Grace Tierney's Blog

Hello,

This week’s word comes with thanks to Samuel Johnson’s famous dictionary of the English language. He includes several intriguing word histories along with his definitions and I couldn’t resist following up on what he says about the word bribe.

He defines it as “a reward given to pervert the judgement, or corrupt the conduct.” That definition hasn’t changed since 1755. He also gives the etymology and says it comes from French “originally signifies a piece of bread, and is applied to any piece taken from the rest; it is therefore likely, that a bribe originally signified, among us, a share of any thing unjustly got.”

Bribe is now used as both a verb and a noun and both arrived into English in the 1300s. Unfortunately I don’t have any photos of my own bread-making moments so you’ll have to make do with this delicious bread from Milan, which I promise was not given to me as a bribe.

Some more research tells me that yes, bribe came to English from Old French where bribe was a gift, or a hunk of bread given to beggars. Old French also had the word bribeor (beggar) thanks to the verb briber (to beg). Spanish and Italian have cousin words briba (vagrancy) and birbone (vagrant). There is some debate about the origin of the word before that point with suggestions being made about breva in Breton and briwo (to break) in Welsh which imply a Celtic source but that’s far from certain.

While the importance of bread in daily life makes the begging and sharing of bread logical to me, I’m less sure about bribing somebody with a loaf. Having said that, freshly baked bread is a very tempting thing. Perhaps I could be bribed with bread.

Also this week – I had a really fun chat with Art on the Cozy Christmas podcast recently about my book “Words Christmas Gave Us” (find all the ways to get my books here) and it’s available now for listeners.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder.

Hello,

This week’s word is lunting, with thanks to a writing friend Maera Black, who suggested it to me years ago as an interesting obscure word. It made it to my list but never made it to the blog, until now.

Lunting means to relax walking while smoking a pipe. I don’t smoke, but I did a little fake lunting when dressed as Sherlock a few years ago and I can promise you, it is relaxing.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary the first use of lunting was in 1786 in the writing of Robbie Burns, the Scottish poet. That sent me to my Scots Dictionary but sadly lunting wasn’t listed there. However the online Scottish National Dictionary has multiple listings including one dating to the early 1800s for a lunt being a match or other flammable material used to light your pipe or fire.

The word comes from lont in Dutch which was a match or a fuse. It has a cousin word in Middle Low German – lunte – with the same meaning. So this word is one the Dutch gave us.

We don’t see too many gentlemen, or ladies, lunting these days, but the idea of an excuse to wander off for a stroll alone with your thoughts is appealing all the same. Perhaps we could lunt with a good book instead?

Until next time happy reading, writing, lunting, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder.

Hello,

This week’s word was a suggestion by blog subscriber, Philip – amalgamate – and it sent me off to photograph our barometer.

To trace the history of amalgamate (to combine into one organisation or structure) we first have to dive into the earlier arrival in the English dictionary – amalgam. It starts its English history around the year 1400 when it was a blend of mercury with another metal. Hence the “falling mercury” of my barometer. It’s not mercury though. There’s none in my home as we now understand mercury is best kept in chemical labs and specialist locations rather than everyday homes.

Amalgam came from amalgame in Old French and before than from amalgama in Latin for the same thing. It was a word used by alchemists and probably also stopped by al-malgham in Arabic (a soft poultice for sores). Before that you’re looking at malagma in Greek (softening substance). I’m hoping that early users of this word didn’t apply mercury to sores and wounds but honestly historic medicine is somewhat horrific when judged with modern eyes.

By the late 1500s you could use the word as a verb, amalgamise, to reduce to a soft mass through combination with mercury.

By the early 1600s we had amalgamation – the act of compounding mercury with another metal and by the mid 1600s we had amalgamate, our suggested word, a verb meaning to mix a metal with mercury.

The modern meaning, often used in connection with company mergers and acquisitions didn’t arise until the late 1700s. I was unable to trace how the word transitioned from the field of chemistry (where it is still used with its original meaning) to business. However it would be rational to assume that the rising use of chemical processes in business and industry led to some overlap of vocabulary and hence the expansion into amalgamating companies.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder. There’s an issue out this Friday (14 November 2025), so sign up now to avoid missing out on more wordy fun.

Hello,

Haggard Hawks (otherwise known as language author, Paul Anthony Jones) mentioned mediocre’s roots on twitter ages ago and I’m only getting to checking it out now. A mediocre effort on my behalf.

