by Dwane | Jan 10, 2023 | Education, English, Vocabulary
Criticize: to find fault; to point out flaws real or perceived I took some time off for Christmas and New Year. No one criticized me. Pretty impressive, guys. You could be nicer than you think you are. Criticize comes from the Greek word χριτιχός (kritikos)...
by Dwane | Dec 17, 2022 | Education, English, Vocabulary
This week, one of my students translated egg nog into French. She ended up with the phrase: lait de poule. Lait is French for milk, and poule is French for hen. Put the two together and you get, “hen milk”. Um. This threw me for a loop. I started wondering,...
by Dwane | Dec 9, 2022 | Education, English, Vocabulary
Ever wondered why some cities have ‘ham’ attached to their names? Birmingham, Nottingham, Gotham, Buckingham, and even Hampshire? The Old English word for home or homestead is ‘ham.’ ‘Ham’ is also the source of our English word ‘home.’ As the three little pigs said,...
by Dwane | Dec 8, 2022 | Education, English, Vocabulary
A few days ago, one of my students asked where the eight tiny reindeer got their names. I knew there were some German names in there, but beyond that, I was not sure. So, I went looking. The reindeer first show up in a poem by Clement C. Moore. Mr. Moore wrote A...
by Dwane | Dec 7, 2022 | Education, English, Vocabulary
I don’t feel like posting a word today. So, here is one of my all-time favorite jokes about the English language. Maybe. I can’t tell if it’s a joke or if it’s true. The Japanese eat very little fat And suffer fewer heart attacks than...
by Dwane | Dec 6, 2022 | Education, English, Vocabulary
Ballyhoo: to advertise noisily; to publicize using extreme, loud methods The marketers ballyhooed the movie, but it flopped on opening day. Ballyhoo shows up in English in the early 1900s. It was originally a circus word. A ballyhoo was a sideshow used to lure...
