Word of the Week

Word history and etymology

Word of the Week – Moon
We talk a lot at Word of the Week about words that are shockingly new or have interesting roots. Well, moon is neither of those things. 😉 But it's still a fascinating word to study, because of its ancient, ANCIENT history. It's no great surprise that the biggest...
Word of the Week – Resurrect
Did you know that resurrect didn't exist as a word until the 1770s?! I know, go ahead. Shake your head and said, "Nuh uh!" I know I did. But it's true! Resurrect is what etymologists refer to as a "back-formation." Which is to say, we've had the noun, resurrection, in...
Word of the Week – Palm
Since yesterday was Palm Sunday, I thought it would be fun to look at the etymology of the word palm. Not shockingly, it's been in English a long time--since the 1300s. And it comes from a root that means "flat." So in reference to the palm of the hand, it's...
Word of the Week – Peruse
Did you know that peruse is its own opposite? In the late 1400s, the word peruse was created to mean "to go through something with extreme detail or careful scrutiny." It comes from per- (completely) combined with use. By the 1530s, it was applied specifically to...

Have you ever wondered when certain words started to be used in certain ways? Or how they even came about? If they’re related to other, similar-sounding words?

I wonder these things all the time. And so, for years I’ve been gathering interesting words together, looking at the etymology, and posting them in fun, bite-sized posts called Word of the Week. Here you’ll find everything from which definition of a word pre-dates another, to how certain holiday words came about, to what the original meaning was of something we use a lot today but in a very different way. And of course, the surprising words that we think are new but in fact are pretty ancient, like “wow”!