August | 2025 | Wordfoolery
4 posts published by wordfoolery during August 2025| Wordfoolery
Hello, It’s late August now and something is in the air – the back to school vibes. Dreaded by students and teachers alike and a busy time for them, as well as for parents buying supplies. Some schools (for teens) have already started back in my area but it will be another couple of weeks […]| Wordfoolery
Hello, There is a small black and white cat who poses an insidious threat to my garden’s wild birds. She likes to sit underneath the spreading, and concealing, branches of the low-growing Japanese maple tree and wait for an unsuspecting bird to visit the birdbath. Despite liking cats this seems unfair on the unsuspecting birds […]| Wordfoolery
Hello, If anything is in short supply, it’s important to eke it out until you can replenish supplies. This usually happens in my house on a Wednesday when my offspring stare into the fridge, …| Wordfoolery
Hello, The word scavenger today means somebody who collects things discarded by others – perhaps through a spot of skip-diving, car-booting, or literally in the rubbish bins. It is also used of animals who feed on decaying organic matter. That animal sense was added in the late 1500s. A human scavenger in the past, however, […]| Wordfoolery
Hello, This week’s word is ubiquity, with thanks to the teen I passed on my walk last week who claimed to her friend that somebody was ubiquitous. She reminded me how much I like this word. T…| Wordfoolery
Hello, I love finding a word whose meaning has changed dramatically over its lifetime. Some even achieve the total opposite of their original meaning. Penthouse doesn’t quite fall into that category, but it’s close. The word entered English as pentis around 1300 to describe a shed or sloping roof which jutted out from the main […]| Wordfoolery
Hello, I’m enjoying Lucy Worsley’s excellent “Lady Swindlers” podcast about female Victorian criminals from the BBC at the moment and it got me wondering about the word itse…| Wordfoolery
Hello, I have a fondness for the letter Z, as I’ve mentioned here before. The letter X isn’t as neglected, but it’s not far off, which got me thinking about perplexed. It doesn’t have an obvious word root from its spelling or pronunciation, so where did it come from? It turns out that tracing the […]| Wordfoolery
Hello, Possibly the worst accusation to somebody trying to find the origins of words is that they’re making a flimsy argument but today that’s exactly what I’m doing and I’m walking in big footsteps along the way. I’m continuing my reading of Samuel Johnson’s 1755 dictionary and I couldn’t help nodding in recognition when I […]| Wordfoolery
Hello, I love when I discover the etymology of a word and then have an “aha moment” as it becomes ridiculously clear. Disorientation is one of those ones and I only worked it out this w…| Wordfoolery
Hello, Having recently dipped into the Portuguese word roots of marmalade with help from Paddington Bear, I thought it might be time to explore embarrassment thanks to Susie Dent’s book ̶…| Wordfoolery
Hello, The family and I were enjoying “Paddington in Peru” last night when Mr Wordfoolery gave me a lead on the Portuguese history of marmalade. Naturally, as a marmalade fan I had to d…| Wordfoolery
Looking for my Media Kit? Try here. “Words Christmas Gave Us” (2024) unwraps the stories behind the season, via festive words from advent to yule and grinch to scurryfunge. This book, the third in …| Wordfoolery
