Etymology
TO SET A DOG UPON
The term harass was borrowed from French in the early 1600s. Originally spelled with two letter rs, it eventually transitioned to the single r by the eighteenth century. Its…
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Latest Etymology
HONORABLE REPUTATION
Our noun honor originates from the eleventh-century word onur, which originally meant "glory" or "fame". This word, through Old French onor, can be…
WHITE OAK
The city of Albuquerque was established in 1706 as a Spanish colonial settlement. It was named after the viceroy…
TO CONSTRUCT STORES
Throughout history, the word store has had various spellings. Early forms included stoore, stor, stoer, istor, and story. Even…
CROWN VIRUS
Coronavirus has been making headlines lately, but do you know the origins of the word? The term was first introduced…
BLACK RIVER
The Ebola virus was discovered by a team of researchers in 1976 in Yambuku, a small city in Congo.…
SEIZURE FEVER
In 1827, dengue fever was introduced to the West Indies by East African slaves. The Spanish colonists in the region…
The Grammarphobia Blog: A stink over ‘odoriferous’
Have you ever considered the difference between "odoriferous" and "odiferous"? Surprisingly, both words have been in English since the late…
OVERGROWN VIRUS
Before the Zika virus emerged from the forests of Brazil to reach international infamy from 2015-2016, it was an obscure virus…