Christine Lovatt’s Hello Column
Christine’s Hello column appears monthly in Lovatts BIG Crossword magazine
Exclamations
Many exclamations we recognise are attempts to avoid blasphemy. Jeez! comes from ‘Jesus’, as does Gee whiz!, Jeepers! and Jiminy Christmas!, while Golly!, Gosh! and Gordon Bennett! are from ‘God’. Cripes!, Crikey! and Crumbs! are attempts to tone down saying ‘Christ’. The Cockney exclamation Gor blimey! comes from ‘God blind me!’ and Strewth! is [more…]
Silverware, flatware and cutlery ????
The word cutlery comes from the Old French word coutellerie (related to today’s French word couteau ‘knife’) yet the words knife, fork and spoon are all from Old English.
The knife was by far the earliest of the cutlery items, with the word knife coming from the Old English cnif. The first knives would have [more…]
Bon appetit
Many of our food terms comes from the French, such as menu, short for menu de repas ‘list of what is served at a meal’. The term a la carte means ‘food ordered as separate items’ as opposed to a table d’hôte, ‘meal served at a fixed price’. Haute cuisine is high-quality cooking in [more…]
Skyscrapers
Humans seem to have been intrigued by creating enormous buildings and architectural wonders for centuries. The Great Pyramid of Giza, originally 146.5 metres high, was the tallest man-made structure in the world for over 3,800 years.
The Lighthouse of Alexandria, destroyed in 1323, was over 120m tall. Churches and cathedrals, with their tall steeples striving [more…]
What’s your nickname?
There are different types of nicknames, sometimes depending on how a nickname will be used. Hypocoristic refers to a nickname of love and affection, which comes from the Greek hypokorizesthai, meaning ‘to call by endearing names’. Love, pet, babe, darling, dear, all spring immediately to mind.
A moniker also means a nickname or personal name and may [more…]
Nature’s creepy-crawlies
Perhaps it’s no coincidence that etymology and entomology look alike. Cockroach comes from the Spanish cucaracha and describes the unpopular nocturnal insect and a worthless or despicable person, although perhaps it should mean a born survivor, who lives through any circumstance.
Beetle comes from old English bitula ‘to bite’ and to beetle off is to [more…]
Music Terms are Music to the Ears
To face the music is to brave the unpleasant consequences of your actions. There are several theories about the origin of this phrase. A common assertion is that ‘face the music’ originated from the tradition of disgraced officers being drummed out of their regiment. A second popular theory is that it may derive from [more…]
Naming Fauna
To make it even more complicated, they gave each animal two names – a scientific or Latin name and a common name.
The scientific name is unique and the same all over the world, made up of a genus name followed by a species name. The common name can change from one region to another. [more…]
Ursa Major Stars
Ursa Major is a group of seven stars that can be seen in the northern hemisphere but not in the south. The Old Testament book of the Bible (Amos5:8) refers to it as the seven stars.
The name Ursa Major is Latin for the Great Bear. It’s hard to see how it ever resembled a [more…]