The meaning of mediocre is “of average quality”. Interestingly it suffers from being average. Technically that means it’s dead in the middle, neither good, nor bad. But in a modern world where superlatives reign and everything has to be absolutely amazing, average isn’t good enough. Describing something as mediocre nowadays means it’s of poor quality.

Mediocre joined the English language in the 1500s, meaning neither good nor bad. It came from médiocre in French and before than from Latin mediocris. This is where it gets interesting. The Latin word is formed from medius (middle). You might spot the link to medium, for example. But the second half of the word comes from ocris – a jagged mountain. It has cousin words in Greek and Welsh (ochr) and comes from a Proto Indo European root word – ak – sharp, point, or pierce.

So mediocre literally means to be halfway up a jagged mountain.

I love that etymology and yes, I’ve been guilty of stopping, to gather my breath, and inflicting it on my walking companion. I’m not sorry!

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder.

Hello,

This week’s blog is a day late as I was away for the weekend, staying in a tiny castle, pictured below. It’s a gate lodge in Cork at Anne’s Grove, restored by the Irish Landmark Trust, and was the perfect spot to relax with Mr Wordfoolery. As it was built in the 1800s, it never came under attack or needed defensive crenelations, but it has them all the same. Couldn’t be a castle without them, in my opinion.

Crenelations are the square notches on a castle’s battlements (or the uppy-downy bits as I called them when younger). They are designed to allow archers and other defenders to target attackers.

To crenelate arrived in English in the 1800s as a verb but of course castles had crenelations long before that time. It can also be spelled with a double L. An earlier word for the same thing was carnel (in the early 1300s) which came from Old French crenelé. The carnel was a small notch which ultimately came from crena in Latin.

Crena is also related to the word cranny (a small opening or crevice) but you never hear a castle described as having defensive crannies. Perhaps if your defenders were older ladies you could have defensive grannies. I would never go up against those fearsome women.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder.

Hello,

As I type this morning I’m listening to heavy rain battering my somewhat bedraggled late October garden. Anybody outside right now is going to be drenched. Apparently that includes my daughter whose college decided to conduct a fire drill on a very wet day. The trick is to bring your umbrella with you when evacuating in such circumstances.

I researched drenched for my upcoming book “Words the Weather Gave Us”. It includes a chapter with 50 rain words, so I had plenty from which to chose today.

{Extract from “Words the Weather Gave Us” Copyright Grace Tierney 2025}

This one I use often. If caught in a rain-shower unprepared and soaked through, I will announce “I’m drenched”. However an early user of English would then assume I had stopped by the pub on my walk.

Drench was drencan in Old English and it meant to ply with drink, to make drunk, to submerge, or to drown. The last meanings on that list work with the idea of rain clouds but the word’s roots lie in the verb drincan (to drink).

Drench has cousins in Old Norse, Swedish, Dutch, and German. All the northern Europeans were knocking back the ale and mead at that time. A friend might drench you the night before your wedding, for example.

It was the 1500s before drenching gained the idea of making somebody wet by throwing liquid over them but even in the word’s earlier days there was the idea of a drenc-flód which was a storm or a deluge.

The concept of drenching being forcing somebody to drink does linger however, in the idea of drenching farm animals with medicine.

{end of extract}

Wherever you are today, I hope you avoid being drenched, unless you’re enjoying a few pints with friends.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder.

Hello,

This week’s word, bampot, is thanks to the Coliins “Scots Dictionary” which I’m enjoying reading at the moment. I wouldn’t say that I speak Scots but a surprising amount of the words and expressions are familiar and comprehensible to me thanks to my mother’s Ulster Scots heritage, my in-laws, and the general overlap with Hiberno-English and Irish Gaelic.

It has been fun to trace the roots of why I understand Scots words and to find new obscure words I hope to include in my January month of Mystery Words. I did that earlier this year (2025) – one strange word and its definition every day – and while it took some work it was fun to share with other wordy folk online. I’ve been asked why I didn’t continue it after January 31st and honestly, it was too much work and was interfering with my writing, but I hope to do another month in January 2026 (follow Wordfoolery on bluesky, twitter, and facebook if you’d like to see them).

Bampot means a foolish, stupid, or crazy person and is a colloquial term in Scots. It’s a pretty good insult actually, handy if the person you’re insulting doesn’t know the meaning as it makes them look even more foolish if they have to query it. Of course here on Wordfoolery we love fools so we’d take it as a compliment.

