InDepthNH.org (https://indepthnh.org/author/michael-ferber/)
For hundreds of years we English speakers have come up with countless terms of abuse for each other—one of the more fertile sectors of the language—and a surprising number of them are based on urban scorn for rural folk.
English now has only one pronoun for the person we are talking to: you. It was not always so, as readers of the Bible or Shakespeare are well aware.
The Hittites were once a powerful kingdom that, at its peak around 1300 BCE, dominated Anatolia (now Turkey) and even reached as far south as Aleppo (now in modern Syria); they fought a major battle with the Egyptians, led by Ramesses the Great, at Kadesh in 1274
I have a thing about thing. It is a really interesting word, with a surprising history.
You have probably noticed that in recent years the words fortunate and fortuitous have converged in meaning. “The timing of the new mortgage rate could not have been more fortuitous.” “How fortuitous that we should meet today!”
The majority of city and town names in New Hampshire come from British placenames (mainly English), but many of these placenames have mysterious origins.
Many of us oldsters remember being taught in school that there are eight parts of speech, but I find that, when I try to remember what I was taught, I usually come up with nine. When I look at various websites that agree that there are eight, I see that their lists are not identical.
The national movement in opposition to Donald Trump and his regime has been growing at great speed, with demonstrations of various kinds taking place nearly every day across the country.
Its basic sense, going back many centuries, is “obtain” or “acquire,” with a direct object, as in get a job or get a haircut.