Words for Granted - An etymology and linguistics podcast
Episodes
The Proto-Indo-European Puzzle: Interview with Laura Spinney
11 May 2026
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Ray chats with author Laura Spinney about Proto-Indo-European, the ancestral language of hundreds of modern languages spoken by b...
The Science and History of English Accents: Interview with Valerie Fridland
20 Apr 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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The History of the Alphabet: Interview with Danny Bate
17 Mar 2026
Contributed by Lukas
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Lessons on Language with the Grammar Girl (Mignon Fogerty)
02 Jan 2024
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, Ray chats with Mignon Fogerty, aka the Grammar Girl. "Good grammar" may seem like the epitome of prescriptivism, but when it comes to...
The Marvels of Translation: Interview with Keith Khan-Harris
08 Jul 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What can we learn about the nature of translation by reading a warning message in hundreds of different languages? In this episode, Keith Kahn-Harris ...
The Power (and Omnipresence) of Rhetoric: Interview with Guy Doza
20 May 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Rhetoric has a bad reputation. We tend to think of it as a linguistic tool used by polticians and marketing execs to maipulate the masses. While this ...
A Defense of "Bad" English: Interview with Valerie Fridland
27 Apr 2023
Contributed by Lukas
Instead of criticizing deviations from Standard English as "wrong," what if we celebrated them as expressive lingusitic innovations? In this conversat...
Learning New Languages: Interview with Rob Paterson
19 Mar 2023
Contributed by Lukas
What goes into building a language learning curriculum? How do designers choose features within a language learing app? Are some approaches to languag...
Combatting Bias in Linguistic AI: Interview with Courtney Napoles
22 Jan 2023
Contributed by Lukas
As Lead of Language Research at Grammarly, Courtney Napoles is building systems to better help people from around the world communicate. In this episo...
Origins of Place Names: Interview with Duncan Madden
20 Dec 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Place names are not random––behind the name of every country is a story of how it came to be. From stories of invasion and rebellion to the fantas...
Grammatical Gender: Interview with Danny Bate
07 Nov 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this interview with linguist Danny Bate, we go deep on all things gender––grammatical gender, that is. Why do some languages have gender while ...
Episode 109: Trivia
14 Sep 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Trivia refers to obscure or useless information, but this definition is a far cry from the word's etymology. Trivia, or tri-via, literally means "thre...
African American English: Interview w/ Tracey Weldon
02 Aug 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, I speak with Tracey Weldon, linguist and board advisor on the Oxford Dictionary of African American English project. We discuss the o...
Episode 108: Understand
05 Jul 2022
Contributed by Lukas
What does "standing under" have to do with "understanding?" Nothing at all, which is why most of us probably overlook the obvious fact that "understan...
Episode 107: World
22 May 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Old English, the word "world", or weorold, did not refer to a place. It was a compound word comprising wer, meaing "man", and ald, meaning "age"...
Deciphering Ancient Scripts: Interview with Silvia Ferrara
12 Mar 2022
Contributed by Lukas
Have you ever wondered how writing was invented - or, how many times it was invented? How many undeciphered scripts has the ancient world left us, a...
Episode 106: Grotesque
02 Feb 2022
Contributed by Lukas
The etymology of "grotesque" is hiding in plain sight: "grotto-esque". Originally, the word was used to describe a style of ancient art that was disco...
Episode 105: Idiot
05 Jan 2022
Contributed by Lukas
In Ancient Greece, an "idiot", or idiotes, was a "private person", which meant someone who did not hold a political office. In this episode, we explo...
Episode 104: Genius
12 Dec 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Though people of extraordinary talents and intellect have always existed, the modern sense of "genius" didn't emerge until the relatively recent 18th...
Episode 103: Run Amok
21 Nov 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Most Malay loanwords in English describe the local flora, fauna, and food of Southeast Asia. "Amok", however, is different. Amok, which describes a vi...
Episode 102: Hyperbola/Hyperbole & Ellipse/Ellipsis
23 Oct 2021
Contributed by Lukas
"Hyperbola" and "ellipse" are geometrical curves, while "hyperbole" and "ellipsis" are rhetorical terms. At face value, it's not clear how the meaning...
Episode 101: Parabola/Parable
19 Sep 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The meanings of "parabola" and "parable" have very little to do with one another, yet these words are etymological doublets of a single Greek work, p...
Episode 100: Google
21 Aug 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Before Google was the name of one of the world's biggest tech companies, "googol" was an obscure math term that meant "ten to the one hundredth power"...
Episode 99: Average
25 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
The word "average" has anything but an average etymology. If the leading theory is correct, "average" ultimately derives from an Arabic word meaning "...
