Welcome to our Inklings page, where you get a sprinkling of weird and wonderful facts about words and language. Inklings can be seen in full in Colossus Crosswords magazine – [GeoTargeted to=”AU,NZ”]click here for more information[/GeoTargeted][GeoTargeted out=”AU,NZ”]click here for more information[/GeoTargeted]
From Colossus Inklings No.121
We published reader Peter Robinson’s letter about the King Canute story in Colossus 121’s Puzzle Postbox. Here are three legends of British kings, which may be true or not.
King Canute sat on the beach and ordered the waves to turn back and leave his feet dry. As Canute knew would happen, [more…]
From Colossus Inklings No.120
The Australian National University in Canberra ran a competition asking readers to send in an Australian place name with a suitable definition. The entrant was allowed to add, remove or change one letter of the place name if desired. Here are some of the witty results:
Barragate – a really fishy [more…]
From Colossus Inklings No.120
A reader recently wrote in to tell us that she was 20 years past threescore and ten. Why didn’t she just say ‘fourscore and ten’? I suspect it’s because the prescribed lifespan of an average person was purported to be threescore and ten’ 70 years old. And she was telling us [more…]
From Colossus Inklings No.120
To show how much words change their meanings, look at these five words that have similar meanings. Only one had the same meaning originally.
Danger comes from 13th C daunger ‘power’, as in ‘power to inflict injury’. This in turn came from Latin dominium ‘ownership’.
Hazard evolved from the Arabic al zahr, ‘the [more…]
From Colossus Inklings No.119
Milliner – ‘originally meant ‘native of Milan’, later ‘a vendor of fancy goods from Milan’.
Stationer – comes from the medieval Latin stationarius meaning ‘tradesman at a fixed location, ie not itinerant’.
Butcher – ‘variant of the Old French bochier from boc ‘he-goat’ or buc ‘male deer’.
Tailor -‘Originally from the Latin taliare [more…]
