http://blogs.e-rockford.com/woodonwords Can't get enough words about words with Sunday's newspaper column? Then this blog's for you, my word-craving friend. I work the late shift, so don't look for responses until the next day. Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:04:57 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en My previous two offerings were about "pair." Appropriately enough, it has two homonyms in English. One is "pare," which can mean "to cut or trim away; peel" -- hence, "paring knife." It also can mean "to reduce or diminish gradually." This definition includes the advisory that it's often used with "down," as in, ... http://blogs.e-rockford.com/woodonwords/2009/11/20/a-pair-of-homonyms/ If "pair" means "two," as discussed previously, how did we get "au pair" to apply to one person? I'm glad I asked. The word "pair" had its origin in the Latin "paria," the neutral plural of "par," which means "equal." So a pair is composed of two equal (or similar or corresponding) ... http://blogs.e-rockford.com/woodonwords/2009/11/19/a-pair-as-one/ One of the issues that may never be settled in this country is how to define a "couple" -- at least as far as marriage is concerned, or any adult relationship, for that matter. A safer word is "pair." A pair is either two of something or "a single thing made ... http://blogs.e-rockford.com/woodonwords/2009/11/18/this-one-means-two/ In Roman mythology, Cupid was the god of love, traditionally depicted as a winged boy with a bow and arrow. Generically, a cupid (lowercase) is "a naked, winged cherub, as on a valentine." The name Cupid can be traced to the Latin verb "cupere," meaning "to desire." From this comes the noun ... http://blogs.e-rockford.com/woodonwords/2009/11/13/love-child/ I received a request for a follow-up on the previous offering, and "I aims to please." To "shut out" is to exclude. In sports, a "shutout" means one team was excluded from scoring. That team was "shut out." Again following our guideline, the noun is one word (or hyphenated), the verb ... http://blogs.e-rockford.com/woodonwords/2009/11/12/opening-up-about-shut/ Here's yet another reminder on the guideline "Two words for verbs, one word or hyphenated for nouns and modifiers." This time I'll be writing about "write." To vote for someone who isn't on a ballot, you "write in" that person's name. The person then becomes a "write-in candidate" or just a ... http://blogs.e-rockford.com/woodonwords/2009/11/11/some-write-stuff/ In the interest of thoroughness, I have a few more thoughts about "gigs" and "jigs." As noted earlier, the older French "gigue," for "fiddle," may have figured in the origin of "jig." The instrument's distinctive shape also inspired two "gig-" words: A "gigot" is "a leg of mutton, lamb, veal, etc." or ... http://blogs.e-rockford.com/woodonwords/2009/11/09/how-can-there-possibly-be-more/ The dictionary's second member of the "gig" gang is a fishing term. It can be "a fish spear" or "a fish line with hooks designed to catch fish by jabbing into their bodies." It also can be a verb for such activities. It's a contraction of the earlier terms "fishgig" and "fizgig," ... http://blogs.e-rockford.com/woodonwords/2009/11/07/the-angler-angle/ The first "gig" to make its way into modern English took a long road. Its most recent ancestor is the Middle English "gigge," meaning "whirligig," which is mainly a spinning toy or a merry-go-round. That one probably descended from Scandinavian words, such as the Danish "gig" -- "whirling object" or "top" -- ... http://blogs.e-rockford.com/woodonwords/2009/11/05/versatile-but-obscure/ The first "gig" I can remember was Gig Young, the actor. His birth name was Byron Elsworth Barr; he took Gig Young from a character he played in the 1942 film "The Gay Sisters." He died in 1978, and his life story is not a happy one. And he's not ... http://blogs.e-rockford.com/woodonwords/2009/11/04/its-just-a-job/