podictionary Podcasts

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An almost daily podcast for logophiles (lovers of words), podictionary covers a new word for a minute or two in each episode, discussing etymology (word history) and related trivia. Primary Format : Variety Language : Unknown Also Listed as: City : Ottawa State/Province : ON Country : Canada Region : NA User Tags: User Votes: RSS Feed Website People found this Podcast Searching for: View this Podcast on a Google Map. Podcast iTunes Link Text Only listing of podictionary Podcasts Methings.com listings of podictionary Podcasts If you like this podcast, you might also like:

bamboozle – podictionary 230 A rerun podcast from 2006 This word highlights the dangers of electronic media. I looked up bamboozled in the Oxford English Dictionary online, that's where the draft third edition can be found. There is a verb to bamboozle and a noun bamboozle so I clicked on the etymology for the first one listed online, the [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website hyena – podictionary 250 From 2006 Some listeners have been asking for words that arose from languages other than Latin.  I chose hyena out of the blue, thinking, that's likely to be African isn't it? Which just goes to show how hard it is to get away from Latin and Greek roots since hyena too arrived in English after [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website proclivity – podictionary 249 A repeat episode from May 2006  I got the idea for this word of the day from reading more about the Oxford English Corpus, that dictionary maker's tool said to have a billion words in its database. One of the things that lexicographers have been able to do, that they weren't able to do before, [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website mall – podictionary 265 From June 2006 The podictionary word for today is “mall”:  I'm not a mall person, but of course every now and then I need to go to the mall to buy something.  Would you have suspected that the word we use to describe this collection of stores originates in a word for "hammer?"  The word [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website umpire – podictionary 245 An old episode from May 2006 The other day I mentioned that Richard Lederer had brought up a word with an interesting background and "umpire" is the word. An umpire is of course the official who enforces the rules in baseball and a number of other sports.  In some sports the official isn't called an [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website train – podictionary 241 A rerun from May 2006 I can think of three meanings for the word train right off the top of my head. There is the train that people might ride on either to go to work every day or when traveling around Europe. There's the training that takes place in classrooms and there is the [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website pale – podictionary 240 From April 30, 2006... I find in the Oxford English Dictionary that there are ten words pale spelled pale.  None of them are a bucket, which would be spelled pail. One at least is short for pale ale, so that's okay, but I want to talk about the one that's behind the phrase "beyond the [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website astonished – podictionary 239 A rerun from 2006 If I am doing a good job at podictionary I hope that I've astonished you with some of my unexpected histories of words you thought you already knew. Well, at least I hope I have astonished you in the modern sense, not in the sense the word held when it first [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website focus – podictionary 238 A repeat episode from April 2006. Right around the time when Shakespeare was alive there was another guy in Germany by the name of Johannes Kepler. He was quite the guy. Wikipedia tells me that he wrote science fiction.  He must have put his imagination to good use in the realm of science fact as [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website bedlam – podictionary 237 Again from 2006 - This is a fairly well known story due to a great book that I'll mention later. In the year of our lord 1247, in the City of London was founded the priory of St. Mary of Bethlehem. As a rich person might do now for tax purposes, the land for this [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website horoscope – podictionary 231 An episode from 2006 Today we can predict the future with elaborate weather forecasting computer programs, and by getting Ivy League educated economists on the radio. But in the bad old days people who wanted an accurate picture of the days to come would consult a soothsayer who poked through chicken entrails, or looked to [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website seminar – podictionary 234 Another episode from 2006 I'm sure you have attended seminars.  They seem a little interchangeable with conferences and expositions. The usual definition these days is a get together of specialists in some field or other, or alternately students studying under a professor. The word started appearing in English within the last 100 years and is [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website maelstrom – podictionary 235 This episode circa April 2006 I checked the New York Times to see how people were using the word "maelstrom." To be honest I needed to check the spelling first. There was a story on the war in Iraq and the maelstrom in Bagdad; another about a family crises maelstrom; and one on a maelstrom [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website luggage – podictionary 229 From April 2006 I hate luggage. My theory of travel includes a thin suitcase and a fat wallet. Consequently I never travel. The word "luggage" appears first in 1597 and one of the first citations is Shakespeare' Henry IV where the King's son Hal asks his friend to bring your luggage nobly on your back [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website puppet – podictionary 227 First posted April 2006 In English the word "pupa" is the stage of life of an insect.  For example between being a caterpillar and being a butterfly the stage where this kind of insect morphs is called its pupal stage. This is the idea of Carl Linneas who in the 1750s came up with the [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website nemesis – podictionary 225 Nemesis is the goddess of righteous anger; divine retribution and vengeance. Her name translates as "to give what is due." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website window – podictionary 224 From 2006 The other day on the blog The Oxford Etymologist Anatoly Liberman just happened to mention in passing that the word "window" evolved from an earlier pair of words "wind" and "eye." So a window is the space in the wall where the wind looks in; or at least did until people started sticking [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website cement – podictionary 223 From 2006 In fact I want to talk about both cement and concrete and explore what is different about them. The word cement seems to have come into Middle English from Old French and ultimately from Latin.  The earliest ancestor word in Latin has a meaning of small stones that have been chipped off a [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website gazpacho – podictionary 1145 comes from Arabic and means “soaked bread.” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website vichyssoise – podictionary 1144 Louis Diat was a French chef and he worked for the Ritz restaurants Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website pest – podictionary 222 The word pest arrived in English in the late 1400s in the saliva of a flea. The flea we might now regard as a pest, and the rat upon which the flea rode we would also classify as a pest, but back then, the word pest didn't apply to either. Pest is ultimately from Latin [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website goal – podictionary 1142 from an Old English word that had originally meant “barrier.” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website funeral – podictionary 1141 we can look back to the Latin words funus and funer meaning “death rites.” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website vegetarian – podictionary 205 From March 2006 The Devil's Dictionary does not have an entry for vegetarian. It does however, have one for carnivore: someone who is addicted to the cruelty of devouring timorous vegetarians, their heirs and assigns. I also visited urbandictionary seeking enlightenment and the most popular definition of vegetarian there appears to me to be some sort of manifesto invoking [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website hour – podictionary 196 Originally from February 2006 While you and I know what an hour is, the people who invented the word had no clocks and for them an hour was not so much a length of time as a milestone through the course of the day. In English the word appears first in 1225 and at that time an [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website disaster – podictionary 195 This episode originally posted in 2006 When historians look back thousands of years, sometimes the evidence begins to get a little sketchy, so whether it was 2000 years ago or 3000 years ago or maybe far longer, the idea that the pattern of the heavens might have some influence on our lives down here on the [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website soccer – podictionary 266 A re-run in honor of the World Cup of Soccer (originally aired in 2006) The podictionary word for today is “soccer”:  I began researching the etymology of soccer and very quickly broke into the history of football.  It struck me that there is a parallel in the course of these sports with the various branches of [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website show – podictionary 133 First posted December 2005 - that'd make this a re-run episode. When the word “show” first showed up in Beowulf well over 1000 years ago, it didn’t mean what we think of today, but instead referred to the other end of the field of view, it meant “to see.”  Yet by 1200, and in opposition to [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website swear – podictionary 1140 when Old English speakers were swearing up a storm they called it swearing (or the parent word to swearing). Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website simplify – podictionary 1139 Something simple isn’t multi layered, it only has one fold. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website wraith – podictionary 220 This episode was originally aired in April of 2006 I suppose the first time I encountered the word "wraith" was in the 70's when I read JRR Tolkien's Lord of the Rings.  The ringwraiths were those black captains of evil that were roaming the land seeking Frodo Baggins and the ring he bore. JRR Tolkien was an [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website brittle – podictionary 218 This episode re-run from 2006 Anatoly Liberman has a blog going called "the Oxford Etymologist"  I was reading one of his pieces that talked about the antiquity of some words and how the older they get, the more silly it becomes to try to pin a specific year on their emergence. Brittle is a good word to [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website hassle – podictionary 217 Repeat episode from 2006 In 1993 the entry for "hassle" in The Columbia Guide to Standard American English gave the word a meaning close to "fight." For me though, hassle means more inconvenience than fisticuffs and I seem to be supported in this by most of the dictionaries I checked. One point that comes up with this word [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website galoshes – podictionary 216 First aired March, 2006 When I go out in the winter I wear my winter boots.  When I was a little kid my dad wore overshoes.  They were a kind of rubber outer boot that he zipped or clipped up over his dress shoes.  They were also called galoshes. It seemed to me a pretty British word, [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website ferret – podictionary 213 Originally posted March 2006 Ferret's are very popular pets.  I looked at urbanditionary to find not definitions of some slang use of the word ferret, but a bunch of entries by enthusiastic pet owners extolling the virtues of their animals. Still, people sometimes throw around the insult "ferret face" and although this isn't for etymological reasons, there [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website bye-bye – podictionary 194 The word "bye-bye" is a duplication of "bye" and both are more likely to be used between people who are very close—say members of a family—than between more formally related people. It's easier to imagine heads of state parting with "goodbye" than "bye-bye." But we all know that "bye" is just an abbreviation of "goodbye."  What's interesting [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website ciao – podictionary 193 Originally issued February 2006 In the olden days when people wrote to each other on pieces of paper they would often sign off with "sincerely" or "yours truly." These formalities above the signature have a name; the "subscription" which makes sense because they are "sub" or below the "script" or writing. Another name for them is more formal [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website gentle – podictionary 192 all sources do point to Latin roots. Back there in Latin the word meant "family" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website allegorical – podictionary 190 The alle part means "other"—and its also there inside the word "parallel." The second half—gory—relates to public speaking as the ancient Greeks would have done in their agora. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website iceberg – podictionary 189 "berg" meant mountain Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website ellipse – podictionary 187 rom a Greek word that means "to come short" as in "close, but not quite there." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website pickle – podictionary 212 The word appeared first in English in 1440 in a work regarded as a masterpiece. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website pew – podictionary 1138 what is so smelly about the seats in the church Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website tantalize – podictionary 1136 King Tantalus was king of Phrygia which was where Turkey is now Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website prince – podictionary 1103 a prince isn’t second in line at all; the prince was the king Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website garbage – podictionary 182 French cooks called the guts of chickens and geese garbage Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website garble – podictionary 181 "garble" once meant sorting good things from bad Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website okay – podictionary 1131 the initials “o” and “k” stood for “oll korrect” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website angel – podictionary 172 a guy named Gregory—who would later become pope—was out shopping for slaves...said they looked like angels Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website number – podictionary 1091 Ancient Greek "nemein" with a meaning of “deal out” or “distribute” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website pharmacist – podictionary 171 from pharmakia an Ancient Greek word which not only meant “medicine” but also “poison” and “witchcraft.” