I have been subscribing to many of your wonderful puzzle books for some time now and the pleasure they give me is just fabulous. I can hardly wait for them to arrive in my mailbox.
I am an Aussie, born in Warrnambool, Victoria and also lived in Melbourne, and now Im living in the U.S, [more…]
Another word for grovel or ‘bow and scrape’ is kowtow.
Chinese ke tou is the act of deep respect shown by bowing so low as to touch your head to the ground.
Ke means ‘bump’ and tou means ‘head’. A subject would kowtow to the Emperor or other superior.
Kowtow came into English in the early [more…]
In Ancient Rome an apt nickname used for the goddess Juno was Moneta which may have been derived from the Latin verb monere meaning ‘advise, warn’.
The name Moneta was also applied to her temple in Rome, which contained a mint. In due course, moneta came to mean mint, then ‘stamp for coining’ and finally [more…]
In polite company you have to watch what you say, be careful to use the right tone and turn of phrase and not to offend.
‘Mind your Ps and Qs’, your mum would say!
As with many phrases of our oral tradition the exact origin is not clear but there are some very believable theories, one [more…]
The sound of a sneeze has the onomatopoeic atishoo to describe it. This works well, and is further authenticated by the word’s similarity to ‘tissue’, a must-have for sneezers.
One theory links the origins of ‘atishoo’ to the Black Death.
The nursery rhyme, Ring a Ring o’Roses, is thought, by some, to have developed as a [more…]
This very down-to-earth word has a very lofty origin .
The supreme Egyptian god, Amen or Amon was Ammon to the Greeks.
He was worshipped at the temple of Jupiter Ammon situated at a Libyan oasis.
The dung and urine of camels that came to drink at the oasis, was collected and sal ammoniacus or ‘salt of [more…]
This sweet little songbird owes its name to a large breed of dog!
Stories that the group of volcanic islands to the north of Africa were inhabited by large dogs, led the Romans to call these islands Canariae Insulae or dog islands.
Canary became used as an adjective to describe exports form the islands, such as [more…]
The alphabet was known as Christ-cross-row because the row of letters was preceded by a character resembling a Maltese cross.
When an illiterate person was required to sign his name he would print the Christ-cross as his mark.
Eventually the first syllable was reduced and the word crisscross entered our language meaning to cross with lines. [more…]
