I have a feeling this has been discussed before but I can find no record of it in the Search system here. I know that in the UK and especially in the mens-wear business, trouser can be used in the singular to mean a pair of trousers. So what constitutes a trouser? Is it a pair because there are two ...

You make an excellent point, damoge. I suppose you can always drive slowly. It's just that a driven person is focussed, determined and perhaps compelled. Not the sort of person who drives slowly! Droves of people coming over the hill (or whatever) conjures a picture of large numbers. If there were t...

Very interesting. Based on the history I think it is probably a modern corruption to say the people came in droves. There is no sense of being driven as sand or snowflakes are when they form a drift. Having said that, if someone drifts about, they are manifestly un-driven! Perhaps we should change i...

Very interesting George. Thank you for the effort here - most illuminating.

So it was all Augustine's fault. Well, I'm with the Eastern orthodox - no knowledge of Greek? Huh, a lightweight.

Ahh! I have just done my own research on this to answer my own question. Fascinating! The Greek original word was agape, one of four words for Love. The others are: philios for the love displayed by say, an Anglophile; eros for romantic, dare I say erotic, type love; and storge for the fondness thro...

This is bizarre. I don't know much about the Bible, especially the New Testament, but in an effort to review the original of your modified eversion, George I find that the word love is used instead of charity. I always though the three sisters were Faith, Hope and Charity. But in the Bible Gateway w...

It's certainly not a word I use every day, but Smite (and Smote) do appear occasionally in my discourse. And fine words they are too. Better to smite the crossword puzzle than to smash it as my children do.

Australia enjoyed a Prime Minister, Paul Keating, in the nineties who was famous for his vituperative tongue. He said of Andrew Peacock (then Leader of The Opposition) "We're not interested in the views of painted, perfumed gigolos." That should give you a feel for the type of bloke that Peacock was...

I have re-written this one.

I wonder if 'cosy' is related to cosset? It certainly has connotations of small roomed cottages. "Origin unknown" in my online dictionaries.

I watched Nigel Hawthorne in The Madness of King George yesterday and found myself using the word 'fop' in describing his son (later George the fourth). So wondered about fop and its derivation. In doing a little research I discovered lots of completely different words for the same thing - such as c...

Thinking about this word, I wondered about its origins. I did a little research and it seems the etymology beyond Latin is obscure and uncertain. So why is it pronounced vane/vain when instinct tells us that it should be vine - presuming some German origin? And why is it spelt vein? In Latin, vena...

Yes Phillip, you had already replied - under Swither. But maybe we should dither this conversation lest the authorities pick up our discussion and decide to take action.

I'm not really suggesting a corruption from one to the other; just marvelling at the similarities between the meanings of rhyming words. I have long admired the large number of -ump words like lump, hump, rump, bump, stump, dump, and others, that seem to have similar meanings or at least all relate ...

Further examples might include overwhelm which really means whelm. I expect I will wake in the night with more.