yeppers
The English language is forever changing. New words appear; old ones fall out of use or change their meanings. World Wide Words tries to record at least some part of this shifting wordscape by featuring new words, word histories, the background to words in the news, and the curiosities of native English speech.
This site is the archive of pieces that have appeared in the free newsletter. Weekly issues include much more than appears here, including discussion by readers, serendipitous encounters with unfamiliar language, and tongue-in-cheek tut-tuttings at errors perpetrated by sloppy writers.
Some statistics: the newsletter currently goes out to 36,000 subscribers by email, plus more through RSS, Twitter and Facebook. The site contains more than 2,700 pages, accumulated over 17 years, and on average reaches 77,000 unique visitors a week, who between them make 550,000 page views.
Eximious One of the first pieces that I wrote for World Wide Words, nearly 20 years ago, was on inkhorn terms. They are bookish words of the sixteenth century, for the most part generated from classical Latin ...
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Brown as a berry This has long puzzled people and readers have asked me about it in the past. The simple truth is that nobody really knows, though there are theories. The first thing to say about the expression is that ...
[Read the whole piece] Randomly chosen
Spiv Spiv is a British English colloquial term whose meaning and cultural implications may be obscure to anyone outside the country. A spiv was typically a flashily dressed man (velvet collars and lurid kipper ties) who ...
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The next website update
The next update to this site is due on 2 November. You should then be able to read about the new word manicule for an ancient symbol and the story behind the sexist insult old besom. If you had subscribed to my newsletter, you would already have seen them, and more besides.
Recently added pages
This site is the archive of pieces that have appeared in the free newsletter. Weekly issues include much more than appears here, including discussion by readers, serendipitous encounters with unfamiliar language, and tongue-in-cheek tut-tuttings at errors perpetrated by sloppy writers.
Some statistics: the newsletter currently goes out to 36,000 subscribers by email, plus more through RSS, Twitter and Facebook. The site contains more than 2,700 pages, accumulated over 17 years, and on average reaches 77,000 unique visitors a week, who between them make 550,000 page views.
Eximious One of the first pieces that I wrote for World Wide Words, nearly 20 years ago, was on inkhorn terms. They are bookish words of the sixteenth century, for the most part generated from classical Latin ...
[Read the whole piece]
Brown as a berry This has long puzzled people and readers have asked me about it in the past. The simple truth is that nobody really knows, though there are theories. The first thing to say about the expression is that ...
[Read the whole piece] Randomly chosen
Spiv Spiv is a British English colloquial term whose meaning and cultural implications may be obscure to anyone outside the country. A spiv was typically a flashily dressed man (velvet collars and lurid kipper ties) who ...
[Read the whole piece]
The next website update
The next update to this site is due on 2 November. You should then be able to read about the new word manicule for an ancient symbol and the story behind the sexist insult old besom. If you had subscribed to my newsletter, you would already have seen them, and more besides.
Recently added pages