usage, whether of ideas or of words, without worrying about origins. Enough to say that it's spinach, and the ...

800 words | view cover

Letters: Jul. 28, 1967

Jul 28, 1967

Riots & Responsibilities Sir: Once again the desperate lot of the Negroes and the conditions in which they live in Northern ghettos has caught a city by surprise [July 21]. This is all the more horrifying when we realize that the federal, state and local governments seem at a loss to know what to do. ...

2049 words | view cover

The War: Do-Gooders with a Difference

Apr 07, 1967

Youthful protest over Viet Nam has ranged from mobbing Cabinet officers to burning draft cards. Yet for many young Americans who are profoundly repelled by the prospect of fighting the war, the alternative has been to serve the cause of peace in Viet Nam. That, at least, is the philosophy followed by the 250 members ...

861 words | view cover

Letters: Dec. 9, 1966

Dez 09, 1966

On Center Stage Sir: Perhaps with Winthrop Rockefeller as Governor [Dec. 2] Arkansas will be the stage where the conflicts between the North and the South are resolved. When the curtain closes, radical reconstruction is replaced by gradual liberalization. JEFFREY BERGER Temple University Philadelphia Sir: Mr. Rockefeller's interest in and accomplishments for Arkansas are indeed ...

1461 words | view cover

Asia: Run-In on the Rann

Mai 07, 1965

Through an accident of onomatopoeia, the Rann of Kutch* looks just like it sounds. A reeking reach of black tidal mudflats bounded with sand dunes and etched by dead streams of salt and scum, it was until recently of interest only to hardy naturalists in search of the lesser flamingo and herds of wild asses. ...

399 words | view cover

World: Live & Let Live, Kiss & Letkiss

Mrz 05, 1965

To a blare of brass and a gathering bloodbeat of drums, the dancers in the two long lines—men on one side, women opposite—hop forward, jump back, hop-hop-hop ahead, and then kiss-kiss-kiss. After that, both lines shift right so that new partners pucker into view for the next round of "letkiss," the non-dance craze that has ...

279 words | view cover

Books: Squishops & Jobbernowls

Aug 17, 1962

You ENGLISH WORDS (254 pp.)—John Moore—Lippincoft ($4.75). If a man must go soppy about something—and no doubt a man must—what better object could there be for his daft, uncritical, wife-maddening, friend-alienating affection than the English language? John Moore, a Gloucestershire man who writes light novels (Dance and Skylark, September Moon), keeps pigs and calls himself ...

323 words | view cover

Books: American as She Is Spoke

Jul 11, 1960

DICTIONARY OF AMERICAN SLANG (669 pp.)—Compiled by Harold Wentworth and Stuart Berg Flexner — Crowell ($7.50). Webster is a moldy fig. For all its scholarship, the supposedly unabridged dictionary (600,000 entries) gives hardly a hint that the American language is in the grip of a permanent revolution. The Websterian ideal of language as a careful ...

596 words | view cover

Letters, may 30, 1960

Mai 30, 1960

The U-2 Over the Summit Sir: As one citizen of the U.S., I will sleep a little better each night now knowing that this Government has been for some time securing my future by sending reconnaissance expeditions to spy on clever, clandestine and cunning Russia. MARGARET MORTON New York City Sir: No amount of sugar-coating ...

1591 words | view cover

Books: Mr. Pockheel's Daymare

Okt 19, 1959

THE RETURN OF H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N (192 pp.)—Leo Rosten, —Harper ($3.50). Hyman Kaplan, the bagel Bonaparte, has returned from the island of Ellis. As in The Education of H*Y*M*A*N K*A*P*L*A*N more than 20 years ago, English is his most beloved enemy, but Waterloo is not in his capricious vocabulary, and as the stars with which he ...

420 words | view cover

Letters, Feb. 27, 1956

Feb 27, 1956

Brazil and the Future SIR: DEEPLY APPRECIATIVE COVER STORY IN LAST ISSUE [FEB. 13] OF YOUR BRILLIANT MAGAZINE WHICH REVEALS PERCEPTIVE ANALYSES OF CURRENT PROBLEM AND GOALS TO BE PURSUED BY MY GOVERNMENT. I ATTACH FUNDAMENTAL IMPORTANCE TO THE ROLE OF A FREE AND WELL INFORMED PRESS IN STRENGTHENING GOOD WILL AND UNDERSTANDING BETWEEN OUR ...

1473 words | view cover

Education: Think Before You Spell

Mai 31, 1954

Twice before, lanky Bill Cashore, 14, of little (pop. 500) Center Square, Pa., had entered the national spelling bee sponsored by the Scripps-Howard newspapers. Twice he had been knocked out at the district level. This year, when Bill decided to try again, under the auspices of the Norristown Times-Herald, he knew the odds against him ...

468 words | view cover

Books: The Fine Art of Swearing

Mrz 13, 1950

OCCUPATION: WRITER (320 pp.)—Robert Graves—Creative Age ($4). With the two words of his title, explains Robert Graves, "I fill in my income-tax return—but cynically because 'writer' has become almost meaningless as a descriptive term since popular education opened the dikes to a shallow sea." Having blared this raspberry into the face of the "antipoetic world ...

