Category: Word Trivia

songs

episode – First a Greek dialogue between two songs, it is from eis, “into,” and hodos, “way.” More…

lyric poetry – Characterized by an expression of the poet’s personal feelings—and originally descriptive of songs accompanied by the lyre (examples are John Keats and Percy Bysshe Shelley). More…

melodrama – Meaning “song play,” it has a Greek origin—from melos, “music, song”—and it started out as a sensational play interspersed with songs. More…

vaudeville – Comes from a French composer calling his songs “chanson du Vau de vire”—”song of the valley of Vire (in Normandy)”—later shortened to “vau de ville.” More…

useful

alpha version, preview version, beta version – Alpha version describes a development status that usually means the first complete version of a program or application, which is most likely unstable, but is useful to show what the product will do to, usually, a selected group—and is also called preview version; the beta version is usually the last version before wide release, often tested by users under real-world conditions. More…

index fossil – One useful for dating and demonstrating the relation between strata in which it is found. More…

putti – Cupids that make themselves useful, as in old paintings; the singular is putto. More…

decorative arts – Any of the arts that create entities that are both useful and beautiful. More…

thick

foggy, fog – Foggy first meant “covered with a grass; mossy; boggy,” as fog first meant “coarse grass” and evolved to mean “thick, murky” in relation to atmosphere. More…

riley – Has two meanings: thick and turbid, or angry and irritable. More…

baobab tree – Is so thick—up to 30 feet across—that some African tribes hollow them out so families can live inside. More…

thumb – From Old English thuma, “thick, swollen.” More…

mineral

diamond – Developed from adamant—the name of the hardest stone or mineral of ancient times—from Latin adamans, from Greek adamas, “invincible” (a-, “not,” and daman, “to tame”). More…

Formica – Got its name from being created as a substitute “for mica,” a mineral. More…

mineral – Etymologically “something obtained by mining,” from Latin minera, “ore.” More…

snow – Technically a mineral, it is Teutonic in origin, from an Indo-European root shared by the Latin words niv-/nix and Greek nipha; the spelling snow first appeared in English around 1200. More…