Today is the day when unusual things happen, for today is a blue moon . It is the second full moon in a single calendar month (the last o...

At first blush (or even second) brimborium sounds rather like a place name from The Lord of the Rings. But in the proper context, its OED m...

With the publication of The Horologicon approaching, I thought I'd do a few posts of words that didn't make it in. There's a l...

A horoscope is a look ( scope ) at the hour ( horo ) that you were born. It's related to horology , which is the study of clocks, a...

What does wi-fi mean? Come on, you ought to know. You almost certainly have wi-fi (unless you're reading this blog from some paleol...

Some words have origins much ruder than you might imagine, others were once clean and pure but now smeared by association. Take, for exa...

I've just completed a Grand Tour. I would say that I've just completed a Grand Tour of Europe, but that would be a tautology as the...