Words for Granted - An etymology and linguistics podcast

There are more etymologically different names for Germany than there are for any other European country. This is due to ... Read more

In the pre-modern world, philosophy referred to all forms of intellectual knowledge. Today, the discipline of philosophy... Read more

Today's episode looks at the Old English sense of the word wyrd. Originally, it wasn’t an adjective, but a noun that’s c... Read more

This episode explores polysemy, the phenomenon by which a single word can have multiple meanings. Why do we use the word... Read more

The days of the week are part of the core vocabulary of any language. In English, their etymologies are rooted in ancien... Read more

The word ‘meat’ once referred to all forms of solid food, not just animal flesh. In today's episode, we explore the ambi... Read more

As a common noun, ‘bohemian’ describes an artistic, carefree lifestyle usually marked by poverty and unorthodoxy. The wo... Read more

The word ‘God’ is not derived from the original Biblical texts. Rather, it’s a term from Germanic paganism that was adap... Read more

As someone who came of age during the late 90’s, my first encounter with the word ‘gothic’ was through alternative music... Read more

One of the most defining characteristics of the Standard American English accent is its ‘rhoticity,’ or the pronunciatio... Read more

‘OK’ is the most spoken and most written word in the entire world. It's such a fundamental part of modern communication ... Read more

The word ‘cannibal’ comes to us by way of a familiar historical figure: Christopher Columbus. The word is ultimately a H... Read more

In today's episode, we begin our investigation of the etymologies of each day of the week. Both Monday and Tuesday are u... Read more

In Old English, the word for Wednesday was Wodnesdaeg, which literally meant ‘Woden's day.’ It comes from a loan transla... Read more

Greek gods. Golden Age heroes. Our conscience. Guardian angels. Evil spirits. All of these things and more were once ass... Read more

In common usage, a ‘philistine’ is a derogatory term for an anti-intellectual materialist. The word derives from the anc... Read more

In Old English, the word ‘wife’ meant woman. In fact, the word ‘woman’ derives from the word wife! Today's episode is no... Read more

This episode begins a new series on the etymology of English idioms. In this general overview of idioms, we discuss why ... Read more

The word ‘comfort’ once described the spiritual consolation given by God to an individual. Today, it describes commercia... Read more

According to literary critic Raymond Williams, culture is ‘one of two or three most complicated words in the English lan... Read more