This year there will be a rare double appearance of two broods of cicadas, one seventeen-year brood and one thirteen-year brood. I remember very clearly the appearance of a seventeen-year brood back in 1953, when I was just a small child. (We called them locusts back then, though we knew they were properly called cicadas.) … Continue reading The Year of the Cicadas

In this post I will look at three English words—“apology”, “martyr”, and “angel”—borrowed from ancient Greek with meanings somewhat different from their meanings in Greek. The lesson is that the original meaning of a word isn’t always a good guide to its current meaning. I begin with the word “apology”. I. In the year 399 … Continue reading Please Accept My Apology