Posts Tagged: king

  • AI generated (with photoshop) Image of King Charles as UFC fighter with voice bubble saying "You want the crown? You come and get it!" He is not a carolingian but a windsor.

    Is Charles a Carolingian?

    The coronation of Charles III We have just left the Elizabethan era and are about to have King Charles III coronated into what some people are calling the Carolingian era. Its not really right and people are confusing what it means. My views of the monarchy have changed over the years. I do now wonder […]

  • Is Charles the best name for English kings and what are the choices?

    Will Charles keep his head?

    Australia’s new king is King Charles III. The new monarch, like his mother, has decided to keep his name as sovereign after ascending to the throne. The English monarchs and their advisors have a strong sense of history so we really need to ask: is Charles the best name for English kings and what are […]

  • 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. […]

  • Map of Ceylon, once Serendipity

    How do you get to serendipity?

    Serendipity must be one of my favourite words. Its adoption into English is a wonderful story. In 1754 Horace Walpole, the son of Prime Minister Robert Walpole, composed a letter that introduced serendipity into the English language: … It was once when I read a silly fairy tale, called The Three Princes of Serendip: as their highnesses travelled, […]

  • Marcus Aurelius every moment in time is a pinprick in eternity

    Time and tide

    Marcus Aurelius is close to the original meaning of time when he calls moments pinpricks of eternity. Time and tide both meant points or portions of time.

  • 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

  • The word "carbuncle" spearheaded Prince Charles’ attack on the designs of modern British architects. It became a popular and mainstream descriptor for ugly buildings.

    Carbuncle a gem of a word

    I struggled with the nine-letter word puzzle in the Sydney Morning Herald a few days ago (13 October 2009) to find, after rather too much time, the anagram’s solution was CARBUNCLE. I was disappointed for not recognising this delightful word which, twenty-five years before (in 1984) spearheaded Prince Charles’ attack on the designs of modern […]