Start with something simple. We've got the verb give, which we all know, and the thing that you give is a gift. They're quite obvi...

  Today is the first of May, or that's what Shakespeare thought, as did all proper Englishmen. May, for him, ran from May 11th to June 1...

  It is of immense importance to absolutely everyone that The Illustrated Etymologicon is now published, out, in the shops, for sale, and b...

 I've done another little video essay with the splendid people at Little White Lies. It's about the rhetorical trope of epistrophe. ...

  Pancallism is the belief that everything is beautiful, or at least everything that exists, which is quite a lot of things.  The idea, occu...

  Today is, of course, the 74th anniversary of the Kenneth Arnold UFO sighting . The event is celebrated by lexicographers everywhere becaus...

  The week is a curious thing: the division of our lives into a revolving, unfinishing cycles of seven days. Especially as seven days bears ...