contemporary romance - Felicia Davin (Page 2)

Felicia Davin

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contemporary romance

A collection of 33 posts

a word to the poem

contemporary romance

a word to the poem

LEOPARD, n. This is the common name in English for Panthera pardus, a spotted, golden-furred big cat that lives in various habitats across Africa and Asia. The etymology of “leopard” is fairly straightforward: most likely, it’s “leo” for lion and “pard” from pardos, meaning “spotted.” “Like a lion, but

Leveling

STRIKE, n. There’s a lot of news in the US about striking labor unions right now, so naturally I’ve been wondering why our word for “the cessation of labor in order to force bosses to respect workers” is “strike.” Strike, as a verb and a noun, has a

Gerfaunts and orafles

GIRAFFE, n. This word, referring to the long-necked, spotted African mammal, comes to English through French, where it used to be spelled “giraffe” but is now spelled “girafe,” and in either case its origin is Arabic zarāfa. Before English settled on “giraffe,” we used to call these animals camelopards, gerfaunts,

Coneys

RABBIT, n. My baby learned to say this word. Actually, he learned to say “babbit,” which is even better. Did you know that children simplify words they can’t pronounce in consistent, predictable ways? As in, not all kids employ the same rules, but each individual kid settles on their

fact one: the whale is a discourse

DISCOURSE, n. I can’t quit twitter. It’s owned by a fascist ghoul and increasingly more broken every day, but my bookish community still lives there, it’s a reliable way to get the word out about a new book, sometimes passionate fans will coalesce around a single tweet

"the obscenest picture the world possesses"

"the obscenest picture the world possesses"

PUDENDUM, n. I recently finished reading Ross King’s The Judgment of Paris, a nonfiction book about Impressionism and French history, in particular the artists Édouard Manet and Henri Meissonier. I loved it, not just because there were several etymologies mentioned, most memorably the one in this long excerpt (page

Let's have a bouba

body or sex words

Let's have a bouba

BOOBS, n. This term for breasts shows up in print in US English for the first time in 1929, which means people were saying it before that. “Boobies” is older than just plain “boobs,” and it’s a variation on “bubbies,” which goes all the way back to the 1600s

To have the horn

body or sex words

To have the horn

HORNY, adj. I wanted to know if I could use “horny,” as in “lustful,” in my current novel draft without it being an anachronism, and I am thrilled to report that Green’s Dictionary of Slang has the first recorded instance of “horny” as “sexually eager” in 1826 in US