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Blog postOriginally posted in May 2015
So, duh moment. Did you know that the noun fence--like, you know, the thing around your yard--is from defense? Yeah. Duh. I'd never paused to consider that, perhaps because the spelling has ended up different, but there you go! It has been a shortening of defense with the same meaning since the 14th century. Then sense of that enclosure followed in the 15th century.
It had a similar verb meaning at the same times too, with the "to sword-fight" -
Blog postThis is another revisit...and since we were all sheltering at home for the last months of the school year, one that we're probably all thinking about with longing. ;-) Coming at you originally from May of 2015, when Rowyn was only 7 and Xoe was 9, which of course gave me all the "awwww"s when I saw the picture I had in this one, from the year before that. ;-) (Still not sure how my babies are now going into 7th and 10th!)
~*~
Since someone asked me about this over the weeke -
Blog postOriginally published June 2015
We've all heard it through the grapevine (and some of us might break into song at the mere mention...), but do you know where the saying comes from?
I didn't--but I learned recently so thought I'd share. =)
Grapevine, meaning "a rumor" or "information spread in an unconventional method," comes from the Civil War era South. The "grapevine telegraph" was much like the "underground railroad." Metaphorical and s -
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Blog postLeave it to my daughter to lean over in the middle of church and whisper, "Word of the week!" during the sermon--which is exactly what happened when my dad shared this fun little tidbit. ;-)
Did you know that salary is from the same root as salt? Salary has meant "wages, compensation" since the 13th century, and the word comes from the Latin salarium (same meaning), which is closely linked to salarius, "of or pertaining to salt." Some sources say it's because -
Blog postHello, lovely readers!
I'm going to be taking this week off the blog...and will be migrating it to my website. So if you're visiting right now, you may see a few hiccups as I get everything transferred. But after that, it should (I hope and pray!) all just go automatically there. Say a prayer for me, LOL.
Thanks for your patience! -
Blog postAt the time of writing this (the weekend before it posts), I'm sitting with my laptop at the kitchen table while my husband's comfy in our leather armchair, reading The Nature of a Lady before I have to turn it in on June 1. I'm so very blessed to have a honey who supports my writing--not just because he makes sure I have ample time to actually write, but because he does this too. He reads. He chuckles. He talks to me about the characters and settings and themes as he reads. And, most of all, be
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Blog postOriginally published on 9/3/2012 Today I'm going to examine the origin of a particular phrase rather than a particular word. 😉 Back in the day when I originally examined this, as I was working on Whispers from the Shadows, my hero was exclaiming something about how it was time to take action himself, since those who ought to be continued to...Sit on their hands?Twiddle their thumbs?Do nothing, but that was far too boring an option for his current state of mind. So Roseanna headed to www.etymonl
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Blog postIn last weekend's sermon, my dad preached from Luke 14, and as he went through the Scriptures, something interesting jumped out at me.
First is something that has struck me many times before, in many different passages. Jesus, often about some other task, comes across someone in need. Sometimes He's at dinner. Sometimes He's traveling. Sometimes He's on his way to heal someone else. And what does He always, inevitably do when He sees this other hurting soul? He stops. He heals them. Why? < -
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Blog postOriginally published 10/15/2012
Okay, y'all, I originally posted this seven and a half years ago, and my call for actual evidence to support the claim below netted me nothing but others who were curious, LOL. So I'm trying again--because this claim has since even appeared on Big Bang Theory, touted by Sheldon. So, seriously, people. Someone defend the claim, or I shall be forced to call Sheldon a liar. 😂
So here's the deal. I've heard from quite a few sources tha -
Blog postOriginally posted 3/6/14
I've blogged several times over the years about JOY. What it is, how it's action and choice and not emotion, how it compares to happiness. In some ways, this post from six years ago started it all, so I thought we'd do a revisit. =)
Last week the small Bible study group I belong to began a study focused around James. I've always loved this little book of the Bible, so I was pretty happy to learn that's what we would be studying. My hubby's leading us this ti -
Blog postOriginally posted 8/20/12
Mean is one of those words that I knew well would have been around forever, but I looked it up to see about some of the particular uses. And as usual, found a few surprises. =)
As a verb, mean has meant "intend, have in mind" even back in the days of Old English. No surprise there. It shares a root with similar words in Dutch and German and various other languages, perhaps from men, which means "think." But the unexpec -
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Blog postLet me share a few stories with you. You've probably heard them before. They're stories about some of the Great Men of Faith in our recent history. First, one of my favorites about George Muller. One morning at his orphanage, he was informed by a panicked house mother that there was absolutely no food left. What were they to do? How were they to feed the children?
Well, George instructed her to have all the children sit at their places at the table, plates and cups before them--empty. And -
Blog postOriginally posted on 8/13/12
Once upon a time, I was looking up "war zone," and in so doing came across some interesting tidbits on zone. =)The noun dates to the late fourteenth century, coming directly from the Latin zona, which means "a geographical belt, celestial zone." The Latin, in turn, comes from the Greek zone, which was the word for "belt." Originally this was used solely to talk of the five great divisions on the surface of the earth-- -
Blog postLast week, my husband asked one of those questions of his that really get me thinking--the sort that sounds straightforward but isn't. He said, "What's the purpose of praise?"
