Words of Dead Worlds

The world was his while he remained alive,He showed men how to prosper and to thrive:But all this world is like a tale we hear–Man’s evil, and their glory, disappear. – The Shahnameh, Abolqasem Ferdowsi

They’re an essential part of the human anatomy for about half the world’s population. Testicles. In most languages, the slang terms for them comes from certain obvious sources: balls, nuts, stones, eggs, etc. “Testicles” has […]

It’s a piece of lace that you put around your neck. OK? Not all of these have to be complicated.

There’s bacon and there’s back bacon and there’s Canadian bacon and there’s stringy bacon. On the face of it, it can be confusing that some clearly different cuts of meat have the same name. So […]

A braggart might seem like a cocky fellow. Even something of a dick. But you can hardly blame them. After all, the word “braggart” is descended from “breeches” aka medieval underwear. Its thought to refer […]

At one point in time, a person’s wealth could be measured by the number of cattle they owned. The connection is so tight, in fact, that the two words are linked closely together. “Cattle” originally […]

When a person complains about someone else “stealing their thunder”, their meaning is somewhat obvious. Each of has our special ideas, knowledge, or skills that we can display, and when someone else upstages us by […]

By their very definition, mammals make milk. It’s one of the three things that make mammals who they are. So we shouldn’t be surprised that the very word “mammal” reflects that. The word originally comes […]

This one’s a simple one. An “arcade” is a place with a lot of arches (it’s from the Latin “arco”). So a place with a lot of arches – something like a public walkway with […]

The word “laconic” refers to someone whose speaking style is terse, short, and to the point. As a word, its origin goes back to ancient Greece, where it refers to the speaking style of the […]