Podcasts about Middle English

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 23, 2026 is: frenetic • frih-NET-ik • adjective Something described as frenetic is filled with excitement, activity, or confusion. The word is a synonym of frantic. // The event was noisy and frenetic, which prompted us to leave early. See the entry > Examples: “As Marty Mauser, a wannabe table tennis champion who dreams and deceives his way through his shamble of a life ... [Timothée Chalamet] injects his scenes with enough nervous energy to fuel a plane. Nowhere will you see a performance more frenetic or impressive.” — Ralph Jones, Vanity Fair, 9 Feb. 2026 Did you know? In modern use, frenetic can describe a focused and intense effort to meet a deadline, or dancing among a hyped-up crowd, but the word's Middle English predecessor, frenetik, had a narrower use: it was used to describe those exhibiting a severely disordered state of mind. If you trace frenetic back far enough, you'll find that it comes from Greek phrenîtis, a term referring to an inflammation of the brain. As for frenzied and frantic, they're not only synonyms of frenetic but relatives as well. Frantic comes from frenetik, and frenzied traces back to phrenîtis.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 14, 2026 is: rash • RASH • adjective Rash describes something done or made quickly and without thought about what will happen as a result. It can also describe someone who is doing something rash. // I later regretted having made such a rash promise in a moment of chaos. // Don't be rash about this decision. Take your time. See the entry > Examples: “The climactic scenes toy with the blurred lines between hallucination and reality, but the logic falls apart; threads like Hana's rash decision to undertake a dangerous surgical fix virtually evaporate without much payoff.” — David Rooney, The Hollywood Reporter, 3 Feb. 2026 Did you know? Is it possible that the origins of the noun rash (referring to a group of red spots on the skin that is caused by an illness or a reaction to something) and the adjective rash (meaning “overly hasty”) are the same? Not so fast! Like many homonyms—“two or more words spelled and pronounced alike but different in meaning”—the two rashes have distinct sources. The noun rash, which first appeared in English in the late 17th century, probably comes ultimately from the Latin verb rādere, meaning “to scrape, scratch, shave.” The adjective rash appears to be about two centuries older, and comes from a Middle English word rasch meaning “active, quick, eager.”

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for March 7, 2026 is: libertine • LIB-er-teen • noun A libertine is in broad terms a person who is unrestrained by convention or morality. More narrowly, the word describes someone who leads an immoral life. // The legend of Don Juan depicts him as a playboy and libertine. See the entry > Examples: "As horrifying as some of the sins of Victorian scholarship may have been, it would have been anathema to these students of classical philosophy to simply throw out Plato. But that's what some of their modern inheritors have tried to do. … It's worth noting that we might not have Plato's work at all, were it not carefully studied and preserved by the Islamic scholars (hardly libertines themselves) of the medieval period." — R. Bruce Anderson, The Ledger (Lakeland, Florida), 1 Feb. 2026 Did you know? "I only ask to be free," says Mr. Skimpole in Charles Dickens' Bleak House. His words would undoubtedly have appealed to the world's first libertines. The word libertine comes from the Latin lībertīnus, a word used in early writings of Roman antiquity to describe a formerly enslaved person who had been set free (the Roman term for an emancipated person was the Latin lībertus). Middle English speakers used libertine to refer to a freedman, but by the late 1500s its meaning was extended to freethinkers, both religious and secular, and it later came to imply that an individual was a little too unrestrained, especially in moral affairs. The likely Latin root of libertine is līber, the ultimate source of our word liberty.

Are the words harmony and reason connected? Let’s find out in this Adventure in Etymology. Meanings of harmony [ˈhɑː.mə.ni] include: Agreement or accord. A pleasing combination of elements, or arrangement of sounds. Two or more notes played simultaneously to produce a chord. It comes from Middle English armonie (harmonious sounds, song, music, harmony), from Old […]

Ahead of her new book What's So Great About the Great Books? coming out in April, Naomi Kanakia and I talked about literature from Herodotus to Tony Tulathimutte. We touched on Chaucer, Anglo-Saxon poetry, Scott Alexander, Shakespeare, William James, Helen deWitt, Marx and Engels, Walter Scott, Les Miserables, Jhootha Sach, the Mahabharata, and more. Naomi also talked about some of her working habits and the history and future of the Great Books movement. Naomi, of course, writes Woman of Letters here on Substack.TranscriptHenry Oliver: Today, I am talking with Naomi Kanakia. Naomi is a novelist, a literary critic, and most importantly she writes a Substack called Woman of Letters, and she has a new book coming out, What's So Great About the Great Books? Naomi, welcome.Naomi Kanakia: Thanks for having me on.Oliver: How is the internet changing the way that literature gets discussed and criticized, and what is that going to mean for the future of the Great Books?Kanakia: How is the internet changing it? I can really speak to only how it has changed it for me. I started off as a writer of young adult novels and science fiction, and there's these very active online fan cultures for those two things.I was reading the Great Books all through that time. I started in 2010 through today. In the 2010s, it really felt like there was not a lot of online discussion of classic literature. Maybe that was just me and I wasn't finding it, but it didn't necessarily feel like there was that community.I think because there are so many strong, public-facing institutions that discuss classic literature, like the NYRB, London Review of Books, a lot of journals, and universities, too. But now on Substack, there are a number of blogs—yours, mine, a number of other ones—that are devoted to classic literature. All of those have these commenters, a community of commenters. I also follow bloggers who have relatively small followings who are reading Tolstoy, reading Middlemarch, reading even much more esoteric things.I know that for me, becoming involved in this online culture has given me much more of an awareness that there are many people who are reading the classics on their own. I think that was always true, but now it does feel like it's more of a community.Oliver: We are recording this the day after the Washington Post book section has been removed. You don't see some sort of relationship between the way these literary institutions are changing online and the way the Great Books are going to be conceived of in the future? Because the Great Books came out of a an old-fashioned, saving-the-institutions kind of radical approach to university education. We're now moving into a world where all those old things seem to be going.Kanakia: Yes. I agree. The Great Books began in the University of Chicago and Columbia University. If you look into the history of the movement, it really was about university