A listener brought up the word paraphernalia as an instance of a word easier to say than to spell. The second “r” is often the victim of elision, so misspelling becomes a distinct possibility. The word is interesting in its own right. In Roman...

November is almost gone, so in my backyard, winter is about to make an appearance. Let’s look at some words that involve that season. Brumal means of or pertaining to winter. It’s a great little word, but it’s not frequently used. It is a...

I know that the focal point of traditional Thanksgiving dinners is the turkey, but I’m going to go off on a pig tangent in this posting. Many words that have nothing directly to do with pigs ended up using roots related to the pig. Sometimes this...

The adjective expert means experienced or skilled. It is heavily grounded in trying something for yourself, in hands-on learning, in personally putting something to the test. It comes from the Latin verb experiri, to try, to undergo thorough...

We covered slang terms for money on a recent program (wtcmradio.com). Among the offerings called in was “filthy lucre.” Lucre came from a Latin word, lucrum, which meant profit. But already in Roman times, a negative connotation began to creep in....