http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/nxyv.htm#N1

This is the last issue of the World Wide Words newsletter in its present form. It’s been fun for the past 18 years, but writing a scheduled weekly newsletter has become increasingly arduous. After months of indecision this issue, number 900, seemed a good point at which to stop.

But it’s not the end, ( Read more... )

http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/nxyv.htm#N2

The redesigned website is now online. This should make it much easier to read pages on mobile devices with small screens. I’ve removed some little-used features and simplified the site navigation. Your comments on the new format and reports of any problems will be welcome.

To complicate matters, the ( Read more... )

http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/nxyv.htm#N3

Immensikoff. Hilary Powers commented, “One reason for the name’s attachment may be its appropriateness for the garment described in the quote - the greatcoat in question was clearly a shuba, a fur-lined overcoat designed for the Russian winter. I can still remember my college Russian teacher describing ( Read more... )

http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/nxyv.htm#N4

A correspondent identified only as J Hooker wrote a disgusted letter to the Lady’s Newspaper of London in January 1863 about slovenly and unhygienic rural servants in France:

If I were to do more than hint at their hydrophobic habits, their pulicidal, pulicivorous, and even phtheirophagous propensities, ( Read more... )

http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/nxyv.htm#N5
[Q] From Katya Epstein: In the movie The Producers, Max Bialystock says to Leo Bloom, “Am I correct in my assumption, you fish-faced enemy of the people?” Does fish-faced have a specific meaning, or did Brooks write this because Gene Wilder looks kind of like a fish?
[A] You may say that of Wilder. I’m ( Read more... )

http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/nxyv.htm#N6

• Perpetuity isn’t what it used to be, Rob Bernstein discovered on reading an advertising email: “Buy a one year perpetual license for Iron Speed Designer and receive an extra year of updates and support for free!”

• Lee Schlesinger was amused by a headline in the Boston Globe of 9 October: “Police ( Read more... )

http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/nohz.htm#N1

Habiliments. “Your article on habiliments,” emailed John Walmsley, “brought to mind a word used by my great-uncle (and others of his generation) in the 1970s in County Fermanagh, Northern Ireland. It may still be in use there. My great-uncle referred to one’s underwear as ‘your decibels’. (The spelling ( Read more... )

http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/nohz.htm#N2

I was leafing, if that’s the right word, through a digital copy of an issue of the Strand Magazine, most famous as the publisher of Arthur Conan Doyle’s stories about Sherlock Holmes, when this word almost jumped off the page. It was in a story about a child pickpocket who might have come from the pages ( Read more... )

http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/nohz.htm#N3
[Q] From Ozer Bergman: If I had a poached egg for breakfast, did I have contraband?
[A] You might guess that we have yet another case of English words of the same spelling and pronunciation that have arrived in the language from different sources. But that may not be true in this case. Bear with me, it’s ( Read more... )

http://www.worldwidewords.org/nl/nohz.htm#N4

• Alan Clayton writes in numerical wonderment, “I just searched Google for a walking route around Reims and one hit was ‘Find over 0 of the best walking routes in Reims ...’. Unfortunately there were only just over -1 of them.”

• The Herald Sun of Australia surprised Barbara McGilvray with news of the ( Read more... )