Felicia Davin

French literature

Reading societies

LESEGESELLSCHAFT, n. I have no business talking about German words in this newsletter, as I do not speak German (and some of you do!), but I love a long German word. One of my favorite professors, whenever he veered into a topic he didn’t have a degree in, would

food words

Marmalade

MARMALADE, n. One of many wonderful things that happened in my introductory French classes last semester was a moment when, after I had taught the reflexive verb se coucher, meaning “to lie down, to go to bed,” a keen-eared student asked in English, “Is this like that song?” Video Block

A 2020 wrap-up

RINDERPEST, n. This is German for “cattle plague,” like what strikes in Egypt when Pharoah won’t let my people go, but also a very real and devastating disease. Don’t worry, though—it’s one of two viruses that the World Health Organization has declared eradicated. Those would be

animal words

Swan around and swan song

SWAN (ABOUT/AROUND/OFF), v. A friend asked about the origin of this expression a couple weeks ago, and here’s what I’ve found. It seems to be primarily British, first used at the end of the nineteenth century. Initially, it meant moving like a swan—swimming, gliding. Because

body or sex words

To have the horn

HORNY, adj. I wanted to know if I could use “horny,” as in “lustful,” in my current novel draft without it being an anachronism, and I am thrilled to report that Green’s Dictionary of Slang has the first recorded instance of “horny” as “sexually eager” in 1826 in US

Window undressing

WINDOW DRESSING. This expression’s literal meaning is a display in a retail shop window, like the one pictured below, courtesy of the Instagram account of The Ripped Bodice, a bookstore specializing in romance novels: therippedbodice A post shared by Bea and Leah (@therippedbodice) Window dressing also means, more figuratively,

classical antiquity

Lictors

LICTOR, n. This word might come from Latin “ligare,” meaning “to bind,” and it indicates a soldier who worked as a bodyguard for a magistrate in ancient Rome. “Lictor” has been on my mind this week because I read Tamsyn Muir’s bonkers lesbian-necromancers-in-space novel Harrow the Ninth, whose prequel

French history

Coup de

COUP, n. I know, I know—sorry. Sometimes the news is just inescapable. But at least this word, which has been all over US politics twitter lately (and also, I assume, Peru politics twitter, though granted I don’t see much of that), is a fascinating one. In English we

US history

Whooping cough heartthrobs

COQUELUCHE, n. Once, a long time ago in my first year of grad school, I was attending a social event hosted by the teaching assistants’ union, mingling with other new students. A science grad student looked at me in perplexity when I said that my PhD would be in French.

Turn left

LEFT, adj., adv., n. This week a student in French 101 asked me about the origin of “tout droit” (straight, as in “go straight, don’t turn”). “Droit” is French for “right,” and it’s in both the sense of your right hand and your right to vote. It comes

Decadent and destabilizing

DECADENT, adj. This week, The American Conservative published an article by Rod Dreher worrying about the downfall of society, not because of the pandemic or the climate crisis or anything that actually threatens human lives, but because a lot of the young folks are queer and trans these days. I’

expressions

Flop flip

It is Sunday evening and I am still woefully unprepared to teach Monday’s classes, so no word this week, sorry. I’ll be back next week! Instead, for your perusal, here are links to lexicographer Jonathon Green’s slang timelines of words used for penis (that is to say,

expressions

Suck-egg grannies

A couple readers asked me about the expression “teaching grandmother to suck eggs.” I’ve never heard anyone say this in conversation, but the expression came up a couple times in my googling for last week’s newsletter on weasels and sucking eggs. I didn’t include it because I

animal words

Mean as a suck-egg weasel

WEASEL, n. The English language unfairly maligns this small mammalian predator, using its name to mean a conniving, duplicitous person, or the act of “weaseling out” of an obligation or a promise. Sometimes writing teachers talk about “weasel words,” language used to create the impression of citation or authority where

Ice ice baby

SASTRUGA, n. This word comes to English through German and originally from Russian, and it’s usually seen in the plural as “sastrugi.” Sastrugi are snow and ice formations that occur in polar regions where the wind sculpts the snow into dune-like ridges. Sometimes they’re several meters tall, and

Fairyland

ELDRITCH, adj. Jenny Hamilton of Reading the End asked people on twitter to give their own definition of this word without looking it up: Jenny Hamilton @readingtheend without googling it for phrasing tips, define "eldritch" for me September 15th 2020 4 Likes I didn’t comply with Jenny’

The tweets are coming from inside the house

TODESTRIEB, n. This is a German word and I don’t speak German, let’s get that out of the way right off the bat. Freud originated this word, which means “death drive,” pretty much literally. “Tod” is death and “trieb” is drive, urge, impulse, desire. (Plus, Wiktionary tells me,

& per se &

AMPERSAND, n. The name of this symbol & comes from a variant pronunciation of “and per se and.” School teachers used to add “per se” to their recitation of the alphabet when they arrived at letters that could also be words by themselves: I per se I, for instance. The

Boycott and Coventry

I sure did teach a lot of Zoom classes this week. Nothing I could come up with right now would be the equal of this twitter thread on the word “boycott,” so I am taking the week off. Anthony Oliveira @meakoopa tonight i learned the word "boycott" entered

Don't get it twisted

WRONG, adj., adv. This word comes from Late Old English wrang, which meant “twisted, crooked, wry” and is in turn from Old Norse rangr or *vrangr, which meant the same thing but could also mean “unjust.” The Online Etymology Dictionary has this to say about how we form the opposite

Meddling kids

PESKY, adj. Yesterday afternoon I was with my quarantine pod, having a drink in the sunshine. One of the kids in our pod, a four year old with a fantastic vocabulary, returned from running around the yard to investigate the snack situation and then declared, “You ate all the grapes,

plant words

A rose is

ROSE, n. This week I was reading Tiffany Reisz’s novel The Rose and a character suggested that an artifact with “rose” in its title was named “after Eros,” and I will happily suspend my disbelief for magic, but not for linguistics. “Rose” is attested, beautifully, all the way back

plant words

Just pleachy

PLEACH, v. This verb means “to intertwine young branches to form a hedge.” These are pleached trees: Really I just wanted to brag that I read “pleach” in This Is How You Lose the Time War by Amal El Mohtar and Max Gladstone, made the Libby app define “pleach” for

Awful scofflaws and flawed outlaws

SCOFFLAW, n. This week my local paper had a headline that said “Workers can report virus scofflaw bosses,” and I thought, “Scofflaw? Is that word just… exactly what it looks like?” (Okay, full disclosure, the first thing I thought was “Bob Loblaw’s Law Blog” because my brain is a

On not having a phone

Things I Have Thought About Doing With My Phone But Could Not Do Because Its Touchscreen Is Dead an exhausting yet incomplete list, in roughly chronological order THURSDAY, JULY 23 * Texting the recording engineer with whom I make audiobooks that my phone wasn’t working, so he wouldn’t be