education and the idea that you would have a common core and all undergraduates would read these books. The idea that the Great Books were for the ordinary person was really an afterthought, at least for Mortimer Adler and those original Great Books guys. Now, the Great Books in the university have had a resurgence that we can discuss, but I do think there's a lot more life and vitality in the kind of public-facing humanities than there has been.I talked to Irina Dumitrescu, who writes for TLS (The Times Literary Supplement), LRB (The London Review of Books), a lot of these places, and she also said the same thing—that a lot of these journals are going into podcasts, and they're noticing a huge interest in the humanities and in the classics even at the same time as big institutions are really scaling back on those things. Humanities majors are dropping, classics majors are getting cut, book coverage at major periodicals is going down. It does seem like there are signals that are conflicting. I don't really know totally what to make of it. I do think there is some relation between those two things.Ted Gioia on Substack is always talking about how culture is stagnant, basically, and one of the symptoms of that is that “back list” really outsells “front list” for books. Even in 2010, 50 percent of the books that were sold were front-list titles, books that had been released in the last 18 months. Now it's something like only 35 percent of books or something like that are front-list titles. These could be completely wrong, but there's been a trend.I think the decrease in interest in front-list books is really what drives the loss of these book-review pages because they mostly review front-list books. So, I think that does imply that there's a lot of interest in old books. That's what our stagnant culture means.Oliver: Why do you think your own blog is popular with the rationalists?Kanakia: I don't know for certain. There was a story I wrote that was a joke. There are all these pop nonfiction books that aim to prove something that seems counterintuitive, so I wrote a parody of one of those where I aim to prove that reading is bad for you. This book has many scientific studies that show the more you read, the worse it is because it makes you very rigid.Scott Alexander, who is the archrationalist, really liked that, and he added me to his blog roll. Because of that, I got a thousand rationalist subscribers. I have found that rationalists at least somewhat interested in the classics. I think they are definitely interested in enduring sources of value. I've observed a fair amount of interest.Oliver: How much of a lay reader are you really? Because you read scholarship and critics and you can just quote John Gilroy in the middle of a piece or something.Kanakia: Yeah. That is a good question. I have definitely gotten more interested in secondary literature. In my book, I really talk about being a lay reader and personally having a nonacademic approach to literature. I do think that, over 15 years of being a lay reader, I have developed a lot of knowledge.I've also learned the kind of secondary literature that is really important. I think having historical context adds a lot and is invaluable. Right now I'm rereading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. When I first read it in 2010, I hardly knew anything about French history. I was even talking online with someone about how most people who read Les Miserables think it's set in the French Revolution. That's basically because Americans don't really know anything about French history.Everything makes just a lot more sense the more you know about the time because it was written for people in it. For people in 1860s France, who knew everything about their own recent history, that really adds a lot to it. I still don't tend to go that much into interpretive literature, literature that tries to do readings of the stories or tell me the meaning of the stories. I feel like I haven't really gotten that much out of that.Oliver: How long have you been learning Anglo-Saxon?Kanakia: I went through a big Anglo-Saxon phase. That was in 2010. It started because I started reading The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. There is a great app online called General Prologue created by one of your countrymen, Terry Richardson [NB it is Terry Jones], who loved Middle English. In this app, he recites the Middle English of the General Prologue. I started listening to this app, and I thought, I just really love the rhythms and the sounds of Middle English. And it's quite easy to learn. So then, I got really into that.And then I thought, but what about Anglo-Saxon? I'm very bad at languages. I studied Latin for seven years in middle school and high school. I never really got very far, but I thought, Anglo-Saxon has to be the easiest foreign language you can learn, right? So, I got into it.I cannot sight read Anglo-Saxon, but I really got into Anglo-Saxon poetry. I really liked the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle. Most people probably would not like the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle because it's very repetitive, but that makes it great if you're a language learner because every entry is in this very repetitive structure. I just felt such a connection. I get in trouble when I say this kind of stuff, because I'm never quiet sure if it's 100 percent true. But it's certainly one of the oldest vernacular literatures in Europe. It's just so much older than most of the other medieval literature I've read. And it just was such a window into a different part of history I never knew about.Oliver: And you particularly like “The Dream of the Rood”?Kanakia: Yeah, “The Dream of the Rood” is my favorite Anglo-Saxon poem. “The Dream of the Rood” is a poem that is told from the point of view of Christ's cross. A man is having a dream. In this dream he encounters Christ's cross, and Christ's cross starts reciting to him basically the story of the crucifixion. At the end, the cross is buried. I don't know, it was just so haunting and powerful. Yeah, it was one of my favorites.Oliver: Why do you think Byron is a better poet than Alexander Pope?Kanakia: This is an argument I cannot get into. I think this is coming up because T. S. Eliot felt that Alexander Pope was a great poet because he really exemplified the spirit of the age. I don't know. I've tried to read Pope. It just doesn't do it for me. Whereas with Byron, I read Don Juan and found it entertaining. I enjoyed it. Then, his lyric poetry is just more entertaining to read. With Alexander Pope, I'm learning a lot about what kind of poetry people wrote in the 18th century, but the joy is not there.Oliver: Okay. Can we do a quick fire round where I say the name of a book and you just say what you think of it, whatever you think of it?Kanakia: Sure.Oliver: Okay. The Odyssey.Kanakia: The Odyssey. Oh, I love The Odyssey. It has a very strange structure, where it starts with Telemachus and then there's this flashback in the middle of it. It is much more readable than The Iliad; I'll say that.Oliver: Herodotus.Kanakia: Herodotus is wild. Going into Herodotus, I really thought it was about the Persian war, which it is, but it's mostly a general overview of everything that Herodotus knew, about anything. It's been a long time since I read it. I really appreciate the voice of Herodotus, how human it is, and the