Now, I already knew that things like the psalms and even our modern praise and worship songs never stir my hubby's heart like they do other people's. That's just not how he's made. Which in turn lends him an interesting perspective on it and makes him question whether the POINT is to be moved by it...or som -
Blog postThis is a very appropriate revisit from 2012, I thought since we're only a few days away from May 1. As in, May Day. Ha...ha...ha...😉
Anyway!
Mayday, according to "The Wireless Age" from June 1923, is an aviator distress call. It was agreed that just saying the letters SOS wouldn't do--that was the agreed upon message for telegraph, but it didn't translate so well to spoken words. The powers that be also decided a simple "Help!" wouldn't do. So they chose -
Blog postOriginal post published 4/30/2015
Passion: though its current definition involves "any strong feeling," it has its roots in pain. Passion comes straight from the Latin passio, which means, quite simply, "suffering."
So our English idea of being passionate about something...it means not just something we feel strongly about, but something we're willing to suffer for.
Susan Meissner pointed this out in a great class at ACF -
Blog postOriginally posted August 27, 2012
Though a revisit, this remains one of my favorite word discoveries!
I always thought of wow as a modern word. So when I looked it up, I was shocked to see that it's from 1510!
Wow is a Scottish interjection, one of those that arise from a natural sound we make when surprised by something. Much like whoa, ow, ouch, huh, and the like.
It became a verb in more modern days, though--we only started wowing people in the 1920s, originatin -
Blog postI have dedicated this week to an At-Home Writing Retreat...Since I couldn't attend my IN PERSON writing retreat with my dear friend Stephanie Morrill this year. Therefore, I am pulling a "Thoughtful" post from the archives today. I hope you are all staying sane during this strange season we find ourselves in. I've revisited this one before. But it definitely feels relevant today. Original post published 6/30/2016
Life is hard. So often we feel pressure. People are pushi -
Blog postHolidays mean food. (So do regular days, LOL.) And this year, with trying to limit our trips to the store, I'm making more of an effort than usual to make sure all leftovers get eaten. Which led me to pull everything out of the fridge and declare dinner a smorgasbord of leftovers (when else do you get to have pizza with a side of mashed potatoes? This is awesome.). Which, of course, led my daughter to ask, "What does smorgasbord even mean? What a weird word."
I replied, "I t -
Blog postIt's Holy Week. My favorite week of the year. Most of my friends and family are Christmas diehards, but us? My husband and I have always preferred Resurrection Day and the week leading up to it. The week when the focus isn't on gifts but on sacrifice.
This year, everything looks so different, doesn't it? A couple of months ago when talking about what we'd do this week, we were considering things like finding a Good Friday service at another local church, since ours doesn't have one. My hus -
Blog postI've looked at the word fast before, but I was specifically focusing on the adjective/adverb form (and why we don't add -ly to it anymore). Today I wanted to take a look at the verb/noun form. Seems appropriate as we enter Holy Week, the end of the period of Lenton fasting, which contains one of the two days traditionally requiring a fast (Good Friday). 😁
As a quick reminder, the adj/adv form originally meant "firmly fixed." This is preserved today in steadfast. A reminder I hav -
Blog postHoly Week will soon be upon us ~ my favorite week of the year. Better, in my opinion, than Christmas, where it's so easy to focus on the physical traditions instead of the miracle. Because this week is all about the miracle. The miracle that rewrote history, restored us to God, brought eternity to us all.
Holy Week will soon be upon us, and so I'm starting to think about what that means. Especially this year, when normal traditions have been, er, interrupted. Last weekend, one of the verse -
Blog postI found this one on another trending list at Etymonline.com -- and found it quite interesting! Did you know that curfew is literally "cover fire"? It's from the Old French cuevrefeu -- cuevre being "cover" and feu, of course, being "fire." Why?
Well, it began in the Middle Ages, when a bell would ring at 8 or 9 p.m., signaling everyone to douse their fires...so that no one would fall asleep, leave the fires unattended, and so burn the whole village -
Blog postI'll never forget the first time I watched Monsters, Inc. with the kids. We'd rented it so were watching it at home. Both of them were pretty small. They laughed in all the right places--and the grabbed hold of my arms and scrambled into my lap at the expected ones too. They--and I--thoroughly enjoyed the movie. But what I remember most isn't honestly the plot or the names of the characters or anything like that. What I remember most is the bad guy. Or rather, one particular trait of the bad guy
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Blog postTalking about some secretive words today. 😉
In one of our family devotionals last week, there was a quote from a "mystic" of millennia past, and we found ourselves wondering where the word came from.
Mystic comes from the Greek mystikos, meaning "secret, connected to the mysteries." Sometimes today I hear any ancient scholar deemed a mystic being occult . . . but that connotation didn't come around until 1610, long after the word was applied to those who spoke or
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