The mechanism is usually the same: a word is used loosely, the loose sense becomes common, and the precise one falls away. Here are fifteen that travelled unusually far.
1.…
Scripts are usually classified by what a single character represents: a sound, a syllable, a consonant, or a whole word. Almost every design choice below follows from that decision. Here…
The pattern is consistent: name the colour after the thing, then keep the name long after nobody uses the thing. Here are fifteen.
1. Maroon
From the French for chestnut,…
Before anyone thought to define units against physical constants, they were defined against whatever was to hand — literally. Most of those origins are still buried in the words. Here…
When something arrives from elsewhere, people tend to name it after wherever it came through rather than wherever it came from. Multiply that by a few centuries of trade and…
For most of recorded history, ancient Egypt was legible only in fragments. Its monuments, tombs and papyri were covered in writing, and the knowledge of how to read that writing…