accumulation of facts. It was great.Oliver: I love the first half actually. The bit about the Persian war I'm less interested in, but the first half I think is fantastic. I particularly love the Egypt book.Kanakia: Oh yeah, the Egypt book is really good.Oliver: All those like giant beetles that are made of fire or whatever; I can't remember the details, but it's completely…Kanakia: The Greeks are also so fascinated by Egypt. They go down there like what is going on out there? Then, most of what we know about Egypt comes from this Hellenistic period, when the Greeks went to Egypt. Our Egyptian kings list comes from the Hellenistic period where some scholar decided to sort out what everybody was up to and put it all into order. That's why we have such an orderly story about Egypt. That's the story that the Greeks tried to tell themselves.Oliver: Marcus Aurelius.Kanakia: Marcus Aurelius. When I first read The Meditations, which I loved, obviously, I thought, “being the Roman emperor cannot be this hard.” It really was a black pill moment because I thought, “if the emperor of Rome is so unhappy, maybe human power really doesn't do it.”Knowing more about Marcus Aurelius, he did have quite a difficult life. He was at war for most of his—just stuck in the region in Germany for ages. He had various troubles, but yeah, it really was very stoic. It was, oh, I just have to do my duty. Very “heavy is the head that wears the crown” kind of stuff. I thought, “okay, I guess being Roman emperor is not so great.”Oliver: Omar Khayyam.Kanakia: Omar Khayyam. Okay, I've only read The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam by Edward Fitzgerald, which I loved, but I cannot formulate a strong opinion right now.Oliver: As You Like It.Kanakia: No opinions.Oliver: Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson.Kanakia: Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. I do have an opinion about this, which is that they should make a redacted version of Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson. I normally am not a big believer in abridgements because I feel like whatever is there is there. But, Boswell's Life of Samuel Johnson, first of all, has a long portion before Boswell even meets Johnson. That portion drags; it's not that great. Then it has all these like letters that Johnson wrote, which also are not that great. What's really good is when Boswell just reports everything Johnson ever said, which is about half the book. You get a sense of Johnson's conversation and his personality, and that is very gripping. I've definitely thought that with a different presentation, this could still be popular. People would still read this.Oliver: The Communist Manifesto.Kanakia: The Communist Manifesto. It's very stirring. I love The Communist Manifesto. It has very haunting, powerful lines. I won't try to quote from it because I'll misquote them.Oliver: But it is remarkably well written.Kanakia: Oh yeah, it is a great work of literature.Oliver: Yeah.Kanakia: I read Capital [Das Kapital], which is not a great work of literature, and I would venture to say that it is not necessarily worth reading. It really feels like Marx's reputation is built on other political writings like The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and works like that, which really seem to have a lot more meat on the bone than Capital.Oliver: Pragmatism by William James.Kanakia: Pragmatism. I mean, I've mentioned that in my book. I love William James in general. I think William James was writing in this 19th-century environment where it seemed like some form of skepticism was the only rational solution. You couldn't have any source of value, and he really tried to cut through that with Pragmatism and was like, let's just believe the things that are good to believe. It is definitely at least useful to think, although someone else can always argue with you about what is useful to believe. But, as a personal guide for belief, I think it is still useful.Oliver: Major Barbara by George Bernard Shaw.Kanakia: No strong opinions. It was a long time ago that I read Major Barbara.Oliver: Tell me what you like about James Fenimore Cooper.Kanakia: James Fenimore Cooper. Oh, this is great. I have basically a list of Great Books that I want to read, but four or five years ago, I thought, “what's in all the other books that I know the names of but that are not reputed, are not the kind of books you still read?”That was when I read Walter Scott, who I really love. And I just started reading all kinds of books that were kind of well known but have kind of fallen into literary disfavor. In almost every case, I felt like I got a lot out of these books. So, nowadays when I approach any realm of literature, I always look for those books.In 19th-century American literature, the biggest no-longer-read book is The Last of the Mohicans by James Fenimore Cooper, which was America's first bestseller. He was the first American novelist that had a high reputation in Europe. The Last of the Mohicans is kind of a historical romance, à la Walter Scott, but much more tightly written and much more tightly plotted.Cooper has written five novels, the Leatherstocking Tales, that are all centered around this very virtuous, rough-hewn frontiersman, Natty Bumppo. He has his best friend, Chingachgook, who is the last of the Mohicans. He's the last of his tribe. And the two of these guys are basically very sad and stoic. Chingachgook is distanced from his tribe. Chingachgook has a tribe of Native Americans that he hates—I want to say it's the Huron. He's always like, “they're the bad ones,” and he's always fighting them. Then, Natty Bumppo doesn't really love settled civilization. He's not precisely at war with it, but he does not like the settlers. They're kind of stuck in the middle. They have various adventures, and I just thought it was so haunting and powerful.I've been reading a lot of other 19th-century American literature, and virtually none of it treats Native Americans with this kind of respect. There's a lot of diversity in the Native American characters; there's really an attempt to show how their society works and the various ways that leadership and chiefship works among them. There's this very haunting moment in The Last of the Mohicans, where this aged chief, Tamenund, comes out and starts speaking. This is a chief who, in American mythology, was famous for being a friend to the white people. But, James Fenimore Cooper writing in the 1820s has Tamenund come out at 80 years old and say, “we have to fight; we have to fight the white people. That's our only option.” It was just such a powerful moment and such a powerful book.I was really, really enthused. I read all of these Leatherstocking Tales. It was also a very strange experience to read these books that are generally supposed to be very turgid and boring, and then I read them and was like, “I understand. I'm so transported.” I understand exactly why readers in the 1820s loved this.Oliver: Which Walter Scott books do you like?Kanakia: I love all the Walter Scott books I've read, but the one I liked best was Kenilworth. Have you ever read Kenilworth?Oliver: I don't know that one.Kanakia: Yeah, it's about Elizabeth I, who had a romantic relationship with one of her courtiers.Oliver: The Earl of Essex?Kanakia: Yeah. She really thought they were going to get married, but then it turned out he was secretly married. Basically, I