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Penguin
You might have seen this frankly brilliant fact pop up on the @HaggardHawks Twitter feed this week: Penguins were nicknamed ARSE-FEET in 18th century English. (fr. A History of the Earth, 1774)...
View Article10 Origins of World Cities
Last year on the HH blog, we talked a bit about how Britain literally means “home of the tattooed people”. BRITAIN means ‘tattooed people’.— Haggard Hawks (@HaggardHawks) 15 June 2015As with a lot of...
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London
A few weeks ago over on the HaggardHawks YouTube channel, we looked at the origins of 10 city names, covering everywhere from Chicago (“a place to grow wild onions”) to Funafuri, the capital of Tuvalu...
View Article10 Old Animal Nicknames
If there’s one subject that crops up fairly regularly on the HaggardHawks Twitter feed, it’s animal nicknames. You might have spotted this tweet about penguins—and the explanation behind it—over on...
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18,000 followers!
Blimey, thanks everyone! We’ve flown past the 18,000 followers landmark—which can only mean one thing. It’s time for another one of our fiendish language quizzes...Same rules as always: no time limit,...
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10 Obscure Words For Everyday Things
You might have spotted this word over on the HaggardHawks Twitter feed the other day:A mirror image is called an ENANTIOMORPH.— Haggard Hawks Words (@HaggardHawks) 17 May 2016Originally used in...
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10 Portmanteau Words
If you follow the HaggardHawks Twitter feed, you might have spotted the word insinuendo the other day, meaning “an insinuated remark”. According to the late Oxford English Dictionary editor Robert...
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Auburn
Earlier today, this peculiar etymological twist cropped up on the HH Twitter feed:AUBURN hair takes its name from the Latin for ‘white’.— Haggard Hawks Words (@HaggardHawks) 27 May 2016And so here’s a...
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10 Useful Scrabble Words
Chances are that if you like words, you’ll like Scrabble. It’s just so much fun, isn’t it? Waiting the entire game for the letter Q to come up so you can play jonquils and score 500 points, only for...
View Article10 Colour Names
A few weeks ago, this intriguing factoid popped up on the HH Twitter feed:English had no word for the colour ORANGE until oranges began to be imported from the continent in the Middle Ages...
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10 Fossil Words
A while ago on the HH blog, we looked at the history of time immemorial—an expression now used to mean “time beyond memory” or “time out of mind”, but which began life as a legal term in mediaeval...
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10 Chemical Element Names
So a lot of very big things have happened this week. For one, the UK voted to leave the European Union for some reason. Secondly, the shelves on the HH bookcase were starting to sag a bit in the...
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10 Words To Do With Halves - 500 Words Ep. 25
Ah, how the time flies. It seems like only yesterday HaggardHawks embarked on a series of fifty Top 10 YouTube videos, back when David Cameron was Prime Minister and the UK wasn’t being laughed at by...
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10 Words Derived From Places In America
It seems we’re always late to the party here at HaggardHawks. Yes, it was July 4 last Monday but, hey—what can you do? So. A very belated Happy Independence Day to anyone reading this over in the...
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10 Words For The People You Know - 500 Words Ep. 27
You might have spotted this tweet over on the HH Twitter feed the other day:FRAME-PERSON is an old English dialect word for an overnight visitor whose stay demands a great deal of planning beforehand.—...
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10 Misnomers - 500 Words Ep. 28
Looking back through the HH archives the other day, we happened across this little gem of information:The name of Paris' PONT NEUF means 'new bridge'. Completed in 1607, it is actually the oldest...
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10 Words For Other Words
If you’ve been keeping up with the HH“500 Words” YouTube series, you’ll so far have found out about 280 of the 500 words we’re going to look at this year. But this week, we’re turning things around. So...
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10 Rhymable Unrhymable Words - 500 Words Ep. 30
A little while ago, this fact cropped up on the HH Twitter feed:Nothing rhymes with CARPET. http://t.co/oLcpVgYaIF— Haggard Hawks Words (@HaggardHawks) 18 July 2015It ended up sparking quite a debate...
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10 Words Borrowed From Other Languages - 500 Words Ep. 31
A long, long time ago over on HaggardHawks, this little fact popped up:Around 30% of the English language is derived from French.— Haggard Hawks Words (@HaggardHawks) 17 January 2014In retrospect,...
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20,000 followers!
Great Scott! Good old Haggard Hawksisn’t even three years old, and yet here we are—20,000 lovely people are now following our online shenanigans. Seriously, thank you. Everyone. It’s nice to have you...
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10 Words That Sound Rude (But Really Aren’t) - 500 Words Ep. 32
A few days ago, HH tweeted this:If you’re CUNCTATIVE then you’re prone to delaying or procrastinating.— Haggard Hawks Words (@HaggardHawks) 12 August 2016It’s one of those words that, if you’re not...
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10 Words Coined By Writers – 500 Words Ep. 33
If you’ve been keeping up with the HH 500 Words YouTube series, you’ll have seen a few literary lists crop up amidst all the weird words and word origins. Back in February, we marked Dickens’ birthday...
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10 Words With Nautical Origins - 500 Words Ep. 34
You might have spotted this little nautical fact over on Twitter the other day:A SLUSH FUND was originally the money a ship’s cook made from selling waste fat and cooking grease when they arrived in...
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10 First Names Used As Words | 500 Words Ep. 35
You may remember this fact from the HH Twitter feed a while back:As a verb, the girl’s name REBECCA can be used to mean ‘to destroy a gate’.— Haggard Hawks Words (@HaggardHawks) 30 July 2015...which...
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We’ve migrated!
In case you didn’t already know, Ethan the Hawk and the entire Haggard Hawks network have spread our wings and migrated!We have a lovely, shiny new website now online at haggardhawks.com, where all of...
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