The Scots Dictionary notes that the source of bampot is barm, the froth which forms on the top of a fermenting liquid and which is the source of barmy (meaning crazy) in British English. I’ve already taken a look at barmy and it’s a timely reminder as it links to barmbrack – a cake which is served at Halloween, later this month.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder. There’s an issue out this Friday (17 October 2025), so sign up now to avoid missing out on more wordy fun.

Hello,

Dote is one of those words where you really need the context to understand the meaning. For example, if an Irish person tells you that you’re a dote, please take the compliment. In Hiberno-English it means you are sweet or adorable. It could be used for a small child, or of a close friend, somebody you truly care for in life.

A related use of the word is when we say that somebody doted on somebody or something. Such as, our neighbour has a new puppy from the animal rescue shelter and is doting on him, lavishing him with love and toys. This use of the word to show excessive love or infatuation dates to the late 1400s.

There’s a much older meaning, which persists in usage, and relates to impaired cognition in old age. The verb to dote arrived into the English language (spelled doten) around 1200 and it meant to behave irrationally, do foolish things, possibly thanks to advanced age. While the exact linking word is not recorded sources suggest it had arrived from Middle Dutch doten (foolish). My mother-in-law would use the expression “he’s doting” to indicate that somebody has some mental slippage due to age and that’s where is comes from.

This meaning of doting may be related to Dutch dutten (to nap) and Icelandic dotta (to nod, to sleep), perhaps saying the brain has become sleepy? Or referring to the way many of us can be confused mentally when we wake from a nap. There was also a use of dote as a noun, in the 1100s for somebody who was a fool or senile, but that has faded from use during the intervening centuries, so nowadays if you’re called a dote, particularly in Ireland, it’s a good thing.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder.

Hello,

This week’s word isn’t to be found in any mainstream dictionaries because it was coined by author John Koenig for his “Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows”. He wanted to fill the linguistic gaps in our words to describe emotions and our inner lives. Exulansis is one he created for the project.

Koenig defined exulansis as ” the tendency to give up trying to talk about an experience because people are unable to relate to it”. Most of us have had this experience at some point in our lives. Enthusing about a wonderful new book I read recently to somebody who doesn’t enjoy reading generally leads to a glazed look on my audience’s face. You trail off in mid-sentence, aware that you’ve lost them.

Thankfully he also tells us how to say the word. It’s pronounced “ek-suh-lan-sis”, apparently.

He created etymologies for all the words too. Now that’s a move I admire. For exulansis he tells readers that exulans in Latin means exile or wanderer thanks to the diomedea exulans, the Wandering Albatross. You may be aware that the albatross is a large sea bird which rarely lands. They can fly for hours without even flapping their wings and over the centuries much sailor folklore has accumulated around these astonishing birds.

For some it was a symbol of good luck, but for others it might announce a curse. This is perhaps best known thanks to Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s famous poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner” (1798) where the mariner kills the bird, believing it to be a bad omen.

Now the next time you’re telling a story and you notice those listening can’t connect to your experience, at least you know the word for it. You’re experiencing exulansis.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder.

Hello,

I’ve no record of where I found this week’s word, aliferous. I scrolled at random in my (exceedingly long) word list and it popped out, seeking a story.

Aliferous means having wings. You might describe an angel, bird, or butterfly in this way.

Butterfly sprang to mind in my case as I recently visited the butterfly house in Vienna’s museum district. A small spot but alight with floating and swooping beauties, including the one pictured above. Such delicate things. Short-lived, joyous, and inspirational.

Aliferous arrived into English in the early 1700s from Latin roots. Ala means wing in Latin and ferous means bearing or carrying.

There’s a similar word auriferous which arrived around the same period and means gold-bearing (aurum means gold in Latin) which would be used in the mining sector, I imagine. I suppose then if a creature had golden wings it might be aurialiferous, but I’m just playing now and I didn’t spot any golden-winged butterflies on my visit.

The fer in ferous comes from a Proto Indo European root word bher which related to the idea of bearing children, so the concept of carrying was about life, rather than lifting bags of shopping. This root word forms the background to many English words such as circumference, forbear, prefer, and suffer.

It is also believed to connect to a vast array of other languages with the idea of carrying, bearing, or pregnancy – Sanskrit, Old Persian, Greek pherein (to carry), Old Irish berim (I bring forth), Old Welsh, Gothic, Old High German, Old Norse, and Russian amongst many others.

Until next time happy reading, writing, and wordfooling,

Grace (@Wordfoolery)

p.s. Want more Wordfoolery? Subscribe to the monthly newsletter “Wordfoolery Whispers”. Don’t forget to click on the confirmation email, which might hide in your spam folder.