guess the implication is that he killed his wife in order to marry Queen Elizabeth I. It's a novel all about him and that situation, and it just felt very tightly plotted. I really enjoyed it.Oliver: What did you think of Rejection?Kanakia: Rejection by Tony Tulathimutte? Initially when I read this book, I enjoyed it, but I was like, “life cannot possibly be this sad.” It's five or six stories about these people who just have nothing going on. Their lives are so miserable, they can't find anyone to sleep with, and they're just doomed to be alone forever. I was like, “life can't be this bad.” But now thinking back over it, it is one of the most memorable books I've read in the last year. It really sticks with you. I feel like my opinion of this book has gone up a lot in retrospect.Oliver: How antisemitic is the House of Mirth?Kanakia: That is a hotly debated question, which I mentioned in my book. I think there has been a good case made that Edith Wharton, the author of House of Mirth, who was from an old New York family, was herself fairly antisemitic and did not personally like Jewish people. What she portrays in this book is that this old New York society also was highly suspicious of Jewish people and was organized to keep Jewish people out.In this book there is a rich Jewish man, Simon Rosedale, and there's a poor woman, Lily Bart. Lily Bart's main thing is whether she's going to marry the poor guy, Lawrence Selden, or the rich guy, Percy Gryce. She can't choose. She doesn't want to be poor, but she also is always bored by the rich guys. Meanwhile, through the whole book, there's Simon Rosedale, who's always like, “you should marry me.” He's the rich Jewish guy. He's like, “you should marry me. I will give you lots of money. You can do whatever you want.”Everybody else kind of just sees her as a woman and as a wife; he really sees her as an ally in his social climbing. That's his main motivation. The book is relatively clear that he has a kind of respect for her that nobody else does. Then, over the course of the book, she also gains a lot more respect for him. Basically, late in the book, she decides to marry him, but she has fallen a lot in the world. He's like, “that particular deal is not available anymore,” but he does offer her another deal that—although she finds it not to her taste—is still pretty good.He basically is like, “I'll give you some money, you'll figure out how to rehabilitate your reputation, and later down the line, we can figure something out.” So, I think with a great author like Edith Wharton, there's power in these portrayals. I felt it hard to come away from it feeling like the book is like a really antisemitic book.Oliver: Now, you note that the Great Books movement started out as something quite socially aspirational. Do you think it's still like that?Kanakia: I do think so. Yeah. For me, that's 100 percent what it was because I majored in econ. I always felt kind of inadequate as a writer against people who had majored in English. Then I started off as a science fiction writer, young adult writer, and I was like, “I'm going to read all these Great Books and then I'll have read the books that everybody else has read.” In my mind, that's also what it was—that there was some upper crust or literary society that was reading all these Great Books.That's really what did it. I do think there's still an element of aspiration to it because it's a club that you can join, that anyone can join. It's very straightforward to be a Great Books reader, and so I think there's still something there. I think because the Great Books movement has such a democratic quality to it, it actually doesn't get you to the top socially, which has always been the true, always been the case. But, that's okay. As long as you end up higher than where you started, that's fine.Oliver: What makes a book great?Kanakia: I talk about it this in the book, and I go through many different authors' conceptions of what makes a book great or what constitutes a classic. I don't know that anyone has come up with a really satisfying answer. The Horatian formulation from Horace—that a book is great or an author is great if it has lasted for a hundred years—is the one that seems to be the most accurate. Like, any book that's still being read a hundred years after it was written has a greatness.I do think that T. S. Eliott's formulation—that a civilization at its height produces certain literature and that literature partakes of the greatness of the civilization and summarizes the greatness of the civilization—does seem to have some kind of truth to it.But it's hard, right? Because the greatest French novel is In Search of Lost Time, but I don't know that anyone would say that the France in the 1920s was at its height. It's not a prescriptive thing, but it does seem like the way we read many of these Great Books, like Moby Dick, it feels like you're like communing with the entire society that produced it. So, maybe there's something there.Oliver: Now, you've used a list from Clifton Fadiman.Kanakia: Yes.Oliver: Rather than from Mortimer Adler or Harold Bloom or several others. Why this list?Kanakia: Well, the best reason is that it's actually the list I've just been using for the last 15 years. I went to a science fiction convention in 2009, Readercon, and at this science fiction convention was Michael Dirda, who was a Washington Post book critic. He had recently come out with his book, Classics for Pleasure, which I also bought and liked. But he said that the list he had always used was this Clifton Fadiman book. And so when I decided to start reading the Great Books, I went and got that book. I have perused many other lists over time, but that was always the list that seemed best to me.It seemed to have like the best mix. There's considerable variation amongst these lists, but there's also a lot of overlap. So any of these lists is going to have Dickens on it, and Tolstoy, and stuff like that. So really, you're just thinking about, “aside from Dickens and Tolstoy and George Eliot and Walt Whitman and all these people, who are the other 50 authors that you're going be reading?”The Mortimer Adler list is very heavy on philosophy. It has Plotinus on it. It has all these scientific works. I don't know, it didn't speak to me as much. Whereas, this Clifton Fadiman and John Major list has all these Eastern works on it. It has The Tale of Genji, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Story of the Stone, and that just spoke to me a little bit more.Oliver: What modern books will be on a future Great Books list, whether it's from someone alive or someone since the war.Kanakia: Have you ever heard of Robert Caro?Oliver: Sure.Kanakia: Yeah. I think his Lyndon Johnson books are great books. They have changed the field of biography. They're so complete, they seem to summarize an entire era, epoch. They're highly rated, but I feel like they're underrated as literature.What else? I was actually a little bit surprised in this Clifton Fadiman-John Major book, which came out in 1999, that there are not more African Americans in their list. Like, Invisible Man definitely seemed like a huge missed work. You know, it's hard. You would definitely want a book that has undergone enough critical evaluation that people are pretty certain that it is great. A lot of things that are more recent have not undergone that evaluation yet, but Invisible Man has, as