Tag Archives: etymology

The Lifespan of Words (three ways)

Getting ready for DH2017 this morning, I found myself curious about the lifespan of English words–when they come into the language and when they fall out. So I got all the earliest and latest attestation dates for all the words in OED3, and plotted them out. Here are three graphs (“visualizations,” if you like), all […]

09.08.2017 – 09:38 | By D-AW | Posted in Digital Humanities, Lexicography | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

How Indigenous American words came into English

I’ve been deep in the OED documentation of borrowings and loanwords for my look at “tramlines” [see my previous post, and look out for a few more to come] and OED’s treatment of foreign, about to be naturalized, and naturalized words. I got curious about some of the Indigenous American words in my dataset, and […]

05.05.2017 – 11:18 | By D-AW | Posted in Digital Humanities, Etymology, Language and Literature in Society, Lexicography | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Etymologies

Anstruther Press has recently published Etymologies, a chapbook of poems by Asa Boxer, with an introductory essay by me: See the page at Anstruther Press for more details.

18.04.2016 – 15:15 | By D-AW | Posted in Etymology, Poetry | Tagged , | Comments (0)

Life of Words Poetry Competition

Good news for Ontario secondary school students who like words: The Life of Words is announcing the first in what will be an annual poetry competition, in which we invite submissions of poems about words and reward excellence with some pretty great prizes. Here is the competition web page, where we’ll post links, news, and […]

22.03.2016 – 15:49 | By D-AW | Posted in Etymology, Language and Literature in Society, Lexicography, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

The Colour of Greyhounds

Do you know the old joke, “What colour was Napoleon’s white horse?” Well I have another one for you: “What colour was Napoleon’s greyhound?”. Not sure? You may consult the Official Greyhound Colour Chart: Here’s how OED sums up the situation: Apparently < a first element cognate with Old Icelandic grey bitch (further etymology uncertain: […]

26.11.2015 – 11:06 | By D-AW | Posted in Etymology, Lexicography | Tagged , , , | Comments (0)

Interview with Paul Muldoon

Here are some excerpts from an interview I did with Paul Muldoon a couple of years ago, which focused on dictionaries and etymology. A full .pdf version of the interview can be downloaded here: [Interview with Paul Muldoon]. PM: I’ve never really been into the OED Online. Maybe I should. I think I might even […]

09.09.2015 – 14:26 | By D-AW | Posted in Criticism, Etymology, Lexicography, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , | Comments (0)

Method as Tautology

Although it has been available for a while in the advanced access section of Digital Scholarship in the Humanities, and before that Literary and Linguistic Computing, my article on digital methods in literary research has recently been published in its final version. The full bibliographic details are: Williams, David-Antoine. “Method as Tautology in the Digital […]

21.05.2015 – 11:42 | By D-AW | Posted in Criticism, Digital Humanities, Etymology, Lexicography, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , | Comments (2)

Published: “Geoffrey Hill’s Etymological Crux”

I’m happy to say that Modern Philology has just published a longish article of mine on etymology in Geoffrey Hill’s work, called “All corruptible things: Geoffrey Hill’s Etymological Crux.” A self-archived copy of the article may be downloaded by clicking here. [Note that a revised version of this article appears in my 2020 monograph, The […]

29.01.2015 – 16:50 | By D-AW | Posted in Criticism, Etymology, Poetry | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | Comments (1)

Misunderweared

A song from my early youth came back to me the other day. Here’s the first verse, with a rough translation in italics: Le bon roi Dagobert                       Good King Dagobert A mis sa culotte à l’envers ;           Put on his culotte backwards ; Le grand saint Éloi                         The great Saint Eligius Lui dit : Ô […]

29.09.2014 – 14:33 | By D-AW | Posted in Language and Literature in Society | Tagged , , , , | Comments (4)

Snowclone Sandwich

“Snowclone” is a word for a kind of transferable, reusable pattern of phrase, such as the original “X have Y words for Z” (on the pattern “Eskimos have fifty-five (or pick your number) words for snow“, so transferable to “The French have no word for entrepreneur“, or whatever), or “X is the new Y” (on […]

23.09.2014 – 13:47 | By D-AW | Posted in Etymology, Language and Literature in Society, Lexicography | Tagged , , , , , | Comments (0)