US history - Felicia Davin

Felicia Davin

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US history

A collection of 13 posts

a sloped cobblestone alley with red brick buildings

Corcas

etymological mysteries and romance novels

graphic of 4 fragments of book covers

Behind closed doors

shacks, cabins, toilets, cahoots, and a real “one of these things is not like the others” set of book reviews

fantasy romance

Shall we sing a song?

SHALL, v. This word has been on my mind because my kid adopted it. A couple days ago, he asked for more strawberries and when I told him the box was empty, he said, “Shall we go to the store?” like the world’s most prescriptively correct almost-two-year-old. He says

Snits

Hello, Word Suitcase readers! This newsletter normally arrives in your inbox on Sunday, which today is not. In theory it also comes every two weeks. I meant to send this last weekend, but our household was struck by back-to-back illnesses, the second of which was covid. We’re recovering, but

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

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.

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

False cities and restorations

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

Jackpot

JACKPOT, n. I mostly associate this noun with winning the lottery—hitting the jackpot—but it actually comes from poker, which isn’t too surprising. It originally referred to a pot, or a collective pool of money, into which players would contribute until one of them could open the betting

Filibuster war

FILIBUSTER, n., v. This is an ultra-specific US politics word that means, in contemporary usage, to talk an issue to death in the Senate (or, in its noun form, the long speech that prevents the vote). That practice dates from the 1830s, according to historian Heather Cox Richardson’s January

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

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.

Shoe against the machine

SABOTAGE, n. I caught myself repeating this word’s famous folk etymology in conversation this week—namely, that “sabotage” as in an act of deliberate obstruction/destruction comes from French sabot (clog, as in a peasant’s shoe), which is true, and that the word “sabotage” comes to us from