have some works by Martin Luther King.Oliver: What about The Autobiography of Malcolm X?Kanakia: I would have to reread. I feel like it hasn't been evaluated much as a literary document.Oliver: Helen DeWitt?Kanakia: It's hard to say. It's so idiosyncratic, The Last Samurai, but it is certainly one of the best novels of the last 25 years.Oliver: Yeah.Kanakia: It is hard to say, because there's nothing else quite like it. But I would love if The Last Samurai was on a list like this; that would be amazing.Oliver: If someone wants to try the Great Books, but they think that those sort of classic 19th-century novels are too difficult—because they're long and the sentences are weird or whatever—what else should they do? Where else should they start?Kanakia: Well, it depends on what they're into, or it depends on their personality type. I think like there are people who like very, very difficult literature. There are people who are very into James Joyce and Proust. I think for some people the cost-benefit is better. If they're going to be pouring over some book for a long time, they would prefer if it was overtly difficult.If they're not like that, then I would say, there are many Great Books that are more accessible. Hemingway is a good one and Grapes of Wrath is wonderful. The 19th-century American books tend to be written in a very different register than the English books. If you read Moby Dick, it feels like it's written in a completely different language than Charles Dickens, even though they're writing essentially at the same time.Oliver: Is there too much Freud on the list that you've used?Kanakia: Maybe. I know that Interpretation of Dreams is on that list, which I've tried to read and have decided life is too short. I didn't really buy it, but I have read a fair amount of Freud. My impression of Freud was always that I would read Freud and somehow it would just seem completely fanciful or far out, like wouldn't ring true. But then when I started reading Freud, it was more the opposite. I was like, oh yeah, this seems very, very true.Like this battle between like the id and the ego and the super ego, and this feeling that like the psyche is at war with itself. Human beings really desire to be singular and exceptional, but then you're constantly under assault by the reality principle, which is that you're insignificant. That all seemed completely true. But then he tries to cure this somehow, which does not seem a curable problem. And he also situates the problem in some early sexual development, which also did not necessarily ring true. But no, I wouldn't say there's too much. Freud is a lot of fun. People should read Freud.Oliver: Which of the Great Books have you really not liked?Kanakia: I do get asked this quite a bit. I would say the Great Book that I really felt like—at least in translation—was not that rewarding in an unabridged version was Don Quixote. Because at least half the length of Don Quixote is these like interpolated novellas that are really long and tedious. I felt Don Quixote was a big slog. But maybe someday I'll go back and reread it and love it. Who knows?Oliver: Now you wrote that the question of biography is totally divorced from the question of what art is and how it operates. What do you think of George Orwell's supposition that if Shakespeare came back tomorrow, and we found out he used to rape children that we should—we would not say, you know, it's fine to carry on to doing that because he might write another King Lear.Kanakia: Well, if we discovered that Shakespeare was raping children, he should go to prison for that. No. It's totally divorced in both senses. You don't get any credit in the court of law because you are the writer of King Lear. If I murdered someone and then I was hauled in front of a judge and they were like, oh, Naomi's a genius, I wouldn't get off for murder. Nor should I get off for murder.So in terms of like whether we would punish Shakespeare for his crime of raping children, I don't think King Lear should count at all, but it's never used that way. It's never should someone go to prison or not for their crimes, because they're a genius. It's always used the other way, which is should we read King Lear knowing that the author raped children, but I also feel like that is immaterial. If you read King Lear, you're not enabling someone to rape children.Oliver: There's an almost endless amount of discussion these days about the Great Books and education and the value of the humanities, and what's the future of it all. What is your short opinion on that?Kanakia: My short opinion is that the Great Books at least are going to be fine. The Great Books will continue to be read, and they would even survive the university. All these books predate the university and they will survive the university. I feel like the university has stewarded literature in its own way for a while now and has made certain choices in that stewardship. I think if that stewardship was given up to more voluntary associations that had less financial support, then I think the choices would probably be very different. But I still think the greatest works would survive.Oliver: Now this is a quote from the book: “I am glad that reactionaries love the Great Books. They've invited a Trojan horse into their own camp.” Tell us what you mean by that.Kanakia: Let's say you believed in Christian theocracy, that you thought America should be organized on explicitly Christian principles. And because you believe in Christian theocracy, you organize a school that teaches the Great Books. Many of these schools that are Christian schools that have Great Books programs will also teach Nietzsche. They definitely put some kind of spin on Nietzsche. But they will teach anti-Christ, and that is a counterpoint to Christian morality and Christian theology. There are many things that you'll read in the Great Books that are corrosive to various kinds of certainties.If someone who I think is bad starts educating themselves in the Great Books, I don't think that the Great Books are going to make them worse from my perspective. So it's good.Oliver: How did reading the Mahabharata change you?Kanakia: Oh yeah, so the Mahabharata is a Hindu epic from, let's say, the first century AD. I'm Indian and most Indians are familiar with the basic outline of the Mahabharata story because it's told in various retellings, and there's a TV serial that my parents would rent from the Indian store growing up and we would watch it tape by tape. So I'm very familiar with it. Like there's never been a time I have not known this story.But I was also familiar with the idea that there is a written version in Sanskrit that's extremely long. It is 10 times as long as the Iliad and the Odyssey combined. This Mahabharata story is not that long. I've read a version of it that's about 800 pages long. So how could something that's 10 times this long be the same? A new unabridged translation came out 10 years ago. So I started reading it, and it basically contains the entire Sanskrit Vedic worldview in it.I had never been exposed to this very coherently laid-out version of what I would call Hindu cosmology and ethics. Hindus don't really get taught those things in a very organized way. The book is basically about dharma, the principle of rightness and how this principle of rightness orders the universe and how it basically results in everybody getting their just deserts in various