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How Bible Translations Rewrote English Prose
Episode 56
From Wycliffe’s literal Middle‑English renderings to the Shakespearean style of the King James Version, this episode traces how successive Bible tran…
5 days, 2 hours ago
Prison in English: How a Norman Loanword Became Legal Lexicon
Episode 55
Explore the journey of the word ‘prison’ from its Latin roots through 11th‑century Norman French, into English law, and how it shaped modern legal vo…
5 days, 2 hours ago
Hidden Glyphs & Modern Shorthand: The Legacy of Medieval Scribal Abbreviations
Episode 54
Explore how monks used tiny sigla to save parchment and ink, the standardization of these abbreviations across Europe, and how their legacy lives on …
5 days, 2 hours ago
From Faerie to Fairy: Tracing the French Roots of a Modern Mythic Word
Episode 53
We dig into the journey of the word "fairy" from its Old French ancestor faerie to the modern winged sprite that populates literature, folklore, and …
5 days, 3 hours ago
The Lollards: How a Medieval Protest Transformed English
Episode 52
This episode follows John Wycliffe’s Middle‑English Bible and the rise of the Lollard movement, showing how vernacular scripture sparked religious re…
5 days, 3 hours ago
The Ghostly H: Printing’s Silent Letter Legacy
Episode 51
From Bruges to London, discover how an accidental h in ‘ghost’ became a permanent orthographic relic that survived the Great Vowel Shift and still sh…
5 days, 3 hours ago
From Acronym to Everyday Word: How Laser Became Common English
Episode 50
This episode traces the journey of the word ‘laser’ from a 1960s technical acronym to a staple in everyday English. We examine how pronunciation, tec…
5 days, 3 hours ago
From Ship Logs to Digital APIs: The English Language of Oceanic Navigation
Episode 49
Explore how the humble logbook—originating from a wooden chip log—became more than a ledger, shaping navigation terminology, standardizing maritime E…
5 days, 4 hours ago
The Two Faces of C: How One Letter Learned Two Sounds
Episode 48
Explore how English’s letter C evolved from a single /k/ sound to both hard and soft pronunciations, tracing its journey through Latin, French, and I…
5 days, 4 hours ago
The Volunteer Reading Army: How 19th‑Century Philologists Crowdsourced the First Oxford English Dictionary
Episode 47
Discover how Frederick Furnivall organized thousands of book‑hunters to gather quotations for the first OED, turning readers into archivists and layi…
5 days, 4 hours ago