This blog is for everyone who uses words.

The ordinary-sized words are for everyone, but the big ones are especially for children.



Tuesday, 14 September 2021

Thing To Do Today, But Only In A Good Way: embowel something.

 Look, there's endearingly quirky, and then there's perverse.

To embowel something is to bury it deeply. It might be treasure in the ground, or it might be your house keys in your handbag.

On the other hand, embowel can mean exactly the same as disembowel.

See?

Perverse.

Sometimes I don't know about what the makers of the English language were thinking.

Thing To Do Today, But Only In A Good Way: embowel. The em- bit comes from Latin (it's basically the same as in- but used in this form before b, m, and p). The word bowel comes from the Old French bouel, from the Latin botellus, a little sausage, from botulus, sausage.

Yes, it's where the word botulism comes from. 

Worrying, isn't it?



No comments:

Post a Comment

All comments are very welcome, but please make them suitable for The Word Den's family audience.