Etymonline has this to say on the question: "Seemingly contradictory sense of "hold fast, stick to" (in phrase hew to), 1891, developed from earlier figurative phrase hew to the line "stick to a course," literally "cut evenly with an axe or saw."" Thanks. So it seems that the similar double meaning...

Both 'hew' and 'cleave' have the same two opposite meanings of 'cut' and 'adhere (to)'. But I note that the two meanings of 'cleave' have different etymologies. How can the similar dual meaning of 'hew' be explained? Could the 'adhere to' meaning of 'hew' have been subconsciously influenced by 'clea...

"Not to mention..." is an example of a rhetorical device called apophasis, whereby one refers to something while claiming not to refer to it.

http://alphadictionary.com/goodword/word/apophasis

prosody

1. The study of metre, rhyme and versification in poetry.
2. The patterns of stress and intonation (pitch) in speech.

In addition, I wonder about the link to the eponymous football game Subbuteo

The name of the game 'Subbuteo' is a pun on the word 'hobby' (the bird/a pastime).

'Buteo' is Latin for 'buzzard', so 'subbuteo' is an 'under-buzzard', i.e. a small buzzard.

Is there any difference in meaning between 'zetetic' and 'empirical'?

The sense of very changed in the 15th century to "greatly, extremely", but that of the duplicated adverb verily remained true to its roots.

We still use very as an adjective in such expressions as "the very thing I wanted" and "the very devil of a problem".

Everything on the site is working OK for me. No problems. With regard to David Myer's posts above, another regular member we lost some years ago was Saparris, with whom I used to write 'Group Poems' (see Res Diversae). I don't know about Daniel Obertance – he is not in the List of Members, and there...

Most Americans say "th" when speaking of the German airline "Lufthansa" and I am OK with that. I suppose the "proper" pronunciation of "Neanderthal" also requires a "t" not a "th," but I don't feel like a caveman because I pronounce all the letters in the word. In the UK we pronounce "Lufthansa" wi...

Thanks a lot for the information. I suspected that this idiom is of recent origin. It seems to have caught on quickly.

Back in the day (A long while ago, especially at a time of which one has happy memories) This, as a complete expression (rather than "Back in the day when...") seems to be a fairly new idiom. I would be interested in any views about its use, and date and place of origin. Is it a specifically Britis...

'Avenue Road' (something of a tautology) and 'The Avenue' are very common street names. Don't you hate those ridiculous computer programs that ask for the street name and want the word 'street' or whatever in the next field and they offer all the alternatives the silly programmer could think of? Usu...

avenue From Latin via French. Originally 'approach' or 'way of approach', then 'approach road to a country house', then 'wide road lined with trees', then any wide street, then used randomly for the names of residential streets. Still used to mean 'approach' in a non-physical sense, e.g. 'avenue of...

cockeyed

Crooked, absurd, drunk, or having a squint.

It is, of course, more difficult to make the spaces as well as the letters symmetrical. The best I can do at present is the following:

No pay? God, pets! I spot Bateman. No tub, but on nametab tops I step. Dog, yap on!