Peter Trudgill
05 February 2025
The Greenland-eyeing monster
If Donald Trump really wants to take control of this Danish territory, he’ll need to get to grips with Inuit or Old Norse
Read the full article29 January 2025
Inconstant Constantine
Istanbul has had many names over time – including Greek, Latin and Byzantine versions – before settling on its Turkish incarnation
Read the full article22 January 2025
What a mist opportunity
English spelling is notoriously difficult to learn; how might we benefit by reforming it – and what would we lose?
Read the full article15 January 2025
’Twas the night before Romjul
There is usually a way to translate supposedly untranslatable words into English – even if it does take a bit longer
Read the full article08 January 2025
A river runs through it
Aberdeen may be in Scotland, but its name derives from the Welsh for river mouth. Why?
Read the full article01 January 2025
The pet name of the game
Pet names, known technically as hypocoristics, often use abbreviation, rhyming, and vowel changes to express familiarity and fondness
Read the full article18 December 2024
Is it too much to aks?
The verb ‘to ask’ may have already been transposed in the past, but it took a lot longer for it to be used as a noun
Read the full article11 December 2024
The Farage garage barrage
The pronunciation of his name has always been debatable, but its origin seems clear enough – and it’s not from the Huguenots
Read the full article04 December 2024
Monolingual world rule
Trump is descended from immigrants and has a multilingual family. Why is he not more tolerant of bilingual arrivals?
Read the full article27 November 2024
Words that were borrowed but never returned
Many languages, including English, contain loan words ‘borrowed’ from other languages. But there is one notable exception – Icelandic
Read the full article20 November 2024
Chagrin of the Chagossians
This ethnic group of Afro-Indian origin have their own language, derived from French after their ancestors were brought to the islands as slaves
Read the full article13 November 2024
Was Ludwig van Beethoven actually a famous Belgian?
Discussions on whether there are any famous Belgians often throw up the same names – but very rarely is Beethoven one of those suggested
Read the full article07 November 2024
In praise of small boats
Our English language was brought to us across the North Sea by boatmen landing on the east coast
Read the full article30 October 2024
Joe Green and a name to envy
What links Philip Glass, Volodymyr Zelensky and Giuseppe Verdi?
Read the full article23 October 2024
The same but different
Contronyms – words like ‘sanction’ and ‘cleave’ – are a puzzling phenomenon in English, in that they have two opposite meanings
Read the full article09 October 2024
Fishing for gold in Paris
The word repechage was heard regularly at this summer’s Olympics, but its modern usage bears little relation to its original meaning
Read the full article02 October 2024
What makes a good Burgher?
Why does the Sri Lankan cricket squad have a player with such an English-sounding surname as Mathews?
Read the full article25 September 2024
Talking Türkiye
President Erdoğan wants English speakers to pronounce his country’s name differently. Will he succeed?
Read the full article18 September 2024
The chaotic origins of gas
Flemish physician Jan Baptist van Helmont was the first to recognise gases other than air, and coined the word ‘gas’, from the Greek ‘chaos’
Read the full article11 September 2024
Why athletes are good sports
Reports about the Olympic Games in Paris illustrate the differences in sporting language between American and British English
Read the full article04 September 2024
Mind your Ps and Ts
What do you get when you mix Ancient Greek with Scottish Gaelic? An almost flightless mountain bird
Read the full article28 August 2024
Modern talk in Ancient Rome
Many slang and everyday Latin words, rather than upper-class vocabulary, shaped modern languages such as French and Spanish
Read the full article21 August 2024
Making merry with placenames
In medieval times a ford over a stream would have been somewhere to play, and this is reflected in their names
Read the full article07 August 2024
Wherefore art thou?
One of the most famous questions in English literature is often misunderstood by modern readers
Read the full article31 July 2024
Following the garden path
This technical terminology is easily understood and describes the act of parsing playful sentences that are designed to confuse
Read the full article24 July 2024
Taking divan inspiration
Rather surprisingly, the French word for ‘customs’ is related to the English word for a low sofa-bed
Read the full article17 July 2024
By the rivers of Anglia
Some of England’s waterways are named after the towns they flow through, rather than the other way round – a process known as back-formation
Read the full article10 July 2024
A medieval jig with a violin
Why are the German and English names for stringed instruments so different?
Read the full article03 July 2024
The long and the short of it
The addition of suffixes to indicate a change in size is a common feature of many languages – but the word ‘cello’ is a unique example
Read the full article26 June 2024
Hello from the other side
The use of the word ‘hi’ as a greeting in Britain began in the early 1960s – probably influenced by American TV programmes and films
Read the full article19 June 2024
Language on the move
The geographical spread of Romansh in Switzerland is shrinking as speakers start to use the German of their near neighbours
Read the full article12 June 2024
Me, myself and muggins here
Its origin is uncertain, but the term ‘muggins’ is one of the very few alternative first-person pronouns to ‘I’ and ‘me’ in the English language
Read the full article