Zeus one day, having nothing better to do, released two eagles from the easternmost and westernmost edges of the world. Flying at the same speed, they met over Delphi, where […]
Jeff Aronson’s Words
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Adam’s apple
The Hebrew name of the first man, Adam (אדם), was also used to mean “man” itself, although the more usual word is “ish” (איש). The origin of the name is unknown, […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Adam’s throat-bowl
Of the dozen early medical words I found in the Old English dictionary called the Epinal glossary, five were anatomical: átr (atter, gall, or bitterness; Latin Bile); bledrae (bladder; Latin […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Gargantuan gargoyles
Although I found only one onomatopoeic word (iesca, a sob, hiccup, or belch), among early medical words in the Old English dictionary called the Epinal glossary, another, throtbolla (throat-boll, the […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Medical onomatopoeia
Seeking early medical words in the Old English dictionary known as the Epinal glossary, I was not surprised to find that one of the dozen examples I unearthed was onomatopoeic: […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . The first medical word
In an earlier blog I noted the impossibility of knowing which words came first, language having evolved thousands of years before written records, although claims have been made for the […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Ars magna
In 1545 Girolamo Cardano, an Italian physician, mathematician, and philosopher, published a book, Ars magna, or the Rules of Algebra (picture), which included the solutions to cubic and quartic equations, […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Backronyms
A backronym is not an acronym written backwards but one that is formed retrospectively. The Oxford English Dictionary (OED) gives two definitions: 1. An acronym formed from a phrase whose […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I use a word . . . Get shorty
Abbreviation of a word or phrase to a letter or two is the most extreme form of breakage that it can undergo. The process has variants: initialisms, contractions, and acronyms. […]
Jeffrey Aronson: When I Use a Word … Backslang
Back-formation , forming words by shortening other words, should not be confused with backslang, the formation of words, not by breaking them up, but simply by reversing them. A yob […]