Every year at Christmas time, the Classics Department at Brown University hosts a Latin Carol Service (more recently called the Latin Carol Celebration). One of the highlights is the singing of "Duodecim Dies Festali" by a women's singing group identified on the program as the "Grex C...

Re "The Elements", I'd position it according to its "possibly recognizable tune" -- there's one in every Gilbert & Sullivan operetta. "Full of words and music, signifying nothing", to steal a quote from another British pair, Flanders & Swann.

Hmmm. Is the "rap" in "rapscallion" stolen from the first syllable of "rapacious"? Is "rascal" not wicked enough?

I can believe that "verrompeld" begat "frump". but the related word that jumps to my mind is "rumpled", and "verrompeld" ought to mean extremely rumpled.

From spelling and pronunciation, one might conclude that "caudillo" comes from the same source. But it seems not; instead, according to etymonline, Latin "caput" is responsible. On the other hand, "codex" is still alive and well as the name of a foundation devoted to ar...

The diminution of "decimate" is to be denigrated. But the confusion in the words for powers of ten is also unfortunate. The loss of "milliard" and "billiard" can be cited (although the second of those terms has a much different, probably unrelated but more familiar, mea...

According to this blog https://www.paesana.com/blog/the-story-behind-the-sauce-marinara It was given the name marinara not because it was once a seafood-style sauce, but because it was the preferred meal of Italy’s merchants during long expeditions at sea. It was undoubtedly brought, unchanged, to U...

I can assure you that this word has been around nearly as long as I have. In the late 1950s, Master Sergeant Bilko was the protagonist of a TV comedy show. I can't prove it, but his character makes me suspect that his name was an application of the word. Conjecture -- the word came into being in the...

In some circles, it's not unusual for someone to "volunteer" someone else for a task. (Consider military boot camp.) Willingness may have no part in this transitive use.

Even more complicated? In your exposition, I see only two possibilities described, and in neither of them do I recognize the "arithmetic mean".

No actual game called "Squabble" that I know of, but the suggestions of soundalikes bring to mind the unofficial computer lingo for increasing sizes of (small) computer storage units: bit, byte, nybble, gobble.

And the more contentious contest of Scrabble: "Squabble".

Another alternative to "vamoose", today's good word. But it also means an emergency shutdown of a nuclear reactor. And it also may be tacked onto the beginning of some words, for example "scramjet", which is a souped-up enhancement of a ramjet. Etymologically, it's a shortened fo...

You missed "scram" in your list of synonyms. That's an interesting word, and it hasn't been covered yet. I'll suggest it.

Today, returning in my car from an errand, I found myself behind a full-size bus. Looking at the license plate, I observed that the class of vehicle is "jitney". That seems rather odd for such a large vehicle, and certainly doesn't fall under any of the categories specified in the definiti...