Words!

May 06, 2010

• Latin: "album, albī — neut., white; white tablet, record, list register." So the "White Album" is... hm.
• Old English: "bānloca — masc., joint, limb, skeleton." A kenning: bone-lock.
• Speaking of Old English, look at this, a Folio Society edition of Seamus Heaney's famous Beowulf translation. I want it bad. Look at those linocuts. It sells for $126... That's the sale price. With 20% off.
• "Hapax legomenon — n., from Gr. a word or form of which only one instance is recorded in a literature or an author" (OED). Apparently Shakespeare and the New Testament Epistles have a ton of hapax legomena.