Posts Tagged: Anglo-Saxon

  • An image of the Belle Dame Sans Merci with a verse superimposed I met a lady in the meads, Full beautiful—a faery’s child, Her hair was long, her foot was light, And her eyes were wild. A shortened version of gloaming, gloam is used in the poem.

    Gloaming in Guernsey and Tasmania

    Gloaming in Guernsey Part of my summer reading over Christmas and New Year (2019-2020) has been The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society. It is a delightful novel set in the immediate post-war period on the channel island of Guernsey. Although quite a light novel, its plot slowly and cleverly unfolds the tragedies made […]

  • Edward I in front of Stirling Castle before it is dilapidated

    How to dilapidate a castle

    When I came across the origin of the word dilapidate I was quite excited. There seemed to be the possibility of a great word of the week story behind it. However the links between the word’s origins and its current use are not clear.  There is no corroborated story about the development of the word. […]

  • Thunder ... Thor Destroys the Giant Thrym Rydberg, Viktor. 1906

    From Thor we get thunder

    As Sydneysiders suffer our dog days (see note below) the Bureau of Meteorology appease us by suggesting that thunderstorms are on their way. We pray for the sound of thunder to bring a change from the constant heat. Thunder is the sound caused by lightning as it passes through the air. Lightning heats the air […]

  • Alfred the Great ten out of ten

    2010 points to Alfred the Great

    It is the Year Two Thousand and Ten, Twenty-Ten or Oh-Ten. It is Something Ten and not the Year Something Decem, as it would be in Latin, or Something Deka, as it would be in Greek. Ten is proudly an Old English word, uninfluenced for more than a millennium by foreign language pretensions or even by marauding heathen hordes