By James Currie and Dr. Karen Wieland Whatever to Wear? If you’ve ever read any of Shakespeare’s plays, or even better – seen – a production of a Shakespeare play, you’ve probably heard about – or seen – a doublet. In the Renaissance, doublets were standard fashion of men – a short jacket, often […]
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Dust, Fast, See, Sanction – More Contronyms
by James Currie and Dr. Karen Wieland Welcome back! In this post, we want to finish up with the contronyms, and with that, our little series on word meanings. Recap about Janus In the last post, we (re)introduced you to the Roman god Janus, the god of transitions, beginnings and endings. And the idea of […]
Word Meaning Changes Over Time – I am My Own Opposite!
by Dr. Karen Wieland and James Currie And finally, we’ve arrived at the last of our 5 Word Meaning Change topics. And it’s such an amusing one, in a head scratching kind of way, we’re going to break it into two posts. Almighty Janus! As a winding, sideways introduction to the topic, let’s first […]
Secret Agent
Here is a silly poem that I composed together with one of my elementary-grade students, Leo, using English words derived from the Latin word mittere (to send). Working from a limited list of words forces creativity. We used a Seussical rhyme scheme. SECRET AGENT by Dr. K and Leo I’m on a secret mission; I’ve […]
Docendo Discimus – By Teaching, We Learn
By Dr. Karen Wieland and James Currie More than HALF! Did you know that 29% of the words in the English language are derived directly from Latin words? Another 29% are derived from Old French, and the vast majority of these words also can be traced back to Latin. That means that nearly 58% of […]
Word Meaning Changes Over Time – From Better to Worse
By Dr. Karen Wieland and James Currie And as promised, for better and for worse. In our last word meaning post, we talked about amelioration, when a word’s meaning changes over time from negative to positive. Now, let’s talk a little about the exact opposite – pejoration, when a word’s meaning goes in the […]