Here on the blog, we examine a lot of word histories and etymologies. But have you ever paused to wonder about the letters that make them up? One reader asked me to look into the history of the alphabet itself...which is quite a thing! Of course, I figured the place to start was actually with the...

Radical. Generally, when we hear this word today, it's being used to describe political or other views and positions. It means, in that sense, "extreme." And because it's used like that so often, we tend to think of it that way still when we hear phrases like "radical surgery" or "a radical...

Fire. This one ranks as a word used often and well known. So why, you wonder, would I look into the etymology and history? Largely because there are so many interesting ways to use it, both as a noun, and a verb, that have cropped up over the years! I thought today we'd just take a look at a list...

During our Greek time a little while ago, my daughter and I translated a passage in Matthew that involved the word "tree." Or, as it would sound in Greek, dendron. Of course, as we're reading these words out loud, one of our primary interests--being word nerds as we are--is which words are clearly...

Have you ever wondered about the meaning of tongue-in-cheek ... and perhaps where this bizarre phrase came from? Well, it dates from 1856 in that hyphenated version, taken from the less-succinct phrase "to speak with one's tongue in one's cheek," which comes from 1758, meaning "to speak...