The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll Through the Hidden Connections of the English Language

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Bazil II – a Byzantine Emperior who reigned from 976-1025 ruthlessly conquered the peoples of southern Bulgaria. In the north of the country they were subjudicated by the Holy Roman Empire. “So many Slavs were defeated and oppressed that the word Slav itself became interchangeable with forced labour, and that is where we get the world Slave."

Forsyth attended Winchester College in Winchester, Hampshire, England [3] from 1990 to 1995. [8] He also studied English Language & Literature at Lincoln College, Oxford University from 1996 [12] [13] to 1999. [14] Career [ edit ] The Inky Fool [ edit ]And that's so beautiful that nobody will ever better it; even though, to modern ears, it sounds like an invitation from a woman with a raclette*.

Lee, John (26 October 2014). "England; Bibliophile's London haunts". Los Angeles Times. Los Angeles, CA. p.L.6. de Castella, Tom (19 April 2012). "Are you a Luddite?". BBC News Magazine . Retrieved 9 January 2015. There was a time when I was convinced that ‘candid’ would come to mean ‘hidden’. This was because virtually the only use of the word in the modern world was associated with the phrase ‘smile, you’re on candid camera’ and the main fact about being on candid camera was the reveal at the end, when it was made clear that there was a hidden camera filming you. So, a candid camera was a hidden camera – this now is one of the meanings of the word in the OED. It would be interesting to test people (of a certain age) to see if they would be more likely to say candid meant hidden than frank. The idea, occurred to some medieval scholastic philosophers. Their reasoning went roughly like this. Kenneth Arnold was a businessman and aviator who, on June 24th 1947, saw nine thingummybobs flying past Mount Ranier in Washington State at over a thousand miles an hour. Or, he sayshe saw them. This blog post will not answer the great question as to whether extraterrestrial life visits earth, because, though I know the answer, I'm not telling.Forsyth is a "person who trumpets minor points of learning" and makes it fun and educational and interesting. I want more. I wish this book was twice as long, or there were a series of them. The pelican theory is curious. Pelicans are large birds. Their wingspans can be over three metres (ten feet). But they don't really resemble saucers and they don't fly at over a thousand miles an hour unless they're in the most terrible hurry. So just as rich bored Londoners can suddenly get really keen on some ancient Tibetan practice as a bit of a fad, so the rich bored Roman could bore everybody at the dinner party about how he had taken up resting on the seventh day, and it had really grounded him, and you should try it yourself, because those Jews are just so, so ancient. And did you know they don't have statues of their god because it's a really spiritualreligion? As James says: There can be few better recommendations for any book than that you continuously feel the need to read excepts out to those around you, no matter what they are doing (or what else they are trying to read themselves). "Oh, this one is great."; "Just this one and I'll stop."; "Ah, wait, this one is really good too."I did the same myself, at length. Whatever, I was talking about the book. Yes, the book, great one. Great little-big- book that you should try. Look:

Then Ancient Romans noticed that this wasn't quite right. In fact, there were 365 and a quarterdays in a year. That's how long it takes for the earth to go round the sun once. urn:lcp:etymologiconcirc0000fors:epub:a7a0b138-3c2f-4884-964f-6a215f71d4bb Foldoutcount 0 Grant_report Arcadia #4281 Identifier etymologiconcirc0000fors Identifier-ark ark:/13960/t3rw2kn54 Invoice 2089 Isbn 9781848313071 Lccn 2011535421 Ocr tesseract 5.0.0-alpha-20201231-10-g1236 Ocr_detected_lang en Ocr_detected_lang_conf 1.0000 Ocr_detected_script Latin Ocr_detected_script_conf 1.0000 Ocr_module_version 0.0.13 Ocr_parameters -l eng Old_pallet IA-WL-2000054 Openlibrary_edition Anyway, there are a lot of pelicans on the west coast of America. When the Spanish conquistadors arrived in the bay of St Francis they found an island absolutely covered with them. So they named it Pelican Island. Except being Spaniards they did it all in Spanish. And that's why San Francisco bay contains the island of Alcatraz, because alcatraz is just Spanish for pelican. It comes from the Arabic al ghattas meaning sea-eagle.

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And, weirdly enough, all the Roman names survive in Welsh: Dydd-sull, -llun, -marwth, -mercher, -iou, -gwener, -sadwrn. You know, frank gets its meaning here from the idea of belonging to the Franks and therefore being free – in the same way that slave originally meant being in servitude due to being a Slav. The Northern Europeans didn't use the planets because they weren't into astrology, because it's much too cloudy round these parts. In England you can detect the sun occasionally, in Wales never. The other planets might as well not exist. a b "Adorkable new words make new Collins dictionary". BBC News Scotland. BBC. 22 October 2014 . Retrieved 18 January 2015.