Why Is English Highly Irregular? (Interview with Arika Okrent)
09 Jul 2021
Contributed by Lukas
English may be spoken by a whopping 1.5 billion ESL speakers around the world, but that doesn't mean it's an "easy" language to learn. For native Engl...
Episode 98: Lost Letters: Long s (ſ) and Ampersand (&)
27 Jun 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In many English works printed before the late 19th century, a letter unfamiliar to us today, ſ, is often used in place of the letter S. However, that...
Episode 97: Lost Letters: Ash (Æ, æ) and Ethel (Œ, œ)
30 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
If you've ever encountered the ligatures æ and œ in old texts, you may have wondered: what are they called? Where do they come from? How exactly are...
Nine Nasty Words (Interview with John McWhorter) [EXPLICIT]
16 May 2021
Contributed by Lukas
F*ck. Sh*t. C*ck. These are some of the most profane words in the English language, but what exactly makes them profane? Is there something about pr...
Episode 96: Lost Letters: Wynn (Ƿ), Insular G (ᵹ), Yogh (Ȝ)
19 Apr 2021
Contributed by Lukas
Before the letter W was invented, the rune wynn was borrowed into the Latin AngloSaxon alphabet as a way of representing the /w/ sound. The letter yog...
Episode 95: Lost Letters: Eth and Thorn (Ð,ð and Þ, þ)
14 Mar 2021
Contributed by Lukas
In Modern English, we use the TH digraph to represent the voiced and voiceless dental fricative sounds. However, English previously had two unique let...
Episode 94: The Lost Letters of the English Alphabet (Overview)
13 Feb 2021
Contributed by Lukas
You can't have the English language without the ABC's, right? Wrong. In this overview episode, we look at the history of the alphabet and the many cha...
Episode 93: Pasta
18 Jan 2021
Contributed by Lukas
'Pasta' is first attested in English during the 1800's, which is later than one might expect. However, in prior centuries, a handful of its closely re...
Episode 92: Meals (Breakfast, Lunch, and Dinner)
27 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In today's episode, we look at the etymologies of our meal words––not to mention "meal" itself. (As it turns out, "meal" has a long history of usa...
Interview with Tim Brookes, founder of Endangered Alphabets
08 Dec 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this interview episode, I speak with Tim Brookes, founder of the Endangered Alphabets Project. Among many other things, we discuss why preserving e...
Episode 91: Artichoke
22 Nov 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In ancient Greek botanical literature, there is a reference to a spiny plant called a kaktos. This word would pass into Modern English as "cactus," th...
Episode 90: Apple
25 Oct 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In this episode, we explore the etymology of the most culturally ubiquitous fruit, the apple. Etymologically, the ubiquity of the apple is fitting, si...
Episode 89: Cheese
27 Sep 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In the episode, we explore the etymology of 'cheese,' a Latin-derived word that entered the Germanic languages through trade long before the emergence...
Episode 88: Egg
17 Aug 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The word 'egg' plays a part in one of the most famous anecdotes in the written record about the evolution of the English language. In this episode, we...
Proto Indo-Europeans with Kevin Stroud of The History of English Podcast
30 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This episode features a conversation I had with Kevin Stroud of the History of English Podcast at this year's virtual Intelligent Speech conference. W...
Episode 87: Dead Ringer
07 Jun 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The idiom 'dead ringer' comes down to us from horse-racing slang, but a widely believed folk etymology links the idiom's origins to being buried alive...
Episode 86: Red Herring
17 May 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The idiom 'red herring' is used to describe a distraction from the matter at hand. Literally, a 'red herring' is a kipper––that is, a smoked and s...
Episode 85: The Proof Is in the Pudding
26 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
Of all places, why do we put the 'proof' in the 'pudding?' Like many idioms whose origins date back several centuries, the connection between the lite...
Interview with Simon Horobin, Author of "Bagels, Bumf, and Buses"
12 Apr 2020
Contributed by Lukas
In today's episode, I talk with Simon Horobin, Oxford professor and author of "Bagels, Bumf and Buses: A Day in the Life of the English Language," a b...
Episode 84: Break a Leg
25 Mar 2020
Contributed by Lukas
The etymology of 'break a leg' is disputed, but some theories hold up better than others. In today's episode, we look at a handful of plausible explan...
Episode 83: Apple of the Eye
24 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
As we all know, the idiomatic meaning of 'apple of the eye' has nothing to do with apples. As it turns out, the origins of the idiom also have nothing...
Episode 82: In a Pickle
05 Feb 2020
Contributed by Lukas
"In a pickle" is one of the oddest sounding idioms in English. It means "in a predicament or bad situation," but it's not clear what pickles have to d...
Episode 81: Idioms (General Overview)
13 Jan 2020
Contributed by Lukas
This episode begins a new series on the etymology of English idioms. In this general overview of idioms, we discuss why idioms are syntactically and s...
