The ancient word Behoove means a duty or responsibility to do something.

The Middle English bihoven comes from the Old English behofian, meaning "to have need of, have use for." It is of West Germanic origin, and related to Dutch behoef and German behuf.

For some odd reason I was thinking of Alice in Wonderland yesterday, and my attention became stuck on the caterpillar . What an odd word! As it turns out, it's late Middle English, possibly from a variant of Old French chatepelose , literally "hairy cat." The association with cats occurs i...

You know, that large marine mammal related to the seals found in the Arctic Ocean, and of course, with the large downward-pointing tusks. Easy enough, but where does the word " walrus " come from? The Old English term was morse . Walrus only appeared in the early 18th century, apparently d...

An alphabet is "a set of letters or symbols in a fixed order, used to represent the basic sounds of a language." Ancient Egyptian hieroglyphics, among other writing systems, does not have an alphabet, since the writing is pictorial and represents language at a word or syllable level. Our w...

As a pipe smoker, I am quite familiar with this word, though most people will not know it. Dottle is the remnant of tobacco left in a pipe after smoking.

It comes from a late Middle English word denoting a plug for a barrel or other container. From dot + le.

Knot is a word that can serve as a noun, a verb or as the focus of many phrases. As such, it has a large number of definitions. The most common meaning is "a fastening made by tying a piece of string, rope, or something similar." Knot has come down to us from Old English cnotta , which is...

Apparently, the word history of crazy goes back to the late 16th century in the sense of "full of cracks," from craze + y. Craze was a late Middle English word meaning "to break or produce cracks." It was borrowed from the Scandinavian languages and is related to Swedish krasa , ...

Hooray is an exclamation used to express joy or approval, except in New Zealand, where it means "goodbye" (go figure). It is said to be a late 19th century variant of hurrah , itself formed in the late 17th century as a variant of huzzah , which is speculated to be used originally as a sa...

Akrasia is the state of mind in which someone acts against their better judgment through weakness of will. It is mostly found in philosophical works, and particularly in reference to Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics . Paul, in a fit of akrasia , bought a pack of cigarettes despite having quit the yea...

As an adjective, nude means 'wearing no clothes,' or 'naked.' It may also be a noun, meaning 'a naked human figure as the subject of a painting, sculpture, or photograph.' Nude has a secondary meaning, 'denoting or relating to clothing or makeup that is of a color resembling that of the wearer’s ski...

Quondam is an adjective with a simple meaning: "former or something that once was." As in "the quondam president of the Basket Weaving Society," or, "the quondam Victorian mansion that sunk into the ground." Unlike other rare words, it doesn't take the place of a convo...

My dictionary waxes poetic about punk rock before getting down to the definition of the noun that's on my mind: a worthless person, a criminal or a hoodlum, or an inexperienced young person. The noun is accompanied by a related verb and adjective. As to origin, the dictionary says only that it comes...

Often confused with palette or pallet, palate refers to the roof of the mouth. A second definition is a person's appreciation of taste and flavor, especially when sophisticated and discriminating.

Middle English acquired palate from Latin "palatum."

The noun and verb forms of Pine have different origins and completely different meanings. The noun form refers to an evergreen coniferous tree. Its Old English roots [ha] ultimately derive from Latin pinus and was reinforced by the French pin . The verb form of Pine means to suffer a mental and phys...

A verb or noun with a host of phrases, Mess has a wide range of meanings. Old French provided the original word mes to Middle English, meaning "a portion of food." It retained that meaning until the early 19th century, when it became "an unappetizing concoction" and "predica...