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Title of Grammarphobia: "Grammarphobia: Grammar, etymology, linguistics, usage"
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Q: Having been sucked down many a “rabbit hole” in my reading, I’m wondering how this figurative sense of the phrase developed. Did it appear before Alice in Wonderland was published?
A: The phrase “rabbit hole” has been used both literally and figuratively for hundreds of years, well before Alice fell down o...
Q: I am wondering how chimera has come to mean both “an imaginary monster compounded of incongruous parts” and “an unrealizable dream.”
A: When “chimera” originally appeared in ancient Greece as χίμαιρα&nb...
Q: I was reading an op-ed that had this quote from Abraham Lincoln’s Cooper Union Address: “That is cool.” At first I thought it was satire, but he did indeed say this. What did he mean by “cool”?
A: Lincoln used “cool” in his 1860 Cooper Union speech to mean impudent or shameless, senses that appeared in two of the l...
Q: Can euphemisms turn into dysphemisms and vice versa? If yes, why does it happen?
A: Yes, euphemisms can turn into dysphemisms, and vice versa. The change from a euphemism to its opposite is referred to as pejoration (worsening), while the change from a dysphemism to a euphemism is called amelioration (bettering).