ways. As I was reading the book, I was like, this seems very true that there is some cosmic rebalancing here, and that everything does turn out more or less the way it should, which is not something that I can defend on a rational level.But just reading the book, it just made me feel like, yes, that is true. There is justice, the universe is organized by justice. It took me about a year to read the whole thing. I started waking up at 5:00 a.m. and reading for an hour each morning, and it just was a really magical, profound experience that brought me a lot closer to my grandmother's religious beliefs.Oliver: Is it ever possible to persuade someone with arguments that they should read literature, or is it just something that they have to have an inclination toward and then follow someone's example? Because I feel like we have so many columns and op-eds and “books are good because of X reason, and it's very important because of Y reason.” And like, who cares? No one cares. If you are persuaded, you take all that very seriously and you argue about what exactly are the precise reasons we should say. And if you're not persuaded, you don't even know this is happening.And what really persuades you is like, oh, Naomi sounds pretty compelling about the Mahabharata. That sounds cool. I'll try that. It's much more of a temperamental, feelingsy kind of thing. Is it possible to argue people into thinking about this differently? Or should we just be doing what we do and setting an example and hoping that people will follow.Kanakia: As to whether it's possible or not, I do not know. But I do think these columns are too ambitious. A thousand-word column and the imagined audience for this column is somebody who doesn't read books at all, who doesn't care about literature at all. And then in a thousand-word column, you're going to persuade them to care about literature. This is no good. It's so unnecessary.Whereas there's a much broader range of people who love to read books, but have never picked up Moby Dick or have never picked up Middlemarch, or who like maybe loved Middlemarch, but never thought maybe I should then go on and read Jane Austen and George Eliot.I think trying to shift people from “I don't read books at all; reading books is not something I do,” to being a Great Books card-carrying lover of literature is a lot. I really aim for a much lower result than that, which is to whatever extent people are interested in literature, they should pursue that interest. And as the rationalists would say, there's a lot of alpha in that; there's a lot to be gained from converting people who are somewhat interested into people who are very interested.Oliver: If there was a more widespread practice of humanism in education and the general culture, would that make America into a more liberal country in any way?Kanakia: What do you mean by humanism?Oliver: You know, the old-fashioned liberal arts approach, the revival of the literary journal culture, the sort of depolitical approach to literature, the way things used to be, as it were.Kanakia: It couldn't hurt. It couldn't hurt is my answer to that question.Oliver: Okay.Kanakia: What you're describing is basically the way I was educated. I went to Catholic school in DC at St. Anselm's Abbey School, in Northeast, DC, grade school. Highly recommend sending your little boys there. No complaints about the school. They talked about humanism all the time and all these civic virtues. I thought it was great. I don't know what people in other schools learn, but I really feel like it was a superior way of teaching.Now, you know, it was Catholic school, so a lot of people who graduated from my school are conservatives and don't really have the beliefs that I have, but that's okay.Oliver: Tell us about your reading habits.Kanakia: I read mostly ebooks. I really love ebooks because you can make the type bigger. I just read all the time. They vary. I don't wake up at 5:00 a.m. to read anymore. Sometimes if I feel like I'm not reading enough—because I write this blog, and the blog doesn't get written unless I'm reading. That's the engine, and so sometimes I set aside a day each week to read. But generally, the reading mostly takes care of itself.What I tend to get is very into a particular thing, and then I'll start reading more and more in that area. Recently, I was reading a lot of New Yorker stories. So I started reading more and more of these storywriters that have been published in the New Yorker and old anthologies of New Yorker stories. And then eventually I am done. I'm tired. It's time to move on.Oliver: But do you read several books at once? Do you make notes? Do you abandon books? How many hours a day do you read?Kanakia: Hours a day: Because my e-reader keeps these stats, I'd say 15 or 20 hours a week of reading. Nowadays because I write for the blog, I often think as I'm reading how I would frame a post about this. So I look for quotes, like what quote I would look at. I take different kinds of notes. I'll make more notes if I'm more confused by what is going on. Especially with nonfiction books, I'll try sometimes to make notes just to iron out what exactly I think is happening or what I think the argument is. But no, not much of a note taker.Oliver: What will you read next?Kanakia: What will I read next? Well, I've been thinking about getting back into Indian literature. Right now I'm reading Les Miserables by Victor Hugo. But there's an Indian novel called Jhootha Sach, which is a partition novel that is originally in Hindi. And it's also a thousand pages long, and is frequently compared to Les Miserables and War and Peace. So I'm thinking about tackling that finally.Oliver: Naomi Kanakia, thank you very much.Kanakia: Thanks for having me. This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit www.commonreader.co.uk

Greg Jenner is joined in medieval England by Professor Marion Turner and comedian Mike Wozniak to learn all about Geoffrey Chaucer, author of the Canterbury Tales. Since the fifteenth century, Chaucer has been referred to as the father of English literature. He was one of the first authors to champion the use of Middle English for poetry instead of Latin, and after the invention of the printing press, his works became the foundation of the English literary canon – long before Shakespeare ever put quill to parchment. But Chaucer's life was as extraordinary as his legacy, living as he did through the Black Death, the Hundred Years' War between England and France, and the Peasants' Revolt. In this episode, Greg and his guests explore Chaucer's dramatic biography: growing up the son of a wine merchant in fourteenth-century London, his work for the royal court and long career as a medieval civil servant, his relationship with John of Gaunt through his mistress Katherine Swynford, and his travels throughout Europe. They also examine the poets that influenced him – including Petrarch, Bocaccio and Dante – and take a deep dive into the famous Canterbury Tales. If you're a fan of medieval literature, historical courtroom dramas, and the tumult of fourteenth-century England, you'll love our episode on Geoffrey Chaucer. If you want more literary history with Mike Wozniak, listen to our episodes on Charles Dickens at Christmas and the Legends of King Arthur. And for more fourteenth-century lives, check out our episode on medieval Muslim traveller Ibn Battuta. You're Dead To Me is the comedy podcast that takes history seriously. Every episode, Greg Jenner brings together the best names in history and comedy to learn and laugh about the past. Hosted by: Greg Jenner Research by: Rosalyn Sklar Written by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow, Dr Emma Nagouse, and Greg Jenner Produced by: Dr Emmie Rose Price-Goodfellow and Greg Jenner Audio Producer: Steve Hankey Production Coordinator: Gill Huggett Senior Producer: Dr Emma Nagouse Executive Editor: Philip Sellars

