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Saturday, August 11, 2007
Is it beyond the limits of any known sense that the word "pyramid" derives from Greek soldiers' descriptions of the Egyptian mon..
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Saturday, August 11, 2007
How do the definitions of words slip and slide into something entirely different? Word wrangler John Ciardi explains how "buxom"..
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Saturday, August 11, 2007
What does it mean, exactly, to be "knocked into a cocked hat"? For that matter, what is the origin of the Shakespearean turn of ..
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Saturday, August 11, 2007
Etymologist and poet John Ciardi revisits the idiom of his youth to uncover the myriad ways in which Italian-descended people in..
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Saturday, August 11, 2007
One can trace, as poet/historian John Ciardi does, the word "rhombus" back through its Latin and Greek origins. But to do so wou..
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Saturday, August 11, 2007
In this week's pick from the word garden, etymologist John Ciardi explains how "folk word formations" occur in the least-expecte..
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Saturday, August 11, 2007
"Billion" is, in amateur numerologist John Ciardi's reckoning, "a word that seems to have been born confused." He zeroes in on t..
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Saturday, August 11, 2007
John Ciardi traces the illustrious history of his own last name, from its roots as a German surname through Longbeard detours, t..
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Saturday, August 11, 2007
Where does our traditional image of the pirate flag come from, if there is no recorded history of its actual use? John Ciardi do..
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Saturday, August 11, 2007
Poet and semantic swordsman John Ciardi resurrects another expression from the vaults of time and memory -- "to fight like Kilke..
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Saturday, August 11, 2007
Bacon, or its variants, appears in a number of common British idioms, but none is so important to civil society, apparently, as ..
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Saturday, August 11, 2007
The long and storied history of the name "Siwash" is detailed in this installment, from its origins as a French term of not-so-e..
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Saturday, August 11, 2007
When John Ciardi isn't exploring the fossilized remnants of words, he is either dredging up new uses for old ones or coining his..
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Saturday, August 11, 2007
What's in a name? When it comes to products on the market, suggests John Ciardi, it may boil down to whatever sells. Whether it'..
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Saturday, August 11, 2007
This week's segment answers a profound question for the ages: Was John Ciardi a male chauvinist? Our dogged didacticist ponders ..
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