Felicia Davin

Alleged incidents in Italian theatrical history

FIASCO, n. I have to write a newsletter about this word so I can stop repeatedly looking it up. It’s not that I don’t know what it means in English (a failure, a disaster, a big ol’ ruinous mess) or even that I don’t know where it

food words

Future Cake

HAVE YOUR CAKE AND EAT IT TOO, expr. For a long time I didn’t understand this expression. As a kid I thought, “isn’t having a piece of cake the same thing as eating a piece of cake?” After all, in English you can ask “would you like to

history of science

Students of the knowledge of the material world

SCIENTIST, n. My current novel draft is set in the 1820s and there is a character with an interest in observing the world and performing experiments in order to make discoveries, and I’ve been stuck on how he might refer to himself. I was using “natural philosopher,” which is

Notre-Dame de Paris

Baby shoes

Some mentions of infant loss (in fiction) in this one, just a heads-up. If you want to give that a pass, scroll down to below the picture. SOULIER, n. This is a French word for “shoe.” It’s not the first French word for “shoe” this newsletter has discussed: I

French literature

Messes and romance novels

DISHEVEL(L)ED, adj. Some Englishes spell this word with one L and some with two, so I’m trying to have it both ways, as usual. An adjective meaning messy or disordered, especially regarding someone’s personal appearance, this word popped up in my recent reading of Notre-Dame de

French literature

The OG Cathedral

OGEE, n., adj. and OGIVE, n., adj. I first heard the word “ogee” while taking a class about Gothic art and architecture in college, and I had absolutely no idea what it meant. I couldn’t parse it at all. I remember thinking, “Surely my extremely upper-crust white British art

US history

On the skids

SKID, v., n. I originally looked up this word because after reading Aster Glenn Gray’s Tramps and Vagabonds (discussed in the reviews below), I was wondering about the expression “skid row.” But it turns out “skid” itself was more exciting than predicted. I primarily think of it as a

Ale, fish, mid

Just a note that this newsletter discusses pregnancy and childbirth and links to previous newsletters mentioning pregnancy loss, so read with care if those are difficult topics for you. MIDWIFE, n. Hello again, beloved Word Suitcase readers! Many of you already know—or guessed—that this newsletter’s recent hiatus

US history

Archive dive

Word Suitcase is going on hiatus, n.—this word comes to English directly from Latin, where it meant “gap”—for a little while. I do have a few more word origins to share before I go, though. In books that are neither Romance nor romance, I finally finished Michael W.

food words

Get on top

CREAM, n. We had to buy cream of tartar (potassium bitartrate) recently, and my beloved pointed out that the “cream” in cream of tartar must have an interesting etymology; it’s not the fatty part of milk, so why is it called “cream”? My first thought was that perhaps potassium

Go ask a frog what day of the week it is

CONSTRUCT, n., v. Here’s an English word that is stressed differently depending on whether you mean it as a noun (something made/formed/built) or a verb (to make/build/form something). The noun is stressed CON-struct; the verb, con-STRUCT. Native English speakers shift the stress without thinking about

Twined & twisted

PURL, n., v. I am a novice knitter, so I mostly know this word as meaning “to knit a reversed stitch” or the reversed stitch itself. That sense dates back to the nineteenth century. Before that, “purl” meant “to embroider in silver or gold,” so still associated with textile arts.

Silly English knives

CANIF, n. If you’re on social media these days—and if you’re not, if you’re existing in some kind of posting-free spiritual hermitage, I’m impressed—then you’ve probably seen discussion of Wordle, a game in which you guess a five-letter word. I don’t usually

Hermitage

HERMIT, n. Lots of us have probably been thinking about this word in these days of opting out of social events (but still, for most of us, going to work and school??). A hermit is a person who lives alone, and it comes from the Greek word for desert or

Musical hooks

CROTCHETY, adj. This adjective, which we now mainly use in the sense of “cranky” or “irritable,” is a nineteenth-century creation, and according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, originally it meant “characterized by odd fancies, eccentric in thought.” I can’t explain how we got from “fanciful eccentric” to “irritable,” and

food words

Cloven, clove, cleaved, cleft

CLOVE, n. So I was baking again—as discussed previously I am always baking—and thinking about cloves (Syzygium aromaticum, the spice) and cloves (of garlic) and wondering why English would use the same word for two such very different things. The answer, naturally, is that it’s not the

art history

"the obscenest picture the world possesses"

PUDENDUM, n. I recently finished reading Ross King’s The Judgment of Paris, a nonfiction book about Impressionism and French history, in particular the artists Édouard Manet and Henri Meissonier. I loved it, not just because there were several etymologies mentioned, most memorably the one in this long excerpt (page

food words

Basket cases and pies

COFFIN, n. I’ve been baking a lot lately—honestly sort of an unhinged amount, but what else am I supposed to do with myself, write my novel? (Yes.) Naturally, my baking includes reading about baked goods, so when I came across a mention of etymology in an essay about

Get a clue

CLUE, n. This word, which we now use to mean something that “points the way, indicates a solution, or puts one on the track of a discovery; a key. Esp. a piece of evidence useful in the detection of a crime” (OED), used to be spelled “clew”—in English, spelling

Muses and muzzles

AMUSE, v., BEMUSED, adj. I really thought, last weekend when I embarked on this newsletter, that this section would be a quick and—apologies—amusing note about these two words and how I never want to say or write any form of “bemused” because nobody will know if I mean

French literature

False cities and restorations

FAUBOURG, n., RESTAURANT, n. A good way to make yourself sad during a pandemic—not that we have a shortage! and admittedly this sadness is trivial and selfish—is to read a book about a city you can’t travel to that lists restaurants you couldn’t safely eat inside

No words, only books

Well, friends, it’s late Sunday night in my time zone and I don’t have a word for you. Apologies. It’s been an exhausting couple of weeks. I did make notes on a few of the small-r romances I read, so I thought I’d share those. The

animal words

Various holes

FOXHOLE, n., RABBIT HOLE, n., SPIDER HOLE, n. A few weeks ago, I wrote a newsletter about “pigeonhole” and ever since, I’ve been thinking about the various metaphors we’ve assigned to other animal dwellings. World War I trench warfare gave rise to “foxhole” (also “fox-hole”) as a name

expressions

Bloodhounds and red herrings

RED HERRING, n., exp. Without even trying to, in my head I had made up a whole little fake history for this expression. “Probably there was some groundbreaking important murder mystery with a literal red herring in it,” I said to myself, “and it was misdirection, and that’s why

Gang Busters

GANGBUSTERS, exp. I think this is primarily a feature of US English, but we have these expressions “going gangbusters” or “coming on like gangbusters” that mean “going strongly.” They’re maybe a little dated now and not terribly common, but I still know what they mean. But I only just