An Interest in Etymology

On Fridays from noon until 1:00 pm, our local NPR station, KERA, produces a special Friday edition of a program called The Talk Show. It is the replacement and tribute to The Glenn Mitchell Show, whose namesake and host died in November last year. Every Friday, Glenn Mitchell would have an open question session, during which listeners would call in with questions on any topic they found to be interesting and other listeners would call in to answer them. Glenn promoted it as a show in which "all questions are answered, all knowledge revealed."

The Talk Show is not nearly as good as The Glenn Mitchell Show, but they are trying. It's still interesting to listen to.

Frequently, the subject of callers' questions involves the etymology of words. That is something I always find interesting, so I listen especially closely. I've learned quite a lot about language by listening to such programs and reading things online. One of the callers this week asked about the origin of "nickname," which I'd never thought about (that I recall). The responses came quickly; nickname is a misdivision or letter shift of eke name, which meant an additional name and was originally "an eke name." "An eke name" morphed into "a neke name" and then into "a nickname."

One of my brothers sent me a podcast from the Podictionary.com, which explained the etymology of the word "geezer." Geezer came from guise, through a series of interesting connections.

If you're interested in etymology or just words in general, here are some links you'll find interesting:

• www.podictionary.com--Unrelated to etymology, but to poetry (and found as I wandered Podictionary.com) is John W. MacDonald's weblog (he's a guy who lives in Ottawa and is interested in poetry).
  
• www.etymonline.com--It's the Online Etymology Dictionary
  
• www.m-w.com/cgi-bin/mwwod.pl --The Merriam-Webster website with word of the day


• www.westegg.com/etymology/--Etymologically Speaking site
  
• www.corsinet.com/trivia/j-triv.html--Trivia about the English language


• www.funwords.com/ --Funwords site, operated by Martha Barnette


• www.kpbs.org/Radio/DynPage.php?id=12 --A Way with Words site, a program hosted by Martha Barnette (above) and Richard Lederer (he wrote Anguished English, The Cunning Linguist, and other interesting books)

Well, we're about to go off to have tapas with our friends, making today's two meals similar...for lunch, we went to a sushi bar at which the sushi is prepared and placed on small plates that travel around the sushi bar on a conveyor sort of arrangement. Pick and choose what's of interest. Tonight, we'll pick and choose tapas of interest.