Is music a spandrel? This is a question I have discussed with many people over the years, usually beginning with a definition of the word spandrel. The term comes from architecture and has been borrowed to describe the by-product of an evolutionary adaptation, like flight in birds. Feathers evolved to keep birds warm, but they… Continue reading Word of the week: spandrel
Iamb: it’s a “metrical foot”. This is nothing to do with imperial measurements involving distance, it’s about meter in poems, or how syllables are used in a line of poetry. An iamb is a 2-syllable “metrical foot”, a short or unstressed syllable followed by a long or stressed syllable: da-DUM. Examples include the words “remark”… Continue reading Word of the week: iamb
Partner: this word has changed meaning over the last 30 years, during the time that my brother has lived in Spain. He is married (his wife is Spanish) and he has a Business Partner (an English woman). Over the years, until around 2001, he would refer to the latter as his “partner”. He wasn’t living… Continue reading Word of the week: partner
Narg: it’s an acronym, for “Not a real gentleman”. It’s also the reason I know the word “acronym”, which describes a word that’s formed from the initials of other words, like NATO or AIDS. (I like how in other languages the same letters are used in a different order for both terms – OTAN and… Continue reading Word of the week: Narg
Homophones: words which sound the same but are spelt differently, like “their” and “there”, and indeed “they’re”. They formed part of my 9-year-old daughter’s homework again at the weekend and we have been discussing them on the way to school. Most commonly there are pairs of homophones, like “pail” and “pale” – the former was… Continue reading Word of the week: homophone
Zeugma is a figure of speech where a word (usually a verb) applies to at least two other words in different ways, for example “The barmaid gave me a pint of Guinness and an endearing smile” or “The grumpy barman gave me my change, and a scowl”. In this case we’re using the verb “to… Continue reading Word of the week: zeugma
Last month the BBC2 Quiz Show “Only Connect” featured a question about palimpsests. I had a vague idea of what a palimpsest was (some kind of document), intended to look it up, and then forgot. Earlier this month, while looking up information about Archimedes (trying to explain to my daughter what “Eureka” meant, and why… Continue reading Word of the week: palimpsest
Brick: it’s now a verb, as in “iOS5 upgrade bricked my iPhone 4”, which means that someone’s Apple-made mobile phone has become about as useful as a brick. I remember when mobile phones were the shape of a brick, and just as heavy, so putting “brick” and “mobile phone” into the same sentence is rather… Continue reading Word of the week: brick
This is a post concerning the word “concerning”. It means “about”, or “regarding”. When I last checked it did not mean “troubling”, “worrying”, or “of concern”, but increasingly that is how people use it. I find this development mildly troubling. Words change meaning. I’m fine with that. People change, technology develops, new words come along,… Continue reading Word of the week: concerning
You know Jenga, the game where you build a tower out of wooden blocks and then try to remove one block at a time until the whole tower collapses. The word means “build” in Swahili, as I learnt last year from this article featuring the inventor Leslie Scott and Alan Hassenfeld from Hasbro. I assumed… Continue reading Word of the week: Jenga
The Compartments 