Episode 80: Cannibal
31 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The word 'cannibal' comes to us by way of a familiar historical figure: Christopher Columbus. The word is ultimately a Hispanicization of the name of ...
Episode 79: Philistine
14 Dec 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In common usage, a 'philistine' is a derogatory term for an anti-intellectual materialist. The word derives from the ancient Middle Eastern Philistine...
Episode 78: Bohemian
17 Nov 2019
Contributed by Lukas
As a common noun, 'bohemian' describes an artistic, carefree lifestyle usually marked by poverty and unorthodoxy. The word is derived from Bohemia, a ...
Episode 77: Gothic
20 Oct 2019
Contributed by Lukas
As someone who came of age during the late 90's, my first encounter with the word 'gothic' was through alternative music and fashion. Howev...
Interview with Steve Kaufmann, Polyglot & Co-founder of LingQ
17 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In today's episode, I interview Steve Kaufmann. Steve is a polyglot and co-founder of LingQ. He also hosts a popular language learning Youtube channe...
Episode 76: Wife
01 Sep 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In Old English, the word 'wife' meant woman. In fact, the word 'woman' derives from the word wife! Today's episode is not only an exploration of the...
Episode 75: Grandmother/Grandfather
11 Aug 2019
Contributed by Lukas
What makes your parents' parents so ... grand? In today's episode, we trace the etymology and emergence of the French-influenced kinship prefix 'grand...
Episode 74: Sibling
29 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Today, 'sibling' is one of the most basic kinship terms. However, it wasn't introduced into English until 1903 by a pair of scientists working on gene...
Episode 73: Papa/Dada/Father
12 Jul 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In today's episode, we explore the origins of some of the universal characteristics of nursery father terms in languages from around the world, most o...
Episode 72: Mama/Mom
30 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
'Mama' is a mysterious word. In the vast majority of languages around the world, the word for 'mama' sounds something like ... 'mama.' In today's epis...
Episode 71: Noah Webster's Dictionary
15 Jun 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Noah Webster is best known as the father of the first truly American dictionary. However, Webster's dictionary faced an uphill struggle for recognitio...
Episode 70: Noah Webster (Early Works and Spelling Reforms)
26 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Noah Webster is best known for his 'all-American' dictionary, but in today's episode, we take a look at Webster's earlier works including The Grammati...
Episode 69: OK
05 May 2019
Contributed by Lukas
'OK' is the most spoken and most written word in the entire world. It's such a fundamental part of modern communication that it's hard to imagine the ...
Episode 68: Yankee
13 Apr 2019
Contributed by Lukas
Today, the most relevant usage of the word 'Yankee' is probably in the name of the baseball team, but etymologically, 'Yankee' has nothing to do with ...
Episode 67: The American Pronunciation of R (Rhoticity)
31 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
One of the most defining characteristics of the Standard American English accent is its 'rhoticity,' or the pronunciation of the letter R. Unlike Stan...
Episode 66: The Emergence of the American Lexicon
12 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The English spoken in America began to diverge from the English spoken in Britain shortly after British settlers arrived in the New World. In today's ...
Interview with Lynne Murphy, Author of "The Prodigal Tongue"
04 Mar 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In today's episode, I interview linguist, professor, blogger, and author Lynne Murphy about her book, The Prodigal Tongue: The Love-Hate Relationship ...
Episode 65: Dialect vs. Language
20 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
'American English' is the variety of English spoken in the United States of America ... obviously. But is American English a language unto itself or a...
Episode 64: France
01 Feb 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The name of France derives from the name of a Germanic tribe called the Franks. In addition to the name of France, the namesake of the Franks also pro...
Episode 63: Turkey
14 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
In today's episode, we explore the etymological connection between Turkey the country and turkey the bird. Even though turkeys are native to North Ame...
Episode 62: Cincinnati
05 Jan 2019
Contributed by Lukas
The American city of Cincinnati derives from a patriotic fraternal organization called The Society of Cincinnati. The society itself is named after Ci...
Episode 61: International Names of Germany
17 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
There are more etymologically different names for Germany than there are for any other European country. This is due to a long history of disunity amo...
Episode 60: Wales
02 Dec 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The English name for the country of 'Wales' is not native to Wales itself. It actually has origins in a derogatory term given by the AngloSaxons to th...
Episode 59: Proper Place Names (General Overview)
16 Nov 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today's episode kicks off a new series on 'toponymy,' or the study of place names. In this general overview, we take a look at some of the historical ...
Episode 58: Gymnasium
30 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Nowadays, a gym is a place for fitness and exercise. It's a shortening of the word gymnasium, which derives from the Greek word gymnasion. In the Anci...
Episode 57: Category
15 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the court system of Ancient Athens, the kategoria was a formal accusation. However, when the philosopher Aristotle borrowed the word kategoria to e...