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website street – podictionary 169 In Latin a paved road was a via strata "via" meaning road and "strata" meaning that there was a layer of paving stone on top. Strata became street Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website janitor – podictionary 1127 they were door keepers and doors were in Latin called janua Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website episode – podictionary 167 "episode" translates to in Greek “coming in besides” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website nightmare – podictionary 161 a nightmare was an evil spirit that made it hard to breathe Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website sublime – podictionary 1124 Subliminal is “below the threshold of consciousness.” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website knot – podictionary 165 pretty closely related to words like knit and knob, as well as knuckle Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website draft – podictionary 159 A draft beer is beer on tap, as opposed to beer from a can or bottle.  The reason it is called draft beer is that the word draft draft is really only the modern spelling of an older word draught with the same pronunciation.  Both these words mean "pull" or "draw." In fact they are actually [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website calculus – podictionary 158 I worked at a place a few years ago where one of the principals was a mathematician.  There seemed to be a lot of joking about whether doing math was part of people’s job descriptions—apparently quite a few people were intimidated by it. If you have ever taken a calculus course, or even more so if [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website indian – podictionary 155 It is pretty common knowledge that when Christopher Columbus headed out he thought he was heading for the Far East by way of the west. Europeans knew about trade goods, particularly spices, from the Indies  even though they didn’t have much idea about what lands these Indies constituted.  So when he sighted land he naturally assumed [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website mundane – podictionary 152 mundane means “of the world” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website gorilla – podictionary 1077 About 2500 years ago Hanno reported that they chased and caught three females Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website gorgeous – podictionary 144 gorgeous may specifically refer to a beautiful piece of jewelry hung about one’s neck Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website harbinger – podictionary 1115 Harbinger was a military word meaning "army shelter" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website prevaricate – podictionary 1070 this tearme appropriate unto Husbandrie, is borrowed by Lawyers Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website fond – podictionary 142 The word “fondle” grew out of “fond” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website harlot – podictionary 138 William the Conqueror’s mother was named Harlothe Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website succeed – podictionary 1104 That word predecessor sounds like pre-deceased. Does that mean that once upon a time someone had to die before the new guy got the job? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website fiance – podictionary 136 fiancé meant “trust” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website incandescent – podictionary 1100 a candle has a flame that glows, but a hot coal glows from within Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website humiliate – podictionary 1094 humble literally means “close to the ground” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website zero – podictionary 1092 "zero" traces back to an Arabic word "cifr" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website album – podictionary 128 Since the word "album" comes from Latin meaning “white,” the Beatles White Album name is redundant (but fitting) Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website pomegranate – podictionary 126 pomegranate literally means “apple full of seeds.” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website exhaust – podictionary 1085 You can’t push on a rope. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website work – podictionary 125 "work" had an enormous number of spellings and tenses and variations Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website sponge – podictionary 1082 sponges upon which manufactured items are modeled were animals that live in the sea Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website sky – podictionary 121 Why did the first English reference talk about six or seven skies? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website politics – podictionary 120 Aristotle said “man is a political animal” meaning men live best in a "polis" meaning “city” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website mogul – podictionary 1078 the Grand Mogul was a kingly figure of northern India Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website luge – podictionary 1076 One of the models of slidy things took on the local name for a “sled” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website bobsled – podictionary 1074 the original bobsleds were not used for sport but for logging Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website dictionary – podictionary 1071 For instance listing words in alphabetical order didn’t occur to dictionary makers for quite a while. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website virtue – podictionary 1068 Etymologically being a virtuous woman wasn’t such a great thing Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website entail – podictionary 1066 The word "entail" does literally mean “to attach a tail to” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website deed – podictionary 1061 the definition of deed is “that which is done.” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website trance – podictionary 1060 a trance was the state of being between life and death Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website pant – podictionary 109 reason our ancient forbearers were panting, is because they woke up in the night from a fantastic nightmare Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website baby – podictionary 108 baban evolved as a word from the sounds that babies make before they learn to talk Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website abacus – podictionary 1057 the Latin word grew from a Greek word abak or abax that meant “slab” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website horsdoeuvre – podictionary 107 in 1596, hors d’oeuvre was an architectural term and indicated a piece of masonry that jutted out from the rest building Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website pawn – podictionary 1054 when the Norman Conquerors arrived in England with their French a paun meant “a walker” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website pheasant – podictionary 1053 the Greeks called this bird phasianos thinking they came from near the River Phasis which flows into the black sea. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website lampoon – podictionary 1052 from a French word meaning “let us drink”? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website trapeze – podictionary 1049 "Trapeza" meaning "table" was once "tetra peza" meaning “four feet.” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website yacht and special behind the scenes – podictionary 1048 if you like what you’re reading I would hope you’d like to listen to it even more Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website carpenter – podictionary 1043 Latin root of "carpenter" a craftsman who made chariots, "carpentum" was a two wheeled vehicle Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website SPECIAL podictionary episode 1041- interview with Philip Durkin interview with Philip Durkin, the Principal Etymologist for The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website frolic – podictionary 1035 "Frolic" may be rooted in a word meaning "to jump" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website glue – podictionary 1033 it isn’t easy to imagine how the Indo-Europeans used glue Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website macaroni – podictionary 100 why pasta has certain names and why Yankee Doodle called a feather in his hat macaroni Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website pompous – podictionary 1031 likely first associated with saying formal goodbyes Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website elbow – podictionary 1029 the literal meaning of the word elbow is “arm bend” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website columbine – podictionary 1028 around Shakespeare’s time columbine flowers got a bad reputation as having something to do with the seamier side of sex Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website tweed – podictionary 99 seemed to think he had gotten a shipment of tweed not tweel and the rest is history Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website coroner – podictionary 1023 The reason that coroners have a preoccupation with dead bodies is that in medieval England death was a major source of income for the government. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website sheriff – podictionary 1022 The word sheriff evolved out of shire reeve. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website cranberry – podictionary 1021 from a German name meaning "crane berry" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website gap – podictionary 93 in Old Norse it meant “a wide mouthed outcry” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Chardonnay – podictionary 1019 Chardonnay named based on a place name Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website superstition – podictionary 83 “superstition” has a literal meaning of “stand upon” or “stand over.” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website foreign – podictionary 1010 700 years ago a chamber foreign was an outhouse Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website giraffe – podictionary 1009 It wasn’t called a giraffe, but instead a camelopard Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website forfeit – podictionary 77 In Latin the original expression had been foris factum Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website orangutan – podictionary 1008 orangutan literally means “wild man” or “forest man” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website citizen – podictionary 76 when the word citizen first appeared in English it meant someone lived in a city instead of the countryside Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website tawdry – podictionary 1007 tawdry derives from St. Audrey Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website budget – podictionary 999 In Latin "bulga" meant “a leather bag or knapsack.” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website scapegoat – podictionary 82 William Tindale translated Leviticus from Hebrew and invented scapegoat Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website bulldoze – podictionary 996 bull dosing gave the term bulldoze a meaning of brute force Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website climate – podictionary 995 in Indo-European the word meaning “to lean” was "klei" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website beta – podictionary 994 Phoenicians attributed a meaning to the letter, "bayt" was their word for “house.” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website coffee – podictionary 80 the word "coffee" may have meant “to be without appetite” and designated a type of wine. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website yarn – podictionary 992 the ancient word for a kind of cord made from the insides of animals grew into our word yarn Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website thrill – podictionary 988 "thrill" is related to "drill" and "avatar" and "nostril." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website curry – podictionary 71 an earlier existence of the word curry meant to “brush” or “rub down,” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website snake – podictionary 987 the words "snake" and "serpent" slither back to a root meaning of something that creeps and crawls Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website public – podictionary 986 it turns out that the typo "pubic" has roots deep in the etymology of the word "public" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website shoe - podictionary 64 etymologists aren’t sure if "shoe" goes back to a word related to walking or a different word meaning “to cover” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website doodle - podictionary 981 the doodle you do with a pencil could possibly be named because it's seen as foolish Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website bee - podictionary 970 it is the sound of these insects that gives them their name Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website punt - podictionary 969 The glass blower stuck a blob of molten glass on an iron pole called a "pontil" from French meaning “little point.” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website franchise - podictionary 968 The Franks took their tribal name from the word for their favorite weapon, a spear. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website dude - podictionary 61 "dude" appears to be a word that sprung from the pages of a newspaper one day and was instantly adopted by everybody Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website lobby - podictionary 967 The root meaning of lobby is of “shelter” and ultimately may have evolved from the same root as the word leaf Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website ace - podictionary 961 An Etruscan source is suggested by John Ayto, the OED suggests instead a Tarentine word Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website hype - podictionary 960 we think of hype as meaning revved up but etymologically it comes from "down” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website discombobulate - podictionary 56 discombobulate was not an assembly of other legitimate word components. Instead it was a product of our human fancy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website sincere - podictionary 959 Latin sincerus meaning “clean,” or “pure” originates in Indo-European roots sem meaning “one” and ker meaning “growth.” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website sanction - podictionary 958 sanction is etymologically related to the words sacred and saint Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website casual - podictionary 942 at its root the word "casual" actually means “by chance” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website somersault - podictionary 28 from Latin it was two words "supra" and "saltus" literally meant “above leap” figuratively “jump over.” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website obsessed - podictionary 941 The Latin word was obsidere and the literal meaning is “before to sit”; so that the figurative meaning is that the devil is sitting before you. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website nostalgia - podictionary 940 Greek roots were nostos meaning “return home” and algos meaning “pain.” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website virgin - podictionary 939 virgin appears first in English around the year 1200 Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website stable - podictionary 26 etymologically "stable" means that it’s “likely to stand” or “a place to stand” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website restaurant - podictionary 938 a restaurant is etymologically supposed to “restore” you Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website history - podictionary 937 in Greek the word "histor" at first meant a “wise” or “learned man” Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website vamp - podictionary 918 in 1225 a vamp was a shoe or sock and more specifically that part that got worn out Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website dapper - podictionary 913 The source of the word dapper doesn't mean "well dressed," but instead means "heavy." The idea is that someone who is weighty and important will look the part. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website crisis - podictionary 912 the reason a crisis is called a crisis is because it is in crisis that new directions are decided upon Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website regurgitate - podictionary 54 a word like regurgitate implies the existence of another word, gurgitate. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website quaff - podictionary 911 The word quaff, meaning "to drink deeply" appeared in English in the early 1500s, can you hear the sound of a beer being sucked back in the word? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website bellwether - podictionary 903 I took a look in the newspapers at how the word bellwether was being used. The shopping trends between American Thanksgiving and Christmas are said to be a bellwether of the economy. The number of Harvard grads taking jobs in the financial sector was said to be a kind of bellwether of the markets. The American Heritage Dictionary [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website pretzel - podictionary 902 The religious observance drains out of his account when he relates that the temperance movement has caused wines, cordials and liquors to be replaced with coffee and lemonade. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website vitamin - podictionary 901 And so it was that the word was punished by the removal of its "e" so that people wouldn't ever be fooled again into thinking that a vitamin needed to be an amine. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website museum - podictionary 44 The Museum was singular, there was only one, and it was at Alexandria in classical times. In Greek it was the Museion because it was the temple of the muses. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website interview - podictionary 900 The word comes from French and was once two words entre voir literally meaning "to see between" but more figuratively "to see each other." By that definition telephone interviews would be an impossibility. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website coat - podictionary 899 The legacy of these naming conventions survives in waistcoat and petticoat. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website media - podictionary 898 in the spirit of social media I invite you to use the comment space in the blog post for this episode to tell me, and tell each other, why you think that phrase "the media is the message" is so memorable. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website cash - podictionary 37 Money makes the world go round and cash is king.� The word cash appeared in English right around the time of Shakespeare, and he, being right on top of this language thing, used it. Today’s podictionary word brought to you by GoToMeeting. Try it free for 30 days by following the link www.gotomeeting.com/podcast In Henry V two [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website zaftig - podictionary 897 the Oxford English Dictionary's definition is "of a woman: plump, curvaceous, sexy." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website paparazzi - podictionary 786 The paparazzo who was the subject of the first English citation supposedly practiced for quick photo-ops by having a friend toss a coin in the air so he could "shoot" it dead centre in his frame; along the lines of a western gunslinger. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website accost - podictionary 785 how Edmond Spenser accosted Geoffrey Chaucer Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website evict - podictionary 784 The American Heritage Dictionary points back to an Indo-European root weik meaning "to fight" or "to conquer." The leading "e" in evict is an intensifier according to the Oxford English Dictionary, as if to conquer someone wasn't enough. By the time evict made it into English it was a legal term meaning to recover property, and sometimes recover that property by kicking the occupants off the property. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website nubile - podictionary 782 At first in English a person was nubile with respect to their age; they were old enough to marry. The change in meaning from "marriageable" to "sexy" must have come during the decades when there was no sex without marriage�or at least no public acknowledgement of sex without marriage. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website awkward - podictionary 781 awkward can be broken into two parts; awk and ward. The ward part is the same as in toward, forward and backward. It indicates a direction. The Oxford English Dictionary actually says in its etymology "in an awk direction." So it turns out that there is actually a word awk; or was. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website campaign - podictionary 780 Political campaigns are conducted like military operations. That's fitting because in 1656 Thomas Blount in his Glossographia wrote of the word campaign: "A word much used among Souldiers, by whom the next Campaine is usually taken for the next Summers Expedition of an Army, or its taking the field." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website changes at podictionary This is about where I'm headed with podictionary. I think I'd like to make some changes. First let me say that I am not going to stop producing podictionary; not for some time yet anyway. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website bail - podictionary 779 Would no one stand bail for her? Out of one of the upper balconies of the theatre leaps a sailor who swings down to the stage as he might descending rigging from his ship and offers to protect the actress while threatening the other poor actor. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website cab - podictionary 777 Back in Italian and into Latin the root meant "a goat jumping." In fact the American Heritage Dictionary tells me that caper meant "he-goat" back in Latin. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website taxi - podictionary 776 Those earliest German taxameters didn't actually compute the price of your ride, they simply connected to the wheels of the carriage so that they could show you how far you'd gone. So today we'd call them odometers. Strange that, because the word odometer had been floating around for more than a hundred years before people adopted this German trade name instead. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website stall - podictionary 775 The etymological sources give a bewildering spider-web of related words but seem to connect this kind of stalling of a car to the stall a horse might stand in. It's the standing still that counts. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website curl - podictionary 774 There was a little girl / Who had a little curl / Right in the middle of her forehead; / And when she was good / She was very, very good, / But when she was bad she was horrid. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website size - podictionary 772 When size first appears in English back before the year 1300 it did not mean "dimension" or "magnitude." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website assess - podictionary 773 The 1935 citation in the Oxford English Dictionary that liberates assessment for uses beyond taxation is credited to Webster. Since by 1935 Noah Webster had been dead lo those 90 years we will turn our gaze instead to the New International Dictionary, Second Edition that was printed in his name in that year. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website nutrition - podictionary 771 If you've ever been or been close to a new mother when she hears babies crying you'll believe it when I make the connection between flow and nutrition. Just the sound of babies crying is usually enough to get a nursing mother's milk flowing. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website matrix - podictionary 770 it came as a mild surprise to me as I was writing my book on body words that the part of your fingernail called the matrix was so called because this was a Latin word for "womb" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website envelope - podictionary 769 this is one of those words that came into English twice from French, each time with a slightly different meaning. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website squirrel - podictionary 768 they all have one thing in common, a big bushy tail. In fact the entire species in named for it's tail. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website develop - podictionary 767 Real estate development certainly doesn't reveal roads, houses and shopping malls that had previously been hidden in farmer's fields and woodlots. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website cricket - podictionary 766 "That's disgusting. I mean, sushi is bad enough" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website humble - podictionary 765 In expressing that feeling of it being "pretty nice right here" I am actually not thinking of home as humble. The Oxford English Dictionary's first citation for humble is extracted from a sermon dated to the year 1250 and carries a definitions of: Having a low estimate of one's importance, worthiness, or merits. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website chain - podictionary 764 Two chemists were trying to figure out why a chemical reaction was behaving in a certain way when one pulled out his pocket watch and undid the chain that secured it to his vest. He wiggled it theorizing on the analogy to the chemical reaction and invented the phrase "chain reaction." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website freebooter - podictionary 759 The Dutch parent word is from a Germanic source and so maps pretty nicely to the English components free and boot that came to us from Old English and its Germanic roots. In this case boot doesn't mean the thing you pull onto your foot. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website filibuster - podictionary 757 The Dutch term for a pirate was vrijbuiter and this appears to have quite quickly have been mutated in English mouths into filibuster. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website cappuccino - podictionary 756 how did a group of monks give their name to a fancy coffee drink? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website scandal - podictionary 755 this was the second coming for the word into English because we see citations for it hundreds of years before, but that first time it mutated into another English word slander and so scandal had to be rediscovered Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website dwarf - podictionary 754 in some ways in an ancient world view, dwarves were seen on a par with the gods Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website tea - podictionary 752 both coffee and tea show up in the written record in the same year�1598�and in the same document, but tea came out as chaa and didn't turn up again as tea until 1655 Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website porcupine - podictionary 751 Shortly after the word porcupine waddled its way into English the French king Louis XII came to the throne. He brought with him the fearsome symbol of his family crest, the terror-inspiring porcupine. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website turmoil - podictionary 750 The theory is that "turmoil" arose from Old French and meant a container that was part of a mill. The container was always in motion to shake the grain into the grindstone of the mill. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website club - podictionary 749 Groucho Marx was accepted as a member of a very exclusive club called the Friar's Club and then sent them a telegram saying "Please accept my resignation. I don't want to belong to any club that will accept me as a member." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website OUPblog feed now in iTunes directory This is just a quick non-episode of podictionary to let subscribers know that the Oxford University Press blog feed for my Thursday episodes can now be found in the iTunes podcast directory. If you use iTunes you can subscribe to the OUPblog feed most easily by clicking here or on the iTunes image. You can also go [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website vomit - podictionary 734 Some years ago I went to see a play. As we sat reading the program before the lights dimmed I was interested to see a note apologizing to patrons for any inconvenience during the construction of the theatre's new vomitorium. I've stopped going to that theater. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website etiquette - podictionary 729 Emily Post clearly felt that if you knew your etiquette you could write your own ticket in life, and etymologically she's right. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website interrogate - podictionary 725 It's the rogare part that is more fun I think. In Latin it means "to ask" but the word root goes back to Indo-European and there reg- meant "to move in a straight line." Evidently the connection here is that when you ask someone a question you often hold your hand out toward them. It's thought that this holding the hand out straight brought the meaning of "straight" into the word that Latin speakers used for "ask." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website syllabus - podictionary 708 The problem was that Cicero wasn't writing about a list, he was writing about the little tags on the scrolls and the classics scholars jumped to conclusions. So everybody makes mistakes; who really cares. And that's the second point; who cares? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website desiderata - podictionary 707 Even though Les Crane was a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars and had a right to be here he didn't have a right to infringe on the Desiderata copyright and so got sued for it. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website cinema - podictionary 706 The Greek word for "motion" is kinema and before we ever had the word cinema we first had to labor under the much more tongue tiring kinematograph. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website spur - podictionary 705 If you are a hunter you'll know that spoor are droppings that allow you to track an animal. But the reason these droppings are called spoor is because the root meaning of spoor is the track or trail of the animal itself. In a number of European railway stations you'll see a very similar word used to identify this or that track. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website vertigo - podictionary 703 After I began looking up the word vertigo I stopped and asked a friend what it meant. This is a dangerous thing for me to do because my friends know I'm into dictionaries and they quickly become suspicious of why I might be asking. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website asylum - podictionary 702 The Greek word made it into Latin and then in France as Latin morphed into French the word morphed a little before making it to English as asyle in about 1400. But unbeknownst to the users of this word asyle, another word was simultaneously seeking refuge in England directly from Latin without a French influence. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website pumpernickel - podictionary 701 The common theme is that the bread was not thought to be very good. In fact in some renditions of the story the name arose because the bread is particularly hard to digest, at least according to the story teller. So hard to digest in fact that it causes the eater to fart. And so the bread is named something along the lines of "fart demon." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website queen - podictionary 700 the earliest meanings of the most ancient of these word roots�something that sounded like gwen�was simply "woman." There was no royalty association at all. Which I guess means that The Queen is only human after all. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website alimony - podictionary 697 the editors of the OED thought that having an affair was a bad thing, while Susanna thought it was maybe a good thing Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website sewer - podictionary 696 Now I wouldn't think that being a sewer would be a very desirable job, but the fact is there are two words sewer. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website rabid - podictionary 695 Another name for rabies is hydrophobia. This translates from Latin and ultimately Greek to mean "fear of water" (actually the Oxford English Dictionary says "horror of water"). Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website available - podictionary 694 The word avail has French parentage, but was actually born in England, the French word seemingly being just vail. Since most of French was once upon a time Latin, that French vail started out being the Latin valere meaning "worth" or "value." That's why something was only available if it had worth or value. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website elope - podictionary 693 Back in Shakespeare's day it was a crime. Back much further than that too. Back then to elope meant that you were already married and you were running away from your husband to hang with some other guy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website oyster - podictionary 692 The os- in the oyster word root is the same os- as in osteoporosis. Osteoporosis is a disorder of the bones and os- means "bone." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Gotham - podictionary 691 Gotham is a legendary town populated by fools Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website allude - podictionary 690 Back in Latin allude was originally two words ad ludere, ad meaning "to" and ludere meaning "play." So the reason that allusion is indirect reference is that the person is only playing with the reference. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website mortar - podictionary 684 A mortar and pestle is a simple tool used for grinding things. It consists of a bulky kind of bowl�that's the mortar�and a club shaped pestle that is used to bash away at whatever is in the bowl to render it into smithereens. It may help you remember which the mortar is and which the pestle is if I tell you that back in the 1400s people used the word pestle as a slang term for "penis"; similar shape and sound. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website pounce - podictionary 683 When a falcon pounces on his prey he does so with sharp claws. Our pouncing on houses for sale or delicious tomatoes evolved as an analogy to birds and animals pouncing on one another.In turn animal pouncing was so called because sharp claws of birds of prey were named for their ability to pierce and puncture. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website tramp - podictionary 681 The first citation we have for tramp is back in 1388 and the meaning it's given is "to walk with a heavy resonant step." Just exactly how bringing your foot down with force might have evolved into a meaning of a loose woman might leave you scratching your head. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website limbo - podictionary 674 The border of hell definitely has some bad connotations to it. There are plenty of citations to back me up on this. Milton, Shakespeare, Johnson all use limbo with meanings equivalent to "oblivion", "prison" or "hell." With this in mind it seemed to me a little mean-spirited of the church fathers that chose this name since the folks who inhabit limbo are actually pretty good people. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website hologram - podictionary 673 The way a hologram works is similar to the way rainbow colors emerge from a greasy puddle. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website ejaculate - podictionary 672 Samuel Pepys did include on July 23, 1666 the word ejaculate in his diaries, but his meaning was the same one that Arthur Conan Doyle had Doctor Watson voice when he used the word in the Sherlock Holmes stories. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website fantasy - podictionary 671 Way back in ancient Greek the word meant "to make visible" and was built on the root phaos meaning "light" which also gives us photon and photograph. One of the other meanings of the word fantasy that English inherited from earlier users of the word was that of "a phantom." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website morphine - podictionary 670 Somnus was the Roman god of sleep and one of his offspring was Morpheus, the god of dreams. In 1804 the opium poppy also had offspring, aided by a German chemist. In this case the offspring was known as morphine, also a bringer of dreams. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website insomnia - podictionary 668 Insomnia means "not somnus" in Latin; somnus meaning sleep, but also being the Roman god of sleep. There is a whole family surrounding this state of being. Like many Roman gods Somnus was a continuation of an earlier Greek god Hypnos and had sons including Morpheus and Phantasus who were the bringers of dreams. All of these godly personal names are echoed in English words like hypnotic, morphine and fantasy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website myriad - podictionary 667 Myriad comes from ancient Greek and literally means "ten thousand." According to the Oxford English Dictionary it was pretty rare for them to express an overwhelmingly large number by this word myriad. Instead of using the word for "ten thousand", they used their word for "one thousand" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website beast - podictionary 666 what's so beastly about the number 666? I am reminded of the times I've taken children on wilderness canoe trips. Sometimes they worry about animals in the woods. I ask them what animal do they think is the most dangerous species in the whole world. Sometimes they say a lion, sometimes a bear. I answer "you are; humans are the most dangerous species in the whole world." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website hohoho - podictionary 665 the OED tells me that in 1890 an Englishman recorded the fact that one African tribe referred to another tribe as ho, which was effectively calling them "a heap of dried peas." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website ginger - podictionary 662 If you've ever been to a horse show you know the high value placed on the posture of the horses being judged. One of the techniques for getting a horse to carry its tail in the approved high position was to "ginger the horse." To put ginger up a horse's fundament, to make him lively and carry his tail well. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website auger - podictionary 661 Did he say "a nauger" or did he say "an auger"? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website inaugural - podictionary 660 Clearly important was the behavior of birds so these guys looked not only at whether birds were chirping and how they were flying�in flocks or solo�but also at how the holy chickens were pecking and�when you killed a bird and cut it open�how it's insides looked. Once you'd used bird behavior to evaluate the merit of your plan, if things looked good, you could go ahead. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website china - podictionary 659 Augustus was the ruler of Poland and Saxony and he agreed with what Arthur C Clarke would later say "Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic." And so he imprisoned a guy named Johann Frederick Bottger who was supposed to be pretty smart at that alchemy stuff. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website porcelain - podictionary 658 Looking at a piece of porcelain like a tea cup one is not reminded of shellfish, pigs or women's private parts, but looking at the etymology these connections are indeed there. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website porcelain - podictionary 658 Looking at a piece of porcelain like a tea cup one is not reminded of shellfish, pigs or women's private parts, but looking at the etymology these connections are indeed there. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website jail - podictionary 657 had a laugh when I looked up the gaol spelling at Etymonline. Doug Harper's entry there reads: see jail, you tea-sodden football hooligan Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website jail - podictionary 657 had a laugh when I looked up the gaol spelling at Etymonline. Doug Harper's entry there reads: see jail, you tea-sodden football hooligan Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website penitentiary - podictionary 656 Penitentiary didn't at first have to do with imprisonment. Instead it had to do with feeling badly about what you'd done. To feel penitent comes from a Latin root meaning "regret for one's actions." Obviously it's also related to the word repent. These word roots wound their way from Latin through French and into Middle English. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website penitentiary - podictionary 656 Penitentiary didn't at first have to do with imprisonment. Instead it had to do with feeling badly about what you'd done. To feel penitent comes from a Latin root meaning "regret for one's actions." Obviously it's also related to the word repent. These word roots wound their way from Latin through French and into Middle English. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website brand - podictionary 655 Perhaps it's appropriate then that the word brand means "burn." My old employer got burned in my opinion, paying that much. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website brand - podictionary 655 Perhaps it's appropriate then that the word brand means "burn." My old employer got burned in my opinion, paying that much. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website university - podictionary 654 Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world but when it began, almost instantly after the Norman Invasion, it wasn't called a university. Universitas is Latin and so Oxford's transition to university status, which happened in 1231 didn't show up as an English word right away. Even when it gained the Latin label the word didn't mean specifically that Oxford was a place of higher learning, instead universitas meant that it was incorporated. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website university - podictionary 654 Oxford is the oldest university in the English-speaking world but when it began, almost instantly after the Norman Invasion, it wasn't called a university. Universitas is Latin and so Oxford's transition to university status, which happened in 1231 didn't show up as an English word right away. Even when it gained the Latin label the word didn't mean specifically that Oxford was a place of higher learning, instead universitas meant that it was incorporated. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website fiasco - podictionary 653 All these disasters out of a bottle.; because at root the word fiasco means "bottle." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website junta - podictionary 652 the clue to the roots of junta is in committee. As might be suspected of a Spanish word, junta is originally from Latin. It comes from a root meaning "to join" up until 1808 when junta takes on a decidedly military meaning. I see no evidence as to why junta might have shifted meaning from a military kind of government fighting an invading army to a military government that seems to be fighting its own people. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website trollop - podictionary 651 Trollop itself seems to have an etymology with rather loose morals, or at least loose word roots. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website vicious - podictionary 650 The etymology of vicious is from French back to Latin. In the early 1300s when the word first entered English on the coattails of that punk William the Bastard�leader of the band The Norman Invasion�at first it meant "addicted to vice," "depraved" or "immoral." Don't you think a band called The Sex Pistols would appreciate an etymology like that? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website vicious - podictionary 650 The etymology of vicious is from French back to Latin. In the early 1300s when the word first entered English on the coattails of that punk William the Bastard�leader of the band The Norman Invasion�at first it meant "addicted to vice," "depraved" or "immoral." Don't you think a band called The Sex Pistols would appreciate an etymology like that? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website wolf - podictionary 649 When I was a young boy I had some stuffed animals that must have been produced as an early sort of marketing tie-in to the 1933 Disney film The Three Little Pigs. I’m not quite that old, but maybe the stuffed animals were. I actually don’t remember the pigs, but I certainly do [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website wolf - podictionary 649 When I was a young boy I had some stuffed animals that must have been produced as an early sort of marketing tie-in to the 1933 Disney film The Three Little Pigs. I’m not quite that old, but maybe the stuffed animals were. I actually don’t remember the pigs, but I certainly do [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website orgy - podictionary 648 I’ll leave it to your imagination instead of relating what Urbandictionary’s very popular definitions say about the word orgy. Malcolm Muggeridge once wrote that “an orgy looks particularly alluring seen through the mists of righteous indignation.”� Muggeridge is supposed to have had a pretty healthy appetite for women and booze so I�m not sure if he [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website orgy - podictionary 648 I’ll leave it to your imagination instead of relating what Urbandictionary’s very popular definitions say about the word orgy. Malcolm Muggeridge once wrote that “an orgy looks particularly alluring seen through the mists of righteous indignation.”� Muggeridge is supposed to have had a pretty healthy appetite for women and booze so I�m not sure if he [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website luxury - podictionary 647 In the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations we find the following from the Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope: Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it. Now seeing it there in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations out of the context of the novel in which it first appeared, my mind [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website luxury - podictionary 647 In the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations we find the following from the Victorian novelist Anthony Trollope: Love is like any other luxury. You have no right to it unless you can afford it. Now seeing it there in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations out of the context of the novel in which it first appeared, my mind [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website omen - podictionary 646 The Devil’s Dictionary says that an omen is: A sign that something will happen if nothing happens. The Oxford English Dictionary tells us that that omen came into English only in 1582 but that it comes from classical Latin where it also had a meaning of something that foreshadows an event. The OED frustratingly says that there are [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website mentor - podictionary 645 According to The Concise Oxford English Dictionary a mentor is “an experienced and trusted adviser.” The first citation for mentor in English is 1750 according to the Oxford English Dictionary. But it is very likely that you could have heard the word in England long before that. First as a Greek word�more specifically a person’s name�and [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website halibut - podictionary 644 There is a fish restaurant in the touristy part of the city where I live that tries to entice diners in with fish-based puns. One urges them to eat fish “just for the halibut.” The pun of course is on “just for the hell of it” but as we will see hell is just about [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website health - podictionary 643 Prince Philip is the Duke of Edinburgh and Queen Elizabeth’s husband and he is quoted as saying that his good health in old age is due to the number of banquets and formal events that he has attended at which people have toasted his health. Now, in 2007 he’s 86. People sometimes criticize the healthcare sector [...] Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website praline - podictionary 640 As I've said before, life isn't fair. This time I say it because it isn't the chef who invented praline who we remember when we use the word, it's the nobleman in whose kitchen he worked. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website festoon - podictionary 633 So the meaning that came to my mind for festooned, meaning "draped about" seems pretty accurate. But looking at the etymology I see that a couple of other uses I saw were even more accurate. These referred to salami festooned from the ceiling in a delicatessen. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website coup - podictionary 631 You've likely heard of a coup de grace as well. I saw a restaurant review that talked about the dessert as being the coup de grace. This sense means that it is something that finishes off the meal and a coup de grace would actually finish off anything since the literal meaning is a "blow of grace," that is, "a mercy killing" to put someone out of their misery. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website video podcast - a collection from readings This video podcast runs about 8 minutes and is a collection of snippets from some of the readings Charles has been doing to promote the book. The book is is available at all major North American book chains including Amazon as well as many fine independent booksellers. This video is also available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SucKwXJRaag Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website fair - podictionary 621 A country fair comes from Old French and of course from Latin before that and meant "holiday." Fair weather and fair odds come instead from Old English and so the root of these at least was already being used in the British Isles before 1066 and the Norman Invasion brought French with its country fair. The first citation for fair meaning "beautiful" is from way back around the year 888. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website feud - podictionary 615 Someone asked me how the words feud and feudal were connected. After having taken some considerable time to study the matter I can safely say that the two words are connected only by the fact that each is based on a dumb idea. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website spice - podictionary 614 Europeans began to get fed up with the high prices of spices and tried to cut out the middleman by sailing ships directly to India and the source of the spices. Of course one of the things in the way was America. This ended up being okay because America had such things as chili peppers and vanilla. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website sentence - podictionary 613 How could a word that means "a string of words starting with a capital and ending with a period", also mean "the amount of time someone has to spend in jail?" The Latin ancestor of our word sentence actually meant "to have an opinion." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website habit - podictionary 612 Perhaps the fact that I began this episode by talking about drug habits influenced me into thinking that the word habit was generally associated with things that are bad like a smoking habit or bad eating habits. But I took a look at an English corpus and I see that I was wrong, there are lots more examples of neutral or even good habits out there, like spending habits and a habit of winning tennis tournaments. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website conundrum - podictionary 611 It seems to have been an invented word with no prior etymology it must have been hard to attach a meaning to it at first because the Oxford English Dictionary shows a kind of revolving list of meanings that seem to have been used by people who loved the word, but who just couldn't agree on what it meant. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website career - podictionary 610 When English first adopted career from French in the 1500s it meant a "racecourse." So that's why you always feel like you're running in circles. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website tangent - podictionary 609 The point is that a tangent touches once and then goes away and that's why, when I'm telling stories that seem to have nothing to do with etymology, I'm off on a tangent. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website metaphor - podictionary 607 the reason that the subject of alchemy is so appropriate for the word metaphor is that writings on alchemy written by alchemists had always been as obscure as possible and used piles of metaphor in favour of straightforward explanations on how to turn lead into gold. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website scuttlebutt - podictionary 606 The word butt, as I've said, was once a barrel. Sailors need to drink water like everyone else and so a barrel of water was usually kept up on deck for them to come by and dip their cups into. A sealed barrel didn't help much so two cuts were made into a barrel lying on its side. The cut barrel staves would then be removed leaving a nice square opening that looked a lot like a hatch. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website orange - podictionary 605 This is one of those chicken and egg words that seem a bit strange in terms of which came first. It seems strange to me anyway that this name we give a color never existed in English before it appeared as the name of a fruit. The first citation we have for orange is from 1400 and it is in what might be called an early Latin English dictionary that translates the Latin words for "citrus apple" into the English orange. It was another 150 years before anyone wrote down that orange was a col ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website hooker - podictionary 604 there is a folk etymology floating around out there that there was this guy, General Joseph Hooker was the origin for the word hooker that we now give to prostitutes. How this association could come about is explained, by those who tell the tale, as being because Joe Hooker was not a very strict military leader and allowed his troops to spend plenty of time in the company of paid ladies of the night. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website wicked - podictionary 603 Something that is wicked has the attributes of a wick. Back in Old English a wicca was a wizard and this that's also the source of our word witch. The American Heritage Dictionary takes the root back to an Indo-European source weg which meant "to be strong." It's those black magic powers. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website collar - podictionary 602 The collum that gave us collar came from roots in Indo-European that meant to "turn around." So it's because we can turn our heads on our necks that the neck got called the collum. This idea that the neck might be named because of its ability to turn isn't unique to Latin. In Old English one of the words for "neck" was hales. That word also derives from the same Indo-European root related "to turn" and in fact is also related to the word wheel. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website rustic - podictionary 601 Both rustic and rural came into English around the same time, in the early 1400s. The Oxford English Dictionary says that rustic came from Latin and rural came from French. But although rustic may have come straight from Latin, the OED does point out that there was a French word rustique around the same time. And though rural might have come from French, of course the French word would have been Latin before that. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website write - podictionary 600 English is unique among European languages with a basis in Indo-European in not using some derivative of the Latin word for write, scribere. That's of course where scribble comes from, but obviously not write. According to the Oxford English Dictionary English instead took its word for the setting down of thoughts into words on paper�or the computer screen�from a Germanic source writa or writan that meant "to score." By score the OED means "scratch" as you would do if you were carving yo ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website temperature - podictionary 599 If someone commits a violent act they might use a knife and the blade of that knife might be tempered. What this means is that the steel in the blade has been treated in a certain way that increases its hardness. Though it may seem pretty far removed, it is this form of temper that can lead us back to the roots of weather temperature and people with a bad temper. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website naughty - podictionary 598 According to the Oxford Dictionary of Phrase and Fable "naughty but nice" means something that's "essentially reprehensible" but also pleasurable. Urbandictionary appears to agree in their rude way. Here's a short non-naughty entry that proves the point: A way of describing something in way that shouldn't be good, and yet somehow is. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website intend - podictionary 597 The extensive and complex development of senses in Latin and Old French is reflected also in English. But the chronological appearance of the senses in English does not accord with their original development� As an attempt at chronological order would only end in chaos, a logical arrangement, according in the main with the development as gathered from all three languages, is here followed. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website issue - podictionary 596 when the Romans were tromping all over the classical world into Europe and North Africa they influenced the people who already lived in those places to speak Latin. But just like today where you can recognize people's accents and even different uses of words as marking them from different places�for example someone from Scotland might say "aye" where I'd say "yes"�back in Roman times people also spoke Latin with dialect differences. One example of that is that the word that gave us exit. ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website 24/7 - podictionary 595 Although today�s word may seem to be a number rather than a word, it�s an example of what Erin McKean means when she says that it doesn�t take the status of being in a dictionary to make something a real word, it�s love. If people love to say something, even if it�s not in the dictionary, that still makes it a word; a real word. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website video podcast - Charles is interviewed on CTV Charles is interviewed about his book on CTV by Leanne Cusack. This video is also available at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1ieta1GDFxE Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website catapult - podictionary 594 Back in the days of the Roman Empire there were subtleties about the various engines of war that we can�t appreciate today because they aren�t that important to us. Back then a catapult wasn�t a thing that lobbed big rocks at castles or fortresses; that was a ballista. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website holy - podictionary 593 The etymological sources aren�t completely sure, but they think that Old English speakers got holy from the same source as whole, as in �do you want half a cookie or a whole one.� The idea here was that something holy was so special that it couldn�t be broken, it needed to remain safe and protected. A competing theory that also can�t be proven is that holy is related to "healthy" and in that is thematically related to well-being and good omens. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website secular - podictionary 592 In Latin saeculum meant a generation or an age; that is, the length of time of a lifespan. From its earliest appearance in English almost 700 years ago it meant something pretty close to what we mean now. Why the difference? I can only speculate but it seems to me that a word that describes a length of time in terms of a human lifespan might easily be related to a sense of our mortality. In a context that compares mortality to spirituality, with heaven and an afterlife, a sense of secul ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website agnostic - podictionary 591 Agnostic was the brainchild of a guy named Thomas Henry Huxley in 1870. This Huxley guy is nicknamed �Darwin�s Bulldog� because he fought pretty ferociously to advance Charles Darwin�s ideas in the public debate. Huxley specifically said that he chose the word because he felt in such uncertainty, and that it contrasted so starkly with the certainty felt by the Gnostics of old. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website labor - podictionary 590 As a word labor was one of those that arrived with William the Conqueror and first pops up in the English written record in 1300. Of course before that it had been Latin laborem. It�s meaing at first in English appears to have mirrored the French and Latin forerunners, being �work,� �exertion� or �trouble.� The only source I see that tries to trace the word origin further back than that is Etymonline where it says that the word might originally have meant "tottering under a burden," and t ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website abracadabra - podictionary 589 I�d always assumed that abracadabra was a kind of fabricated word used by magicians, but it turns out its pedigree is at least 1500 years older than our use of it in English. The first known citation was in Latin and it appeared in a kind of medical poem as an instruction for curing the sick magically. But instead of chanting this magic word the secret was in wearing it around your neck. The theory is that you wrote out the whole word, then below that you wrote out the word missing the f ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website brainchild - podictionary 484 Who is the child, the person or the idea? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website puny - podictionary 483 One puny guy who stood up to a king, and won. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website ramble - podictionary 482 What is so interesting about "origin obscure"? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website pepper - podictionary 481 One of the longest traded commodities on the planet. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website fast - podictionary 480 Fast asleep or playing fast and loose, in either case you are stuck with it. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website answer - podictionary 479 Of swearing and answering a challenge Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website doppelganger - podictionary 478 Sir Walter Scott didn't believe in spooks and seems not to have been spooked when someone pulled a gun on him Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website lousy - podictionary 477 No flies on me Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website galaxy - podictionary 476 As basic as mother's milk. