Sally is a pretty big topic. It’s root meaning is to rush or leap forward. This goes all the way back to PIE with an unchanged meaning. Somewhere along the way the English “improved” the word by making a phrase “sally forth”. Since one wouldn’t sally back or sideways, the word “forth” seems redundan...

MTC: You mistook Perry for me. He might be riled but I am honored. I hope Perry doesn't study the church I belong to. The Corinthians were pikers (def 4 from Wiktionary) compared to us. I make up an entire faction by myself.

There is no known etymological relationship between hockey and jockey. The etymology for jockey is certain. The Jack that would be a dull boy if he had to work all the time was the same Jack who rode racehorses. It seems that Tom, Dick and Harry were each too big to ride a racehorse, but Jack was ju...

Cloying is on my list of the 100 most ugly words in the English language. Although it is not onomatopoeic, it sounds the way I feel when something is cloying. Still, it serves its humble purpose.

MTC: "Your mother wears railroad boots," is probably not a raillery. Where I come from this is a taunt that means you are a bastard. It strongly suggests your mother is a prostitute who gets paid for her favors with a pair of boots.

Galanthophile is indeed a rare word. It is apparently a rather new word, combining the scientific name for the snowdrop flower with the suffix, -phile. Snowdrops are another matter. En masse they put on a impressive show. Sometimes the ground is covered with snow one day and covered with snowdrops t...

When I was a high school math teacher, I was ill fated to have a principal who was a reserve Army general. He seemed to think that the mathematics of gun ranging (a pretty complex discipline) was called ordnance. He ordered me (I think he thought he was my general) to teach "ordnance" inst...

My mother was a locally well-known singer. In her youth her friends called her the Prima Donna. She enjoyed the adulation. I don't think my mother ever heard the word diva. As a diva, I picture Lady Ga Ga, not Mom. The dictionaries give room for a positive as well as a negative use of diva.

MTC: I don't see the need for your apology. Scotland is rather bleak and it does come up with some unusual words as well as customs. Hogmany is unfortunately named, but innocent, unless you drink too much uisge beatha. Scots have some beautiful words for beautiful things. Re the Good Doctor’s mentio...

I second Perry's suggestion of transmogrify as a Good Word. I first encountered this word in a graduate computer science class at SMU in the early 1960s. A lot of computer algorithms qualified as transmogrifications in those days. No doubt some do today, but the discipline has become better discipli...

We seem to be majoring on Good Word discussions recently. I would like to see more postings to the other Alpha Agora discussion venues.

Christmas, and so probably Boxing Day, was prohibited in Colonial New England at times. The Southern Colonists were more tolerant. My iconoclastic mother was very much against Christmas, devout Christian though she was. She had Biblical quotations to support her position. She believed words, spoken ...

This Good Word could spawn a wide discussion of other words from the same root. I am saving this until I have finished my dissertation on mash. But others should beat me too it.

It wasn't my bottom. The anecdote is of my dad, as a child, pulling his baby sister in a makeshift toy sledge. Even though my aunt was too young to remember the scorched bottom, she still brought it (the subject, not her bottom) up on occasion.

Luke: Re your discussion of Irish laborers building railroads in Texas and the "Green Grow the Rushes" origin of “gringo”. You struck out twice. The Irish who are famous for building the railroads were the same Irish who were lucky enough to haved survived as cannon fodder for the Union ar...