Peter Trudgill
24 April 2024
No rest on top of the world
It sits on the border between Tibet and Nepal, but Everest is best known by its English name – given in honour of a Welsh geographer
Read the full article17 April 2024
How it could have been MacGregor’s, not Grieg's, piano concerto
Edvard Grieg may have been Norway’s greatest classical composer, but he actually inherited his name from his Scottish forebears
Read the full article10 April 2024
Language tied up in knots
People may assume that the word ‘cravat’ comes from French, but its ultimate linguistic origin is much more complicated
Read the full article03 April 2024
Bohemian rhapsodies
Why the ‘father of Czech classical music’ switched from a German Friedrich to a Czech Bedrich
Read the full article20 March 2024
A question of emphasis
A meeting with Kim Cattrall conjures up thoughts of Anne Boleyn, and a shift in stress in the syllables of their surnames
Read the full article13 March 2024
Playing havoc with tenses
Are devastation and destruction wreaked or wrought? And why did the word havoc change from ‘havot’ in the first place?
Read the full article06 March 2024
The ballad of a refugee poet
Norwich’s literary legacy is a surprising one – both Meir of England and Jan Cruso were important poets from the city but neither wrote in English
Read the full article28 February 2024
Italy’s Austrian national hero
Italian tennis star Jannik Sinner’s home region of South Tyrol is still largely German-speaking despite being in Italy for over 100 years
Read the full article21 February 2024
How my mum lighted the way
A look at eight decades’ worth of a parent’s diaries shows how our use of language has changed in unexpected ways
Read the full article14 February 2024
The law of possession
How we say and write the name of Newcastle United’s home ground is a lesson for those who worry about apostrophes
Read the full article07 February 2024
The talk of a land of unrest
Sadly, the main four branches of the Iranian language are synonymous with areas currently involved in political and ethnic conflicts
Read the full article31 January 2024
Roots of the two Dylans
Both Bob Dylan and Dylan Thomas had interesting linguistic backgrounds, which may have contributed to their creativity with words
Read the full article25 January 2024
The origins of your Burns Night haggis
These are the roots of the traditional feast to celebrate Rabbie Burns
Read the full article24 January 2024
For old times past, my dear
The works of Robert Burns are known the world over, but many English speakers only have a vague understanding of the language he used
Read the full article17 January 2024
Want a digestif with that?
Words can take on a whole new meaning when adopted into another language; French vocabulary is particularly susceptible
Read the full article10 January 2024
Boris should have twigged
There are not many Gaelic loanwords in English, and the most common ones refer to specifically Scottish phenomena. But not all
Read the full article03 January 2024
Taking a shufti at English slang
The adoption of some Arabic words into colloquial English came from British soldiers stationed in the Middle East and north Africa
Read the full article20 December 2023
The origins of the Windrush
The name of the ship is well known these days, but the etymology of the Cotswolds village from which it took its name is less certain
Read the full article13 December 2023
The Euro roots of a US holiday
The Americans have already had their big turkey meal of the year – and Thanksgiving owes a debt to Greece and to harvest festivals
Read the full article06 December 2023
The United States of East Anglia
New England has many place names that must have been taken across the North Atlantic by homesick English people in the 1600s
Read the full article29 November 2023
The land of one direction
Small islands have evolved vocabularies based on topography – including one place where you can go ‘east’ while heading west
Read the full article22 November 2023
The fine art of having a dekko
English has a number of words borrowed from Urdu-Hindi, many of which arrived when British Indian Army soldiers returned to ‘Blighty’
Read the full article15 November 2023
Masters of a remote outpost
The adventures of one carpenter and several British soldiers helped English become the native language on two isolated islands
Read the full article08 November 2023
A pightle fight about dialect
This term for house or property might sound like it belongs to one region – but like many others, it’s in use across England
Read the full article01 November 2023
Mexico’s call of the cowboy
How the raising of cattle by a mixture of Mexicans, African-Americans and Americans gave rise to a distinctive vocabulary
Read the full article18 October 2023
Discovery and disgrace: the tragedy of Taino
After Columbus made landfall in the Bahamas in 1492, as many as 40,000 Taino natives were enslaved in the Caribbean
Read the full article11 October 2023
A brief case for Americanisms
Many of us now use words imported from across the pond, like ’truck’ instead of ’lorry’. But the traffic isn’t only one-way...
Read the full article04 October 2023
The name of ABBA’s game
In parts of Sweden and Finland, the practice of changing your surname to make it sound more learned goes back to the 1600s
Read the full article27 September 2023
America’s slow path to English
The Dutch language survived in North America for many decades after the English had taken control of the formerly Dutch-controlled area
Read the full article20 September 2023
Our pet names for dicky birds
The official titles of our feathered friends have been replaced throughout history with affectionate nicknames that a child might use
Read the full article16 August 2023
When the Celts showed their metal
How direct contact with Welsh and Gaelic speakers left its mark on the migrant tribes who moved into what is now Germany
Read the full article02 August 2023
The battles for the way we talk
The linguistic makeup of the British Isles was partly determined by three battles – in Yorkshire, Builth Wells and Culloden
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