Are the words plain, plane and plan related? Let’s find out in this Adventure in Etymology. Plain [pleɪn] as an adjective can mean: Simple, unaltered, ordinary, unsophisticated. Obvious, evident. Open, honest, candid. Unattractive Flat, level (rare, regional) It comes from Middle English pleyn (clear, unambiguous), from Anglo-Norman pleyn (plain), from Old French plain (plain [flat […]

Lords: Jesse Alex https://insertcredit.com/show/ https://discord.gg/dcofficial Topics: 90s Gen X "Internet High Weirdness" culture: SubGenius, DiLingo, Steve Jackson, the Looneys, KoL Writing a podcast about video games every week as someone who doesn't really play many video games anymore The mystery of BunnyROM https://bunnyrom.neocities.org/ Junk by Richard Wilbur https://media24.fireside.fm/file/fireside-uploads-2024/images/3/3597ddeb-e52e-4cda-a59c-c64600489fea/Al2MMuFX.png https://github.com/jdonland/bookmarks Autopsy, by Ross Sutherland: https://pastebin.com/raw/npCuYjLj Disney saved Star Wars by buying it from Lucasfilm. This is what Saved Star Wars looks like. Cycling's hour record https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/52/Mens_hour_records_progression.svg/2560px-Mens_hour_records_progression.svg.png Microtopics: A gold star Canadian. Cousin show Insert Credit. One of the world's foremost experts on DC Comics. Filling in the gaps with bonus episodes. The lost episode of topic lords that might one day be produced. Spreadsheet Secrets. Detritus and ruins of the culture that came before yours. (Gen-X.) Whether Steve Jackson is still doing the GURPS thing. Where did Gen-X come from, and why did it disappear? Your personal relationship with They Might Be Giants. The weirdos who first colonized the Internet in search of the community they weren't finding in their lives. Nerds riding high on military funding and founding new religions with varying degrees of mockery. British comedy crossing the ocean and losing its cultural context, so a generation of American nerds grow up with a more absurdist sense of humor than the previous generations. Sitting at your computer running IRC in 1996, staring at the screen waiting for someone to say something. Classical Education as a shared cultural context so rich people can understand each other's jokes. Halfway into the 2020s, still thinking about the Roaring Twenties whenever anyone names the decade. Everybody forgetting how to group history by decade after a twenty years of not easily being able to talk about "the 00s" and "the 10s." Playing video games from the ages of 5 to 20 and then stopping forever. Asking some of the most thoughtful people you know questions about video games. The exhaustion of trying to keep video games in your life. Artists and critics with opinions that are wildly out of step with their audience. Video game companies that have great logos. People who are so good at telling interesting stories about the bad video games that they're playing that they convince you to buy the game and then you're like "where's the interesting game they talked about" Talking to the same oldbies every week. An 18 year old kid obsessed with the Atari Jaguar wandering into the middle-aged video game club and everyone is like "sickos face yes emoji" Trying to track down the manufacturer of Digital Princess Friend. Mysterious ROM images that nobody knows the origin of because nobody asked. A Tamagotchi where your little guy can be a fighter plane or Sponge Bob. Mysteriously good Tamagotchi software floating around. The reason M&Ms come in different colors. An egg that your umbrella with an eye can hatch from. Why you can't ship a container full of cheap junk to the United States any more. Middle English style poetry. Sheer shards of shattered tumblers. Modern English alliterative verse. It's cool what people do with words. Paying so much attention to the alliteration that you miss the meaning of the poem. All the Babu Frik Funko Pops that will still be around long after all the stars go out. Hephaestus' Hammer, all gunked up in microplastics. Quoting other poems in the middle of your poem. Publishing a book of all the poems we've read on Topic Lords and then being sued for copyright infringement. A poem that originated on Jim's fridge. Diminishing Mandalorian Returns. The goddamned Ewoks shit. The Droids cartoon. The future of Star Wars: jokes about Star Wars?? The Day the Clown Cried of Star Wars. The angriest you've ever been watching a movie. The third good Star Wars movie. Stealing good ideas from cool fiction. One guy who got lucky a couple times and a thousand yes men enabling him for the next 40 years. Planet Moriband. Finally finding a guy you can call Mace Windu. Waiting for Jar-Jar. Sometimes you just need drivel that you like. Buying a tangerine and noticing that it's a Star Wars-branded tangerine. Technology improving the way we interact with wind resistance. 1890 guy on his velocipede getting mad at all the new Space Bikes. Instituting new rules stating that your bicycle has to look like a bicycle. Ivory Tower Cycle Men. Vampire Tactics. The most prestigious world record in professional cycling. Keeping track of the world record best dress at a fashion show. What about Funny Cars? What's so funny about them? Trying to break the Merckx record using Merckx's original bicycle and outfit. Everyone tying the same world record forever. Riding 270 miles a day for a year. Walking to work 23 miles a day, both ways, because you love suffering and hate bicycles. Detective Comics Comics.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 26, 2026 is: oaf • OHF • noun Oaf is used to refer to someone as big, clumsy, and slow-witted. // The main character starts the movie as a tactless, bumbling oaf who is constantly causing offense to everyone around them, but eventually learns a valuable lesson about kindness and courtesy. See the entry > Examples: “Let me give you a rose. Well, just an imaginary rose. ‘What?' ‘What's the occasion?' ‘What for?' Because I want to participate in an act of kindness. ... It's impossible, even for a blustering, clumsy oaf like me, to ignore the positive effects of a rose in hand.” — Anthony Campbell, The Advertiser-Gleam (Guntersville, Alabama), 24 Oct. 2025 Did you know? In long-ago England, it was believed that elves sometimes secretly exchanged their babies for human babies—a belief that served as an explanation when parents found themselves with a baby that failed to meet expectations or desires: these parents believed that their real baby had been stolen by elves and that a changeling had been left in its place. The label for such a child was auf, or alfe, (meaning “an elf's or a goblin's child”), which was later altered to form our present-day oaf. Auf is likely from the Middle English alven or elven, meaning “elf” or “fairy.” Today, the word oaf is no longer associated with babies and is instead applied to anyone who appears especially unintelligent or graceless.