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website dismantle - podictionary 475 If I can dismantle an Ikea chair, can't I mantle it back together again? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website affinity - podictionary 474 Getting blood from a credit card, or not. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website boffin - podictionary 473 In which we discuss a silly theory that seems to be coming true. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website pee - podictionary 472 Stories of friends and childish urination. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website believe - podictionary 471 If you believe in your heart, then that's appropriate.  But back those beliefs up with fact. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website amnesty - podictionary 469 Forgive, don't forget. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website dirt - podictionary 468 It's a dirty job, but someone has to do it.  On second thought maybe not getting it done isn't all that bad. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website secure - podictionary 460 Hugh Latimer, secure in the knowledge that the future for him turned into the past for us. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website panacea - podictionary 459 A cure for all your ills (except coming back from the dead or being struck by lighting) Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website coin - podictionary 443 How writing is related to money. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website sad - podictionary 442 Cheer up and eat your supper. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website liberal - podictionary 441 Tallulah Bankhead and the origins of freedom. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website slipper - podictionary 440 How to keep your feet warm even when wearing a glass slipper. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Webster - podictionary 434 Spelling, grammar, vocabulary and other hostile acts. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website galvanized - podictionary 433 Shock yourself into action with some galvanizing misinformation. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website battery - podictionary 432 What an old Italian did with the family crystal. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website cell - podictionary 431 Why a cell phone is called a cell phone and what came before Gray's Anatomy. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website graffiti - podictionary 430 Think graffiti is a new form of art?  Scratch that idea. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website bacon - podictionary 429 How Mark Morton saved my bacon. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website hawk - podictionary 428 I don't know, but I'm feeling hawkish about these etymological links. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website havoc - podictionary 427 Shakespeare's dogs of war were actually humans. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website engine - podictionary 426 Why the industrial revolution seemed like a good idea at the time. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website loggerhead - podictionary 425 Of love, fighting, drinking and hot iron. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website xerox - podictionary 424 This episode might seem dry but at least I didn't copy it from anyone. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website comrade - podictionary 423 Camera and camaraderie are room mates. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website murder - podictionary 422 The murderer's Bible - it wasn't a secret. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website scrooge - podictionary 404 Let us all be generous Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website reindeer - podictionary 403 On Malory, Donner and Blitsen, dash away dash away dash away all. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website crowds - podictionary 402 hanging around crowded bookstores is not always a bad thing Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website chimney - podictionary 401 smoke gets in your eyes Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website shopping - podictionary 400 Christmas gifts found lying in a manger. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website insulin - podictionary 399 In which we get pissed off at those who can not see what they are standing on. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website blarney - podictionary 398 We don't really know if everything they say about this word is really blarney or not. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website vamoose - podictionary 397 Vamoose did not first appear in Confessions of an English Opium Eater. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website ransack - podictionary 396 Stealing what was found or finding what was stolen. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website formaldehyde - podictionary 395 Don't lose your head over the sting of etymology meeting entomology.The book I mentioned isBloodletting and Miraculous Cures by Vincent Lam Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary feedback episode # 10 It's been a while since a feedback episode.  Thanks for listening.  The 400th podictionary episode is coming up and the podictionary download statistics stand well above 1.8 million downloads.  Please tell a friend about podictionary. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website apron - podictionary 394 Cook with an apron, eat on a table cloth with a napkin and it will mean the world to you. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website mascara - podictionary 393 The burning secret to dark lashes. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website jet - podictionary 392 In which we throw around a lot of hot air. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website metal - podictionary 391 We mine the dictionaries and forge histories including unlinking metal and medal, which turns out to be half asinine. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website genial - podictionary 390 Of birth, marriage and death; some genial, some not.My Podcast Alley feed! {pca-1edf29c399bd3a9f6c53fc2c42d0b8db} Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website pioneer - podictionary 389 A reason to be proud of the guy who dug your ditch. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website bombast - podictionary 388 We trace the silky cord of a word's progress through meanings. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website poker - podictionary 387 I bet you brag about your poker winnings. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website salamander - podictionary 386 We singe our toes running on hot coals. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website arcade - podictionary 385 In which we bridge the meaning from Latin to American English. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website bless - podictionary 371 If you sneeze with a bleeding nose, it is the sneezer who should say "bless you." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website pattern - podictionary 370 Browning complains about Wordsworth and it becomes a pattern. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website whet - podictionary 369 Sharpen up your wits, your appetite and your ornithology. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website squaw - podictionary 365 This used to be a perfectly good word.  What happened? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary backstop episode This is a special edition of the podcast for word lovers and I'm calling it the backstop edition. The reason is that many podictionary listeners have requested that podictionary maintain back episodes available for download. But since there are hundreds of episodes, the file has gotten too large for the normal podictionary RSS feed.  So what I have done is to establish archive RSS feeds.  I've set up a number of archive feeds with 100 episodes each and I'll be keeping th ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website round - podictionary 363 Running round, squishing rotund and finding the nautical or French roots of round-robin. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website urine - podictionary 362 In which Hippocrates is vindicated and we answer that age old question as to whether there is an etymological justification for drinking urine. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website chaperone - podictionary 347 Protection from the storm.  Listen Now Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Muslim - podictionary 346 Visualize world peace.  I actually saw a tee shirt one time that said "visualize whirled peas."  Listen Now Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Monty Python - podictionary 345 Clothed or unclothed, they were not rotten.  Listen Now   Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website feedback # 9 - podictionary Good news and bad news.  The bad news is that my book is delayed until spring so Christmas shoppers will have to look elsewhere.  This is because it will be softcover, which is a late stage change of plan.  Good news is that it'll be less expensive when it finally does come out in time for such important events as father's day. More good news in my special guest.  Professor Anatoly Liberman is one of the worlds top notch etymologists for English and he has a book out him ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website omega - podictionary 344 The last word on omega.  Listen Now Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website nincompoop - podictionary 343 Joseph Addison was no nincompoop.  Listen Now Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website shovel - podictionary 339 Can you dig it? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website hamburger - podictionary 338 A geographical word first cited in a very long word. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website marble - podictionary 331 you get to keep all the marbles Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website otter - podictionary 330 a mischievous water weasel Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website ignoramus - podictionary 329 Something you don't know about or something you don't want to know about? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website slash - podictionary 328 Slash as internet English, a science fiction genre and slang. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website authorized - podictionary 327 What's the connection between an author and an auction? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website enigma - podictionary 318 The mystery of why this word connects with the years of the Second World War. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website person - podictionary 317 All the world's a stage and the persons in it merely masks. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website procrastinate - podictionary 316 Why put off for tomorrow what you can put off for next week? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website circumstance - podictionary 315 Sexy circumstances for a nun of long ago. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website turnpike - podictionary 313 Do you find it fishy why a highway might be called a pike? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website umbrella - podictionary 311 Take cover and don't get mad about it. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website froth - podictionary 302 Of courage and toothpaste Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website kid - podictionary 297 The play's the thing, kid. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website radical - podictionary 292 Many radicals are earthy, could this be why? Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website pelican - podictionary 291 An unusual, even unidentifiable bird reminding some of Jesus Christ. A wonderful bird is the pelican His bill will hold more that his belican. He can take in his beak Food enough for a week, But I'm dammed if I can see how the helican Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website hamper - podictionary 289 He must be hoisting his hanap at being in company with the Beatles. References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website America - podictionary 286 Happy 4th of July.  America (the place) not in the Oxford English Dictionary and what's more, it's named after an Italian. References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryBrewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fableetymonline.com Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website amber - podictionary 279 From the tops of the trees and the bottom of the seas. References Cited: The Oxford English Dictionary Wikipedia Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website cupboard - podictionary 278 Old mother Hubbard went to the front room display cabinet. References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryThe American Heritage Dictionary of the English LanguageWebster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website closet - podictionary 277 Let me tell you an embarrassing secret. References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryWikipediaetymonline.com Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website stuff - podictionary 276 Strut your stuff. References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website vodka - podictionary 275 Pure spring water for me please. References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryThe American Heritage Dictionary of the English LanguageWikipediaEncarta Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website font - podictionary 272 Do you really think she's your type?  What's your point? References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website stereotype - podictionary 271 Compare this etymology with clich�. References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryWikipedia Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website tip - podictionary 269 A small word with a great many meanings. References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website feedback # 5 - podictionary Contest winnersAdam Abrams was the grand prize winner.The two winners of iTunes gift certificates were Sam_. and David Dal Santo.Finally, Dana L�Wood won the word book. Check out The Word Nerds at www.thewordnerds.org www.dailysonic.com is a network that podictionary is joining.  The neat thing is their ability to splice podcast segments together in an order the listener chooses. Podictionary is also joining www.podcasternews.com and that's another network that lets listeners gang toge ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website urchin - podictionary 258 Little urchins sometimes have prickly personalities References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionaryurbandictionary.cometymonline.com Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website hybrid - podictionary 256 No longer an offence against nature. References Used:The Oxford English Dictionary American Journal of Philology 1884 Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website hubris - podictionary 255 There is good pride and bad pride. References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website magnum opus - podictionary 254 Sometimes we refer to the great achievement of someone's life as their �magnum opus.�  The source of this expression is classical Latin.  The Oxford English Dictionary tells me that there are frequent references to magnum opus by the Roman orator Cicero who was born just about 100 years before Christ.  