Words often belong to etymological families. Sometimes the family relationships are obvious, but sometimes they can be surprising. In this post I will talk about two etymological families, the ship family and the shirt family. A lot of the information here comes from a wonderful book edited by Calvert Watkins, The American Heritage Dictionary of … Continue reading Ships and Shirts

When I was in junior high school, I think it was grade eight, we had regular vocabulary drills. Our grammar book had a section on words that we should know; there was also a list of pairs and triples of words that could be easily confused. I remember just one of these pairs, which for … Continue reading Cynosure and Sinecure