“Origin story” is an expression for a superhero’s backstory — for instance, Superman was born on Krypton just before it was destroyed. Many words also have fascinating origin stories. While English comes largely from Latin (and from Greek, and from Latin through French and Spanish, with some Germanic roots and a bit of Sanskrit, etc.), you’ll find that word usage can change quite bit over a couple thousand years.

To bilk is to cheat or defraud.

The con artist bilked many elderly people out of their savings, promising to cure illnesses from diabetes to cancer with only 36 monthly payments of $99.99 “ for which the victims received nothing but useless placebo pills.

Hoodwink, Swindle, Con, and Fleece are all verbs for cheating others. Fleece is perhaps more severe, having the connotation of taking everything from the victim, the way one sheers all of the fleece from a sheep.

Bilk can also be a noun for the person who cheats others (I hope that bilk goes to jail!) More obscurely, bilk can mean to “escape from, frustrate, or thwart.”

The word comes from the card game cribbage, where it means to play a card that keeps an opponent from scoring. Cribbage is a card game that uses a board like the one below to keep score.

“Origin story” is an expression for a superhero’s backstory — for instance, Superman was born on Krypton just before it was destroyed. Many words also have fascinating origin stories. While English comes largely from Latin (and from Greek, and from Latin through French and Spanish, with some Germanic roots and a bit of Sanskrit, etc.), you’ll find that word usage can change quite bit over a couple thousand years.

Fractious sounds a lot like “fraction,” doesn’t it? It actually means “Unruly, troublemaking, quarrelsome,” or simply “irritable.”

There’s a good reason the fractious sounds a bit mathematical. The word fraction once meant brawling or discord (as in, “A fraction broke out outside the pub”) -“ even today, a fraction (in math) is something that has been broken up.

Don’t confuse fractious with factious, meaning affected by party strife, breaking into factions or cliques within a larger organization. (Actually, those two words are pretty similar, so if you confused them, it wouldn’t really be the end of the world. A factious group could easily become fractious.)

The Students for Progressive Action were a fractious bunch, always fighting with one another over exactly which progressive action should take priority.

Related Words:
Obstreperous – unruly, noisy
Refractory – stubbornly disobedient
Captious – faultfinding, making a big deal of trivial faults

Also, the GRE classics belligerent, bellicose, and pugnacious all mean “combative, quarrelsome, given to fighting.”

When I wrote this post about the word aerie, little did I know that Aerie was a store you could find in the mall! (I found one on a trip to Boston).

An aerie, of course, is “the nest of a bird of prey, as an eagle or a hawk” — or, metaphorically speaking, “a house, fortress, or the like, located high on a hill or mountain.” Aerie can also be spelled aery, eyrie, or eyry.

So, the store American Eagle seems to have opened up a lingerie shop called Aerie. You know … eagle … aerie? Makes sense, right? As in, if an eagle wanted to get amorous, it might say, “Hey baby, come on up to my aerie.”

“Origin story” is an expression for a superhero’s backstory — for instance, Superman was born on Krypton just before it was destroyed. Many words also have fascinating origin stories. While English comes largely from Latin (and from Greek, and from Latin through French and Spanish, with some Germanic roots and a bit of Sanskrit, etc.), you’ll find that word usage can change quite bit over a couple thousand years.

A toady is someone who flatters or acts in a servile manner for self-serving reasons.

Look at that toady, sucking up and offering to do the boss’s Christmas shopping for his kids. Gross.

Lackey, Sycophant, and Myrmidon are synonyms.

Fawn means to try to please in a submissive way.

Obsequious means servile, very compliant, fawning.

Truckle means to act subserviently.

Toady comes from toad-eater, after magicians’ assistants who would supposedly eat poisonous toads so the magician could show off his ability to magically expel the poison. Toadeat used to mean do any degrading thing for your boss, but today you can use toady as a verb (or toady up to someone) for this purpose.

I thought this was pretty excellent. Notice how my mom wasn’t sure about how to use the word, so she “looked up examples of this word’s use in a sentence”? What an excellent strategy!

“Origin story” is an expression for a superhero’s backstory — for instance, Superman was born on Krypton just before it was destroyed. Many words also have fascinating origin stories. While English comes largely from Latin (and from Greek, and from Latin through French and Spanish, with some Germanic roots and a bit of Sanskrit, etc.), you’ll find that word usage can change quite bit over a couple thousand years.

Laconic means “using few words, concise.”

The boss was famously laconic; after allowing his employees to present their new plan for an entire hour, he finally responded, Confirmed.