880 words | view cover

Religion: Liturgy & Language

Jul 21, 1947

Denis de Rougemont is Switzerland's brilliant Protestant discourser on religious and ethical problems (Love in the West ern World, The Devil's Share}. Back in the U.S. from his first postwar trip to Europe, he reports (in the current issue of Christendom) a new surge of interest in Christian liturgy: "A well-defined movement is emerging among ...

473 words | view cover

Education: Talking United States

Feb 07, 1944

An 18-year wrestling match (in one corner, Oxford's short, spike-bearded, self-assured Sir William Alexander Craigie; in the other, American speech) reached its final bell last week. "Wullie" Craigie had at last finished his Dictionary of American English on Historial Principles, from Volume I's A (New England's brand letter for adulteresses) to the new Volume IV's ...

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CHILDREN: Meet the Champ

Jun 08, 1942

For winning the national grade-school spelling bee in Washington last week, eleven-year-old Richard Earnhart of El Paso, Tex. got $500 and a two-day trip to New York City. There he had his first brush with the metropolitan press, came off winner, hands down, over a flabbergasted World-Telegram reporter. Richard had won his championship, over 25 ...

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Letters, Nov. 6, 1939

Nov 06, 1939

Accidental Death Sirs: In this day and age of football when the "passing" game is quite exacting, I see no reason why in your Oct. 23 issue, you should not be equally as exacting when you refer to me as the "late Big Bill Edwards. . . ." TIME has certainly fumbled the ball. Let ...

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Letters, Oct. 23, 1939

Okt 23, 1939

Counsellor Sirs: The following is an editorial from the [Detroit] News today: HE DOESN'T CHEW "Our attention has been called to a sentence in TIME magazine's article on Senator Vandenberg and neutrality law revision: " 'On strategies, Vandenberg constantly counseled with aging, astute Jay Hayden, of the Detroit News, who often shifts his tobacco quid ...

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Education: Blood & Thunder-to-Butterfly

Jan 10, 1938

University of Chicago Professors Sir William A. Craigie* and James R. Hulbert, editors of A Dictionary of American English on Historical Principles, and their associates, who for twelve years have been working on separating U. S. English from English English (TIME, Sept. 21, 1936), were almost finished with the Bs last week. Issued by the ...

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Science: Rutherford's Names

Okt 25, 1937

Like many another elderly and distinguished scientist, Britain's Lord Ernest Rutherford, great formulator of the atom's electrical structure, has a way of having his way. Few weeks ago he published an article in which he referred to the tripleweight atom of hydrogen, generally called tritium, as "triterium." When this verbal goblin reached the eye of ...

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Books: New Dealer

Mai 31, 1937

A MAVERICK AMERICAN—Maury Maverick—Covici, Friede ($3).* Fontaine Maury Maverick dropped his first name (so he says) as a small boy, riding in a wagon up a steep hill, when the driver told him that unless he thus lightened the load they would never make the grade. Critics of New Deal Congressman Maverick assert he has ...

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Letters, Dec. 3, 1934

Dez 03, 1934

"I Hate You" Sirs: Please cancel my subscription to TIME and also to LETTERS. Your insulting remarks about Senator Arthur R. Robinson of Indiana [TIME, Nov. 12], whom I greatly admire as a fearless and honorable gentleman, has finished TIME for me. . . . You display the same gratitude and loyalty as the average ...

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Letters: Feb. 4, 1929

Feb 04, 1929

Sips Sirs: In the Jan. 14 issue of TIME, there is an article on Secretary of State Kellogg, in which the statement is made that "he sips sparingly." Is this not an ironic comment on Prohibition? If the Secretary of State is allowed to sip, however sparingly, may we not expect a reasonable immunity from ...

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Books: Fiction: May 7, 1928

Mai 07, 1928

Alice ALICE IN THE DELIGHTED STATES—Edward Hope—Lincoln MacVeagh, Dial Press ($2.50). Alice in Wonderland, loved these many years by doctor, lawyer, merchant, chief, was also loved by a newspaperman—very, very much. The offshoot of the affair was a daughter, also Alice, who started her pilgrimage through North Hysterica just as her mother's manuscript body was ...

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Letters: Jun. 27, 1927

Jun 27, 1927

Boorish Dowse Sirs: Permit me to correct an impression that might be created in the minds of some readers by the ill-natured and silly letter in the June 13 number of Time signed CYRIL D. H. G. DILLINGTON-DOWSE. I am an Englishman of 25 years' residence in London and 20 in the United States, and ...

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Letters: may 18, 1925

Mai 18, 1925

Herewith are excerpts from letters come to the desks of the editors during the past week. They are selected primarily for the information they contain either supplementary to, or corrective of, news previously published in TIME. Target Practice Fayette County Farm Bureau Association TIME Fayette, Iowa New York, N.Y. May 3, 1925 Gentlemen: I was ...

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