Words for Granted - An etymology and linguistics podcast
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Words for Granted is a podcast that looks at how words change over time. Host Ray Belli uses linguistic evolution as a way of understanding larger historical and cultural changes.
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, pa...
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"...
The word "average" has anything but an average etymology. If the leading theory is correct, "average" ultimately derives from an Arabic word meaning "...
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...
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 ...
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 t...
F*ck. Sh*t. C*nt. These are some of the most profane words in the English language, but what exactly makes them profane? Is there something about pro...
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...
In this episode, I speak with author Ralph Keyes. Ralph's new book, The Hidden History of Coined Words, is an exuberant celebration of the malleabilit...
Words for Granted has partnered with Rebecca Deitsch (Harvard University) to offer a Latin 101 course to listeners. To learn more and RSVP, please fil...