So we know you’re going to enjoy exploring Word Talk, where we look at many of the Words and Phrases in our fascinating English language, what they mean and where they came from. Filling The Gaps provides the story behind some of the people, places and events used in Lovatts crosswords.
Colonel Yuri Gagarin became the first human to fly in space when he orbited the Earth in 1961.
Yuri Alexeyevich Gagarin was born on a collective farm in Smolensk, west of Moscow in March 1934. His father was a carpenter.
After attending his local school for six years and then various technical schools, Yuri joined the [more…]
Ventriloquism was a word originally associated with possession by an evil spirit.
The word comes from the Latin ventriloquus, which is a compound of venter ‘stomach’ and loqui, ‘speak’.
It originally referred literally to the phenomenon of speaking from the stomach, particularly as a sign of demonic possession.
The word was linked to the trick of throwing [more…]
Do you know someone called John or Jack who you would describe as zany?
This word meaning bizarre, way out or wacky comes from the Italian form of John, Giovanni.
The name John and its European counterparts such as Jean and Giovanni were very popular, they came to be used to denote the common man. Jack [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…]
