Wearing a hoodie in the hood does not necessarily indicate one is a hood.

The note about the Greek descendant of the *PIE root gwr-/gwor- reminded me of "baryon," the term applied to subatomic particles that are subject to the strong force and composed of three quarks. And the dictionary says the term was indeed coined on the basis of Greek "bary" + "-on"

I put "tussie-mussie" into the Ngram viewer and got a first, quite small peak at about 1920, a second, much higher peak at about 1950 and a final, highest peak at 1993. The highest peak was about 1/3 higher than the second peak. No help on actual etymology though. I then entered "tussie-mussie" in t...

Thank you for posting the link to the reading. Unfortunately, laughter covered some of the jokes. The original piece appeared in Harpers and is behind a paywall, but someone posted a copy here if you wish to read it. http://www.joshpachter.com/pages/weans.pdf The Good Doctor may wish to comment on t...

Thank you, Slava

I read the following sentence in the Jan 4 & 11, 2021 New Yorker (pg 53), and I can't find a definition. Can anyone help? "In part, this was because the average age of patients was lower, but the improved chances of survival were also the result of flattening the curve, which gave doctors and scient...

I was recently struck at the difference the use of the active vs passive voice makes to the meaning of "intern" as a verb. The dictionary gives intern - 1 as "to work as an intern" (e.g. After graduating from medical school, Ima Doctor interned at Bellevue.) Active voice and intern - 2 as "to depriv...

First, No, I haven't heard this expression. Second, is there a typo in this? Did your mother say "mention by you" (as quoted) or "mentioned by you," with a past tense -ed? In latter, the syntax seems to me to reflect the semantics/pragmatics of the situation. Third, in pragmatic terms, the expressio...

Philip, what I wanted TO DO was GO INTO the SO many all TOO common English words that have NO (or at least minimal) connection with French, Latin and Greek and that ALSO end in "O". I mentioned but TWO words of the type that the Good Doctor has from time TO time ALSO chosen TO refer TO as "authentic...

Dear Dr Goodword
Hello, who says?

"Nankeen" does indeed refer to the color. According to New Zealand Birds Online "The name 'nankeen' refers to the similarity in colour of the kestrels back to the yellowish-brown cotton found originally around the Chinese city of Nanking, once used to make buff-coloured cotton trousers." http://nzbi...

The prototypical lichen is a round blob growing on a flat rock. It's diameter (and area) gradually increases over the years, slowly expanding over the surface of the rock. In crustose lichens, the area on the margin is where most of the growth occurs (Wikipedia) which gives the impression of slowly ...

Etymonline has long (v.) Middle English longen, from Old English langian "to yearn after, grieve for," literally "to grow long, lengthen," from Proto-Germanic *langojan, which probably is connected with the root of long (adj.). Cognate with Old Norse langa, Old Saxon langon, Middle Dutch langhen, Ol...

According to The Audubon Society Encyclopedia of North American Birds (J. K. Torres; Alfred A. Knopf: 1987) and Wikipedia, "corvus" is Latin for "raven." The Crow family, Corvidae, consists of 103 species world-wide, 18 in North America, 10 in Japan. In addition to crows and ravens, other corvids in...

Etymonline says it's the "potamos" -- "rushing river" part. "Potamos" is Greek for "river" and from the PIE-root "*pet" "to rush, to fly." The "hippo" part is from Greek "hippos" "horse" and the PIE-root is "*ekwo-." Other fairly common words from the "hippo-" part are Hippocrates, the Greek physici...