Word of the Week

First of all, my apologies to anyone who missed my Thoughtful Thursday last week--I was taking a sick day. Just a cold, which I'm happy to say didn't get as bad for me as it did for my hubby. Not that I'm happy it involved a fever for the hubby--you know what I mean....

Patent diagram of the first escalator ("revolving stairs") - 1859 This one got me. I admit it. I looked it up during edits on a WhiteFire book because I wasn't sure it was quite early enough in the sense used. And what do I find? A surprise! Escalate is new. Darn new....

A Roman Calendar When I'm writing or editing historicals, much of my word nit-picking relies on gut and ear. If something feels too new or sounds too new (as in, I don't remember reading it in works of the period), I look it up. Which is how I came to look up date...

The Duchess of Chevreuse as Diana the Huntressby Claude Deruet, 17th century We see a lot of historical heroines described as feisty--and why not? It's a great word, right? It means "spirited," right? Wrong. Though I just learned this recently, and now I'm wondering...

The Blizzard by Cornelius Krieghoff, 1860 Given the awful winter weather striking so much of the country this year, this seemed like an appropriate word for the day. =) Though one I can't take credit for coming up with--one of my fellow Colonial Writers, the...

First of all, I did do the drawing last week for the winner of the digital of one of the Ellie Sweet books, and the lucky duck was Kirstin Whitener! Congrats, Kirstin! I know you'll love them!! This week I'll be starting a giveaway for a signed paperback of The...

Last night my poor little Rowyn had a toenail come off (ouch!), and his papa said that that surely deserved as much consideration as losing a tooth. So Rowyn got to pick dinner. Hence how the White family ended up eating waffles, macaroni and cheese, and grapes, LOL....

I called Xoe chum last week, and she gave me such a look! LOL--she only knew the word as "fish food," apparently. (Thanks, Spongebob. Really.) I had to tell her that it meant "friend" too. And then, of course, had to look it up to see where these two very-different...

This classifies as another word that I knew was new, but didn't know was that new. Jitters entered English round about 1925--and it's not entirely clear where it came from. The best guess is that it's a variation of chitter, which had been a dialectical word for...

Nearly forgot it was Monday! LOL But lucky for you, I remembered. 😉 And so, I'm hear to talk about acute. This will be a quick one, but I found it kinda interesting primarily because of my own weird thought-processes. See, when I was learning about angles back in...

Last week in the course of our homeschool day, somehow or another we got talking about what our different fingers are called, and my clever little Xoe asked me why the pointer finger is also called the index finger. Closeup from Michelangelo's Creation of Adam Insert...

I'm back! All settled in (mostly) at the new house, with internet up and running--if you heard the "Hallelujah Chorus" ringing through the air last night, that was just me when my angel of a husband got it all set up. 😉 My search for a word of the week started with...

One of my historical writer friends asked about canteens a little while ago (namely, what they would have called them before they were canteens), which inspired me to look up the word. Canteen is from the French cantine, which means "sutler's shop." Which I had to...

Leave it to Roseanna to browse through the dictionary for fun on the weekend. 😉 Sunday as I was beginning to think about the Word of the Week, I popped over to www.etymonline.com and accidentally bumped the O section. Then thought, "Sure, go with it" and browsed...

I looked this up the other day just for the fun of it ... and because I had never paused to think why PIs used to be called gumshoes. But according to etymology.com: "plainclothes detective," 1906, from the rubber-soled shoes they wore (which were so called from...

It's the first day of school in our house, and the kids are rather excited. (Don't worry, it'll fade, LOL.) Their desks are organized (that won't last either...), they made their "1st Day of..." signs last night for pictures this morning, picked out their outfits (no...

Allegory of Justice by Gaetano Gandolfi "You'll get your just deserts!" Okay, confession. Because that phrase pronounces the final word as one pronounced the word for the delightful confections that make life worth living, I never once realized it's spelled with one...

Sir Sumbras at the Ford by JE Millais, 1857 Hello, m'lovelies! I'm back from the beach and back to business. =) And while I was gone, a friend sent me a link to some awesome word etymologies, so I thought I'd share one with you today. So. We all know the word "wend,"...

I love these words with a long history. =) To mix things up today, I'm going to present this one as a list. Wanna take a guess as to which one I was looking up for the end of my spy story? LOL Primary use (you know, the part of your face) - Old English Used of any...

Gänsefütterung by Alexander Koester, 1890 On the road last week, silly conversation led us to the word gander. And I started to wonder whether the two meanings I knew of--a male goose and to look around--were from the same root, or if it were one of those cases where...

I think we all know what a scandal is, and it's been in the English language pretty much forever. But there's a subtly to it I had never picked up on, and which one of our friends was talking about this weekend. When one goes back to the original Greek skandalizein,...

Agnes Melanie Dickson as a debutante, 1890 Anyone who reads historicals, even 20th century historicals...or watches TV...knows what a debutante is. But as I started writing Colonial-set books, I was a bit surprised to learn the word wasn't around in the 1700s. And a...

Another one I looked up in the course of writing. =) I knew that charades was a pretty old game, but I was interested in the metaphorical sense. And learned some fun things. Charade entered the English language round about 1776, obviously from French. The interesting...

Virus is another word that really surprised me. I guess because I know that viruses are so itsy-bitsy they require a high-powered microscope to see them...I just assumed they were a modern realization. And hence a modern word. Um, no. Virus has been around since the...

Peasants Brawling by Abraham Diepraam(A ragtag collection, to be sure) 😉 I had the pleasure of going over edits on Whispers from the Shadows last week, and my editor and I got to laugh about some of the not-in-use-yet words that slipped through. =) A few were...

Just for the record, I really hated to post something new today and push my lovely book trailer down the page. 😉 But alas, it is Monday, so time to educate! Today we're delving into the world of science. Lavoisier, considered the father of modern chemistry Though I...

Young Lady Seated at the Virginals by Johannes Vermeer, 1670 I was looking up back seat and saw these entries. And given that they came up in the search backwards (entry 2 before entry 1), I had a moment when I thought seat as in a place of government--like a county...

Scolding by Jose Ferras de Almeida I have children. Therefore I have uttered the phrase (a time or two--ahem) "Don't talk back." Or perhaps occasionally, "No back-talk." But when I had a character using the same, I ran into a problem. Back-talk, meaning "an...

A Wet Sunday Morning  by Edmund Blair Leighton, 1896 Wow, it feels like forever since I've done one of these! LOL. Ah, the holidays. =) But the Twelve Days and Epiphany are over, my tree is down, and it's back to the grindstone completely this week. One of the...