Some related words: reticent and taciturn (not talking much) are often used to describe shy people and do not have the sense of getting the point across efficiently than laconic does. Pithy, however, takes this idea even further “ it means getting the point across in just a few, cleverly-chosen words.

Laconic comes from the Greek place name Laconia, the region in which Sparta (which of course gives us spartan) was located. A famous story has an invading general threatening, If I enter Laconia, I will raze Sparta to the ground. The Spartans laconically replied, If.

“Origin story” is an expression for a superhero’s backstory — for instance, Superman was born on Krypton just before it was destroyed. Many words also have fascinating origin stories. While English comes largely from Latin (and from Greek, and from Latin through French and Spanish, with some Germanic roots and a bit of Sanskrit, etc.), you’ll find that word usage can change quite bit over a couple thousand years.

Glib means “fluent and easy in way that suggests superficiality or insincerity.”

She was the worst teacher he had ever encountered, giving glib responses to every question. Can you help me with this algebra problem? he asked. Oh, just solve for x, she said, and walked away.

Some related words are flippant (disrespectfully casual or light in manner), impertinent (inappropriately bold), and saucy (disrespectful or irrepressible, especially in an entertaining way).

Glib comes from a Germanic root for slippery. A glib comments slips right out of your mouth — when you should have instead spent more time thinking and come up with something more meaningful.

“Origin story” is an expression for a superhero’s backstory — for instance, Superman was born on Krypton just before it was destroyed. Many words also have fascinating origin stories. While English comes largely from Latin (and from Greek, and from Latin through French and Spanish, with some Germanic roots and a bit of Sanskrit, etc.), you’ll find that word usage can change quite bit over a couple thousand years.

In English, gauche means “tactless, lacking social grace, awkward, crude.”

That’s kind of weird, because, in French, gauche just means “left.” As in, “Please turn gauche here, Monsieur Taxi Driver.” (Okay, please don’t ever actually say that to a French taxi driver).

It is terribly gauche to put ketchup on your steak and then talk with your mouth full as you eat it. That’s the last time I ever bring you to a nice place.

Sadly, nearly all cultures are biased against left-handed people. Similarly, the word sinister comes from the Latin word for left. The French word for right gives us the English word adroit, which means skilled.

If you are offended by this slight against left-handed people, here are some words you could use in various situations instead of gauche:

Boorish (rude, ill-mannered, insensitive)
Meretricious (attractive in a vulgar way, specious)
Uncouth (having bad manners, awkward)

“Origin story” is an expression for a superhero’s backstory — for instance, Superman was born on Krypton just before it was destroyed. Many words also have fascinating origin stories. While English comes largely from Latin (and from Greek, and from Latin through French and Spanish, with some Germanic roots and a bit of Sanskrit, etc.), you’ll find that word usage can change quite bit over a couple thousand years.

An aerie is a dwelling or fortress built on a high place, or the nest of a bird of prey, such as an eagle or hawk, built on a mountain or cliff.

The billionaire smoked a cigar out his window and watched the riots in the streets below, safe in the aerie of his penthouse apartment.

A related word is stronghold (a well fortified place, especially the central place of a controversial group, as in Police raided the smugglers’ stronghold.)

Interestingly, aerie may also be spelled aery, eyrie, or eyry. It shares an origin with airy, coming from a Latin word pertaining to an open field.

“Origin story” is an expression for a superhero’s backstory — for instance, Superman was born on Krypton just before it was destroyed. Many words also have fascinating origin stories. While English comes largely from Latin (and from Greek, and from Latin through French and Spanish, with some Germanic roots and a bit of Sanskrit, etc.), you’ll find that word usage can change quite bit over a couple thousand years.

Apocryphal means “of questionable authenticity; false.”

I’m sorry, but this putative letter from George Washington that you found at a garage sale is clearly apocryphal -“ it is riddled with anachronisms (for instance, Washington was long dead by the time silent films were invented), and also, Washington most certainly didn’t refer to Martha Washington as hey baby.

Related Words: Ersatz (artificial, synthetic, serving as a substitute), Faux (fake, imitation, as in faux fur), and Specious (pleasing to the eye but deceptive).

The word Apocrypha often refers to books that have been rejected for inclusion in (various versions of) the Bible, either due to dubious authenticity or because the Church considered them useful, but not divinely inspired. Obviously, different authorities disagree about what exactly is included in the Apocrypha.

The Latin “apocryphus” meant “secret, not approved for public reading,” from the Greek “apokryphos” (hidden, obscure), from the roots “apo” (away) and “kryptein” (to hide, also appearing in “crypt”). Hmmn, is that like kryptonite? Actually, yes — before Krypton was a fictional planet, it was a chemical element. The name comes from the same root, so named because it is a rare gas.