July 9, Word Origins

Wednesday, July 9, for the benefit of Karen James and anyone else who thinks it might be interesting to know whether a word came from medieval French, or ancient Germanic tribes, or somewhere else, and why…

A game. A game with dictionaries (online or otherwise). If you like words and you have a dictionary that has etymologies, have it handy. Oxford English Dictionary is a bonus (IF it's an edition with word histories). American Heritage Dictionary is perfect, if (as above) it has at the ends of words something that looks like <ME <OE (which would mean (from Middle English, from Old English) or <Fr (from French). Any dictionary might have that.

If this is making your eyes roll back, never mind. You can play without a book, too. Just a few people need books. Or if you have two internet portals, keep your best-keyboard option open to the chat, and with the other you can find words for the game, or look up to see if the plays are correct.

Karen James has developed a curiosity (perhaps temporary) and I want to stop filling up her facebook page. I would rather fill up two hours of chat.

9:30 my time and Jill's (Mountain Savings Time) Wednesday morning. Yours… maybe the same or different. Time notes

The discussion, on Karen's page, for anyone not already spooked by the whole topic: https://www.facebook.com/karen.james.1023/posts/652456298157523

If you're reading this by e-mail and you need a path to the chatroom, click on the title to get to the blog, which has a tab up to the left with the link and password.