Episode 56: Apology
01 Oct 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The Modern English word 'apology' derives from the Ancient Greek word apologia. However, in the Ancient Greek work known as Plato's Apology, Plato doe...
Episode 55: Sophisticated
12 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In Modern English, sophistication is a desirable characteristic. However, the word derives from sophistry, an Ancient Greek intellectual movement with...
Episode 54: Philosophy
02 Sep 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the pre-modern world, philosophy referred to all forms of intellectual knowledge. Today, the discipline of philosophy is just one aspect of the tra...
Episode 53: They
20 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The pronoun 'they' was borrowed into English from Old Norse. Pronouns within a language tend to be conservative over time, so this borrowing of a fore...
Episode 52: Linguistic Subjectification (Very, Really, Literally, etc.)
01 Aug 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Subjectification is a unique linguistic process by which a word evolves to reflect the subjective viewpoint of the speaker using it. For example, the ...
Episode 51: The
17 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The word 'the' is the sole definite article in the English language. It's also the most common word in our language. However, for such a grammatically...
Interview with Steve Guerra (The History of the Papacy Podcast)
06 Jul 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In this conversation, Steve and I discuss the linguistic influence of the King James Bible and some common English idioms that have Biblical etymologi...
Episode 50: -ly (Adverbial Suffix)
30 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Adverbs ending in the -ly suffix are all contractions hiding in plain sight. -ly is cognate with the word 'like,' and indeed, it literally means … '...
Episode 49: To Be
14 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
To be or not to be? Well, if you're conjugating the verb, you're most likely using a form that does not sound like 'to be.' 'To be' is the most irregu...
Episode 48: History of English Grammar (General Overview)
04 Jun 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Grammar is one of the defining features of language. In today's episode, we look at some of the fundamentals of grammar in general, and then take a br...
Episode 47: Secular
05 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Today's episode serves as an epilogue to the series on Biblical etymology. Secular means 'unaffiliated with religion,' but originally, it was a word u...
Episode 46: God (and His Biblical Names)
24 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The word 'God' is not derived from the original Biblical texts. Rather, it's a term from Germanic paganism that was adapted to Christianity...
Episode 45: Hell
01 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
In the Bible, the word Hell is a common English translation of three Greek and Hebrew words, but the meanings of those words hardly resemble Hell as w...
Episode 44: Letter J
06 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
The letter J is a direct descendent of the letter I. Based on their dissimilar sounds, it's an unlikely genetic connection, and today's story explores...
Episode 43: Demon
20 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Greek gods. Golden Age heroes. Our conscience. Guardian angels. Evil spirits. All of these things and more were once associated with the word daimon, ...
Episode 42: Church
26 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
On average, the word 'church' appears in English bibles 115 times. However, kuriakon, the word from which 'church' derives, only appears in the origin...
Episode 41: Thou
14 Jan 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Up until Modern English, the English language distinguished between its singular and plural second-person pronouns. Thou was the singular, and ye was ...
Episode 40: Biblical Etymology (General Overview)
31 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Today's episode serves as an introduction to an extended series on Biblical etymology. In it, we discuss the difficulties of translating ancient texts...
Episode 39: Eleven/Twelve
15 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
When compared to the other numbers between ten and twenty, the words for eleven and twelve stick out like a sore thumb. If they followed the construct...
Episode 38: Algebra/Algorithm
01 Dec 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The emergence of the words algebra and algorithm can be traced back to the life of one man, an Arabic mathematician named Al-Kworizmi. Toda...
Episode 37: Chemistry
27 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Chemistry as we know it is a rational science. However, both the word chemistry and the science of chemistry itself evolved out of the pre-scientific ...
Episode 36: Serendipity
11 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Unlike most Arabic loanwords, the word serendipity was not borrowed from a foreign language, but invented by an eighteenth century Englishman. It's ba...
Episode 35: Arabic Loanwords in English
24 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Today's episode serves as an intro to a series on Arabic loanwords in English. As a Semitic language, Arabic is very foreign to English. We take a loo...
Episode 34: Saturday/Sunday
11 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
At last, the finale in the Words for Granted series on days of the week! 'Saturday' comes from a root that literally means 'day of Saturn.' Unlike the...
Episode 33: Thursday/Friday
19 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Part four of the days of the week miniseries! This time, we investigate Thursday and Friday, or Thor's Day and Frigg's Day. Like the other days of the...
Episode 32: Wednesday
02 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In Old English, the word for Wednesday was Wodnesdaeg, which literally meant 'Woden's day.' It comes from a loan translation of the Latin dies mercuri...
Episode 31: Monday/Tuesday
14 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In today's episode, we begin our investigation of the etymologies of each day of the week. Both Monday and Tuesday are ultimately loan translations of...