But that was then and this is now.  This Latin phrase waited around almost two thousand years before popping up in English.  It literally means "great work" ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website feedback # 4 - podictionary �?� you can leave a voicemail at 860-967-3847 that's 860-word-tip�?� looking up podictionary in Skype will take you to the same voicemail box.�?� you can email or send audio feedback to feedback@podictionary.com�?� or you can leave feedback in the comments section of the blogpage at www.podictionary.com Thanks for supporting podictionary by listening, by telling other people and by voting for podictionary and leaving comments.  Click here to see how to vote or comme ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website proclivity - podictionary 249 We are predisposed to get more tone out of the language. References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryWebster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website pale - podictionary 240 How fighting with sticks became unacceptable. References Used:The Oxford English Dictionary American Heritage Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website feedback # 3 - podictionary Shownotes: Update on the listenership drive: In addition to the iPod nano & $40 gift certificates, the contest is sweetening the pot by adding a book called Six Words you Never Knew Had Something To Do With Pigs  signed by author Katherine Barber editor of the Canadian Oxford Dictionary  Update on supporting podictionary:Vote at podcast alley  Rate at podcasts.yahoo.com  No audio feedback this week but you can send some by dialing 860- WORD-TIP or look for podic ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website astonished - podictionary 239 If you start feeling a tingling sensation and your hair begins to stand on end, it might just be podictionary. References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary To get in touch with podictionary email feedback@podictionary.com, or dial 860- WORD-TIP or look for podictionary on Skype.  Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website focus - podictionary 238 To get in touch with podictionary email feedback@podictionary.com, or dial 860- WORD-TIP or look for podictionary on Skype.  For those who have a burning desire to understand geometry (or Latin) focus focus focus. References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website bedlam - podictionary 237 Just because he was crazy didn't mean he wasn't smart. To get in touch with podictionary email feedback@podictionary.com, or dial 860- WORD-TIP or look for podictionary on Skype. References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryThe Professor and the Madman Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website seminar - podictionary 234 In which we find that this is a word to grow on. You can now leave feedback on podictionary.  Please visit www.podictionary.com/feedback.htm References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryDictionary of Euphemisms and Other Doubletalk Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website punch - podictionary 233 A word that makes us punch drunk with theories on its origin.You can now leave feedback on podictionary.  Please visit www.podictionary.com/feedback.htmReferences Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryThe American Heritage Dictionary of the English Languageurbandictionary.com Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website satire - podictionary 232 Get a plateful of irony, sarcasm and satire. You can now leave feedback on podictionary.  Please visit www.podictionary.com/feedback.htm References Cited: The Oxford English Dictionary urbandictionary.com The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website horoscope - podictionary 231 Although we don't know the future of the word "horoscope" at least we know some of its past. You can now leave feedback on podictionary.  Please visit www.podictionary.com/feedback.htm References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website patriotism - podictionary 228 Is patriotism the last refuge of a scoundrel, or the first?References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryThe World in a Phraseurbandictionary.com Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website puppet - podictionary 227 Why beautiful girls and dogs both share a similar etymology.References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryMerriam Webster book of Word Histories Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website naked - podictionary 226 Today's word is from Charles Hodgson's forthcoming book called Carnal Knowledge: A Navel Gazer's Dictionary of Anatomy, Etymology, and Trivia.More info at www.navelgazersdictionary.com Please ask your local bookstore to bring it in.  The publisher is St. Martin's PressISBN 0312352751 Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website window - podictionary 224 Charles blows on for some length at the source of the word window, at competing terms for this hole in the wall and at a few random related ideas. References Cited: The Oxford English Dictionary Wikipedia Xrefer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations Oxford etymologist blog Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website feedback #1 - podictionary The first of a series of feedback episodes in which I read listener comments and corrections and play audio-feedback (if I get any).  This week feedback on: ellipsegossamerciaomundane To leave your own feedback for possible use in future feedback episodes please go to www.podictionary.com and look for the audio blog page.  There you can find the word-episode you'd like to comment on and use the comment form.  Thanks for listening. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website icicle - podictionary 214 In which we get take the ice out of icicle and figure out why the guy who got the rats out of Hamlin was "pied." References Cited: The Oxford English Dictionary Xrefer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website ferret - podictionary 213 We ferret out the Latin roots of the name for this popular chicken thief. References Cited: The Oxford English Dictionary Xrefer Bloomsbury Dictionary of Contemporary Slang Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website pickle -podictionary 212 Thomas Malory was in a pickle when he brought this word to English. William Caxton helped with the bringing but didn't help Malory, though he did help himself. Walter Oakeshott braved dusty archives to make this clear to us, though he didn't know he was doing it at first. References Cited: The Oxford English Dictionary Wikipedia Personal pages of Jonathan Evans, University of Georgia Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website match - podictionary 211 Why is a match called a match and why our safety matches are much, much, much safer than matchstick 1.0. References Cited: The Oxford English Dictionary BBC Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website vegetarian - podictionary 205 What's in a name. From cows and horses and rams to Pythagoras and objections to slavery. References Cited: The Oxford English Dictionary urbandictionary.com Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website disaster - podictionary 195 How astrology and horoscopes relate to disaster and flowers. Also some confusion between the flowers and Lady Nancy Astor who chatted with Winston Churchill about poison.References Cited:TheOxford English DictionaryWaldorf Astoria Hotel websiteJohn Singer Sargent Virtual GalleryWinstonchurchill.org Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website cat - podictionary 174 Cats and freedom. References Cited: The Oxford English Dictionary Xrefer The Devil's Dictionary Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable Wicked Words Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website incumbent - podictionary 173 Do politicians lie? References Cited: The Oxford English Dictionary Cupboard Love Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website angel - podictionary 172 In which we tie together Christianity, slaves and etymology. References Cited: The Oxford English Dictionary Xrefer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website pharmacist - podictionary 171 In which we clean out the bad citations to make room for the healthy ones. References Cited: The Oxford English Dictionary The Last Days of Pompeii by Sir Edward Bulwer-Lytton Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website snow - podictionary 170 While I wait for more snow to ski on, I talk about the words for snow. References Cited: The Oxford English Dictionary Language, Thought, and Reality: Selected Writings by Benjamin Lee Whorf Inuktitut living dictionary The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website street - podictionary 169 There are layers of meanings to the word street. References Cited: The Oxford English Dictionary The Canadian Oxford Dictionary urbandictionary.com Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website triskaidekaphobia - podictionary 163 An episode of fear. References Cited: The Oxford English Dictionary Webster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged The New Oxford American Dictionary World Wide Words Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website villain - podictionary 156 Imagine a big house surrounded by villains. References Cited: The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Indian - podictionary 155 Named after a river half a world away. References Cited: The Oxford English Dictionary Xrefer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website hangover - podictionary 154 Has your head been throbbing lately? References Cited: The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website piping-hot - podictionary 153 Fresh food is music to my ears (sexy too). References Cited: The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website present - podictionary 147 Why the ghost of Christmas present is related to those packages under the tree. References Cited: The Oxford English Dictionary href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/redirect?link_code=ur2&tag=podictthepodc-20&camp=1789&creative=9325&path=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.amazon.com%2Fgp%2Fproduct%2F0198662750%2Fqid%3D1135187193%2Fsr%3D1-1%2Fref%3Dsr_1_1%3Fs%3Dbooks%2526v%3Dglance%2526n%3D283155">The Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations Xrefer Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable The American Heritag ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website slave - podictionary 143 Please visit iabolish.com or antislavery.org if only to inform yourself.References Cited:TheOxford English DictionaryBrewer's Dictionary of Phrase and FableThe American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website fond - podictionary 142 Most of the people I am fond of are not all that foolish.References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryWord Originsetymonline.org Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website harlot - podictionary 138 Was William the Conqueror's mom a tart?References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website trade - podictionary 137 Where the track of truck and trade is trod.References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryThe Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website trade - podictionary 137 Where the track of truck and trade is trod.References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryThe Oxford Dictionary of Quotations Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website fiance - podictionary 136 I think the promise of marriage is more important than the promise to marry.References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionaryurbandictionary.com Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website mirror - podictionary 135 Why would a newspaper call itself the Daily Mirror?References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryWebster's Third New International Dictionary, UnabridgedXreferThe American Heritage Dictionary of the English LanguageChambers 21st Century DictionaryCollins English Dictionaryetymonline.orgThe New Oxford American Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website weather - podictionary 134 Is weather good or bad?References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryBrewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website show - podictionary 133 first to see and then to be seenReferences Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryBrewer's Dictionary of Phrase and FableXreferWikipediaOxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website log-in - podictionary 132 I am not sure if it was David Wilton who coined the term CANOE, meaning "Conspiracy to Attribute Nautical Origins to Everything", but the etymologies herein are legit.References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryBrewer's Dictionary of Phrase and FableXrefer Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website board - podictionary 131 All aboard for some room and board.References Used:The Oxford English DictionaryXreferThe Devil's Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website arrive - podictionary 130 England is on an island so it makes sense that this traveling word has to do with ships and ocean voyages.References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website amateur - podictionary 129 If love is not enough, then how can just saying so be enough?References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryThe Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website album - podictionary 128 We start with a clean page for the word "album."References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionaryetymonline.org Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website plumbing - podictionary 127 A heavy word today, but straight and malleable.References Used:The Oxford English DictionaryThe Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website pomegranate - podictionary 126 No wonder eating a pomegranate is such a gory business.References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryCupboard Love Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website work - podictionary 125 A few of quotes related to work.Calvin Coolidge: When a great many people are unable to find work, unemployment results.Northcote C. Parkinson: Work expands so as to fill the time available for its completion.and let�s compare Carrie Fisher: Here's how men think. Sex, work�and those are reversible, depending on age�sex, work, food, sports and lastly, begrudgingly, relationships. And here's how women think. Relationships, relationships, relationships, work, sex, shopping, weight, food.with ... Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website average - podictionary 124 not your average wordReferences Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryWebster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website athlete - podictionary 123 From a Latin book on health we get the prize of athletics.References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryThe Oxford Companion to the Body Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website draconian - podictionary 122 Aren�t harsh laws harsh even if you don�t know what they are?References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website sky - podictionary 121 Can you see the sky on a cloudy day?References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website politics - podictionary 120 Are we political animals?References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryThe Devil's DictionaryThe Oxford Dictionary of Modern Quotations Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website obscure - podictionary 119 the word obscure covers more than you might thinkReferences Cited:The Oxford English Dictionaryetymonline.orgThe American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website swasika - podictionary 118 podictionary tries to put some good back in "swastika"References Used:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website slang - podictionary 117 If slang was originally a slang word, then what did people call slang before that?References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryA New Dictionary of the Canting Crewurbandictionary.com Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website idiot - podictionary 116 From average Joe to most powerful man on earth, an idiot is a private citizen.References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionaryurbandictionary.comXreferThe Devil's DictionaryWicked Words Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website tobacco - podictionary 115 The name of a dying industry with $100 billion plus in revenue and growth rates well above 10%.References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionaryetymonline.orgThe Oxford Dictionary of English (2nd edition revised) (which is, believe it or not, a separate and different reference from the OED above)The Oxford Companion to Shakespeare Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website decimate - podictionary 114 Decimate now means more damage but perhaps less killing.References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryThe New Oxford American DictionaryAmerican Heritage Book of English Usage Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website revolution - podictionary 113 Of astronomers, revolutionaries, high school teachers and Swedish cars.References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website orient - podictionary 112 Why is it that when I am disoriented I am always moving west?References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website orient - podictionary 112 Why is it that when I am disoriented I am always moving west?References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website commute - podictionary 111 Are you sitting in traffic or are you changing places?References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website shave - podictionary 110 Some say the word shave is related to the word itchy, which is what a man's face feels like a day or two after he stops shaving.References Used:The Oxford English DictionaryXreferBrewer's Dictionary of Phrase and FableWebster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website pant - podictionary 109 this word is haunted by ghostsReferences Used:The Oxford English DictionaryThe Oxford Dictionary of Proverbs The Cambridge History of English and American Literature Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website baby - podictionary 108 podictionary announces the Blegburn Dickshonary Online (and calls for help).References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryThe Devil's DictionaryBlegburn DickshonaryCottontown Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website hors d'oeuvre - podictionary 107 A tasty word from French, but not from tasty French food.References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryLe Petit Robert Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website magazine - podictionary 106 English Gentlemen gave us a collection.References Mentioned:The Devil's Dictionaryurbandictionary.comThe Oxford English DictionaryXreferBrewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website magazine - podictionary 106 English Gentlemen gave us a collection.References Mentioned:The Devil's Dictionaryurbandictionary.comThe Oxford English DictionaryXreferBrewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website bargain - podictionary 105 In which we get lost in an etymological fog.References Cited:Oxford English DictionaryAmerican Heritage Dictionaryetymonline.orgWikipedia Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website impact - podictionary 104 The effect of this episode is to offend English prescriptionists.References Cited:Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website impact - podictionary 104 The effect of this episode is to offend English prescriptionists.References Cited:Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website curfew - podictionary 103 podictionary illuminates the word "curfew."References Cited:Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website curfew - podictionary 103 podictionary illuminates the word "curfew."References Cited:Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website ordeal - podictionary 102 In which we avoid offending God (with good reason).References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website ordeal - podictionary 102 In which we avoid offending God (with good reason).References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website lesbian - podictionary 101 Was she or Wasn�t she? I guess we�ll never know.References used:The Oxford English DictionaryXreferMerriam WebsterAmerican Heritage DictionaryThe Divine Sappho site Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website lesbian - podictionary 101 Was she or Wasn�t she? I guess we�ll never know.References used:The Oxford English DictionaryXreferMerriam WebsterAmerican Heritage DictionaryThe Divine Sappho site Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website macaroni - podictionary 100 podictionary cooks up one on why Yankee Doodle would have stuck a feather in his hat.References Cited:Cupboard LoveThe Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website macaroni - podictionary 100 podictionary cooks up one on why Yankee Doodle would have stuck a feather in his hat.References Cited:Cupboard LoveThe Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website tweed - podictionary 99 In which podictionary speeds through the smokescreen and irons out the faults in "tweed."References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary American Heritage DictionaryBloomsbury Dictionary of Contemporary Slang Xreferurbandictionary.com Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website tweed - podictionary 99 In which podictionary speeds through the smokescreen and irons out the faults in "tweed."References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary American Heritage DictionaryBloomsbury Dictionary of Contemporary Slang Xreferurbandictionary.com Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website ostracize - podictionary 98 In which podictionary learns how democracy has always been a messy process.References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryAmerican Heritage DictionaryUrbandictionary.com Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website walrus - podictionary 97 A cold dip in northern seas brings a ride on a "walrus." References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary American Heritage Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website hobbit - podictionary 96 We illuminate several holes in searching for "hobbit." References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryBrewers Dictionary of Modern Phrase and Fable Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Greek - podictionary 95 Is Hellenic the hardest language?References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website petard - podictionary 94 We get to the bottom of "petard."References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryXreferAmerican Heritage Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website gap - podictionary 93 We have to go back to the beginning of time to search for the source of "gap." References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website gap - podictionary 93 We have to go back to the beginning of time to search for the source of "gap." References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Brewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website road - podictionary 92 In which podictionary tries to find out how far back the "road" winds.References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary The Devil's Dictionary American Heritage Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website road - podictionary 92 In which podictionary tries to find out how far back the "road" winds.References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary The Devil's Dictionary American Heritage Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website bus - podictionary 91 podictionary scrounges up the fare for an "omnibus" ride.References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website bus - podictionary 91 podictionary scrounges up the fare for an "omnibus" ride.References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website crony - podictionary 90 In which with Samuel Pepys loses and old friend. References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary American Heritage DictionaryChambers 21st Century DictionaryWebster's Third New International Dictionary, UnabridgedCollins English DictionaryThe Penguin English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website crony - podictionary 90 In which with Samuel Pepys loses and old friend. References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary American Heritage DictionaryChambers 21st Century DictionaryWebster's Third New International Dictionary, UnabridgedCollins English DictionaryThe Penguin English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website appetite - podictionary 89 In which podictionary consults The Bible to see if "appetite" is simply hunger, or something more delicious. References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary The Devil's Dictionary American Heritage Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website orchard - podictionary 88 In which I try to grow the tree of knowledge and bemoan being stood up for a date.References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryRichard Lederer (A Way With Words) Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website mumbo-jumbo - podictionary 87 We unmask mumbo-jumbo�s violent tendencies.Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryBrewers Dictionary of Phrase and Fable Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Wednesday - podictionary 86 We learn why "Wednesday" is the craziest day of the week as well as new meanings for �thank god it�s Friday.�References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website camera - podictionary 85 In which "camera" comes out of the closet.References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website moll - podictionary 84 A minor scuffle over �gun moll.� No shots are fired.References Cited:The Oxford English DictionaryAmerican Heritage DictionaryBlegburn Dickshonary�Aw'm gooin' to meet mi Moll to-neet� is a varra common sayin' wi' factory lads: some o' th' better soort say �woman� i' th' place o' Moll, but nooan so mony. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website Announcement + bonus word"superstitious" SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENT PODICTIONARY WEEKLY LAUNCHED.Bonus weekend word "superstitious" leaves us wondering.References Cited:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website scapegoat - podictionary 82 We find out who to blame for �scapegoat.�References mentioned:The Oxford English Dictionary Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website sarcophagus - podictionary 81 We open the crypt on a word related to eating, drinking and death.References mentioned:The Oxford English DictionaryBrewer�??s Dictionary of Phrase and FableWebster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website sarcophagus - podictionary 81 We open the crypt on a word related to eating, drinking and death.References mentioned:The Oxford English DictionaryBrewer�s Dictionary of Phrase and FableWebster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website coffee - podictionary 80 Today podictionary wakes up to a fresh pot of "coffee" but is it Arabic or African.References mentioned:The Oxford English DictionaryBrewer�s Dictionary of Phrase and FableWebster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website celebrate - podictionary 79 "Celebrate" is a good example of how long it takes to re-write a big dictionary.References mentioned:Oxford English DictionaryWebster's Third New International Dictionary, Unabridged Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website gasoline - podictionary 78 Next time you're stuck in traffic, think that the word "gasoline" comes out of chaos. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website forfeit - podictionary 77 It's a fact that the word "forfeit" (to give up something) is related to "forest" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website daisy - podictionary 72 A "daisy" is a little looker. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website curry - podictionary 71 We doff our hat to Adam Curry and explain something about sucking up. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website grotesque - podictionary 69 In which the word "grotesque" comes out of its cave. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary 68 antique "antique" is found to be related to another word that wouldn't seem at first to have come from the same source. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary 67 gossip In which we learn that people who are "gossips" aren't just talking about you behind your back, they're looking out for you like family. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary 54 regurgitate We bring up the word "regurgitate." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary 53 dice In which we get rolling and the word "dice" is given. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary 52 philately Stamp collecting and tax freedom as viewed through the word "philately." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary 45 memory In which we recall something of the word "memory." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary 44 museum In which we peek into some old rooms in "museum." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary 43 geezer We put on a new face with the word "geezer." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary 42 akimbo We get bent out of shape over "akimbo." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary 14 potato in which the word "potato" is sliced thin, fried and salted and served up fresh Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary 13 oxymoron In which we discover that oxymoron is itself an oxymoron. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary 12 dumb Get smart about a word that means mute and stupid. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary 11 cancer "Cancer," both a killer and a crab. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary 10 tyranny Of kings and dinosaurs and Chaucer, today�s word is �tyranny.� Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary 9 daughter "Daughter" is very old word with an unexpected job. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary 8 malicious Today we play around with "malicious" and learn about an old etiquette guide. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary 7 sound podictionary sounds off about the word "sound" Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary 6 lake There are more meanings to the word "lake" than you thought. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary 5 barbeque We are getting ready for summer and warming up the word "barbeque." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary 4 honest Charles "makes an honest woman" of her, "honest injun." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary 2 psychiatrist Charles takes a minute or two to discuss the history of the words psychiatry and psychology. Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website podictionary 1 chauffeur Spend a minute or two listening to Charles Hodgson talk about the word "chauffeur." Listen | Listen in your iPhone | Download | View full cache | Visit Website