Monthly Archives: June 2026

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Family Ties

Words are like us, they have families. Etymologists hunt down the DNA of our vocabulary, so that we can find out their ancient ancestors from all around the world and we learn that we end up with words that have changed both spelling and meaning over the years but still retain similarities.

Words that sound [more…]

The Art of Celebration

Thousands of years ago, people in Egypt used a dark powder as an eye cosmetic. This powder was made up of substances such as crushed antimony, burnt almonds, lead, oxidised copper, ochre, ash and malachite and was called kohl, from the Arabic al-kuhl, ‘al’ being ‘the’ in Arabic. In fact there are several words [more…]