Television? The word is half Greek, half Latin. No good can come of it. C.P. Scott, editor of the Manchester Guardian Hybrid formations are words made up of elements derived from different languages. Some people can get very annoyed about this, as did C.P. Scott, above, back in the early days of television. Scott was … Continue reading Hybrid Words
ɔɪkəʊˈfjuːʤɪk Oikofugic: Having a desire to leave home, an urge to wander or travel This word was coined in 1904 by the psychologist G. Stanley Hall, in his two-volume opus Adolescence: Its Psychology and Its Relations to Physiology, Anthropology, Sociology, Sex, Crime, and Religion. (Given the title, it’s amazing that he managed to hold it … Continue reading Oikofugic
I’ve always loved words: unusual words, technical words, words with interesting etymologies, words that are often misused. For a while at the end of the last millennium, I wrote little filler items about words for the British Medical Journal, under the slightly self-congratulatory title Words to the Wise. Some have survived to become accessible on … Continue reading Words: Introduction