In this Adventure in Etymology we examine the origins of the word health and related things. Meanings of health [hɛlθ] include: The state of being free from physical or psychological disease, illness, or malfunction. A state of well-being or balance, often physical but sometimes also mental and social. It comes from Middle English helthe [ˈhɛlθ(ə)] […]

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 23, 2026 is: astrolabe • A-struh-layb • noun An astrolabe is a compact instrument used to observe and calculate the position of celestial bodies before the invention of the sextant. // The new astronomy exhibit featured various gadgets and instruments, including an extensive collection of astrolabes. See the entry > Examples: “‘Renaissance Treasures' includes two contemporary navigational devices, a planispheric astrolabe from Persia and a pocket compass (think of them as beta-version GPS), as well as two Mercator globes. One dates from 1541 and shows the surface of the Earth. The other dates from 1551 and shows the heavens ...” — Mark Feeney, The Boston Globe, 9 May 2025 Did you know? “Thyn Astrolabie hath a ring to putten on the thombe of thi right hond in taking the height of thinges.” Thus begins a description of an astrolabe in A Treatise on the Astrolabe, a medieval user's guide penned by an amateur astronomer by the name of Geoffrey Chaucer. Chaucer is best known for his Middle English poetic masterpiece The Canterbury Tales, but when his nose wasn't buried in his writing, Chaucer was stargazing, and some of his passion for the heavens rubbed off on his son Lewis, who had displayed a special “abilite to lerne sciences touching nombres and proporciouns.” Chaucer dedicated his treatise to the 10-year-old boy, setting his instructions not in the usual Latin, but in “naked wordes in Englissh” so that little Lewis could understand. When he got older, Lewis may have learned that the word astrolabe traces to the Late Greek name for the instrument, astrolábion.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 22, 2026 is: disheveled • dih-SHEV-uld • adjective A disheveled person or thing is not neat or tidy. // His wrinkled suit gave him a disheveled appearance. See the entry > Examples: “My mother is waking up. ... She dresses quickly. Her oblong, Scots-Irish face may be too idiosyncratic for the screen anyway, the hollow cheekbones and sharp eyes, the straw-blond hair worn in a low-slung and slightly disheveled beehive.” — Matthew Specktor, The Golden Hour: A Story of Family and Power in Hollywood, 2025 Did you know? These days, the adjective disheveled is used to describe almost anything or anyone marked by disorder or disarray. Rumpled clothes, for example, often contribute to a disheveled appearance, as in Colson Whitehead's novel Crook Manifesto, when the comedian Roscoe Pope walks onstage “disheveled, in wrinkled green corduroy pants.” Apartments, desks, bedsheets, you name it—all can be disheveled when not at their neatest and tidiest. Hair, however, is the most common noun to which disheveled is applied (along with hairdo terms like bun and beard), a fact that makes etymological sense. Disheveled comes from the Middle English adjective discheveled, meaning “bareheaded” or “with disordered hair.” That word is a partial translation of the Anglo-French word deschevelé, a combination of the prefix des- (“dis-“) and chevoil, meaning “hair.”

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for January 15, 2026 is: cloying • KLOY-ing • adjective Cloying is used disapprovingly to describe something that is too sweet, pleasant, or sentimental. // She finds most romantic comedies cloying and predictable. See the entry > Examples: “Images of her came to me often, as did snatches of songs in her repertoire, which she sang to me as lullabies. ... What I couldn't quite summon, despite what I thought of as my keen smell memory, was her fragrance. As a kid, I had never liked it. Bellodgia was heavy, spicy, and floral; when my mother would lean over me to comb my hair ... the cloying rose and carnation combined with her tugging on my scalp always threatened to give me a headache. Still ... I missed that fragrance now.” — Margaret Talbot, The New Yorker, 10 July 2025 Did you know? The history of cloying isn't sweet—it's tough as nails. Cloying comes from the verb cloy, which in Middle English meant “to hinder or seriously injure”; its source is an Anglo-French word meaning “to prick (a horse) with a nail in shoeing.” English cloy too carried this farriery meaning (a farrier being a person who shoes horses) in the early 16th century, but it also had a general sense relating to clogging and stuffing, and in particular to overloading with especially sweet or rich food. From there quickly arose meanings of cloy still in use today: “to supply with an unwanted or distasteful excess usually of something originally pleasing” and “to be or become insipid or distasteful usually through an excess of an originally pleasurable quality (such as sweetness).” The adjective cloying, which describes things that are too sweet, pleasant, or sentimental, was doing the job it does today by the end of the 16th century.

Listen to JCO's Art of Oncology article, "The Quiet Work of Clarity" by Dr. Henry Bair, who is an ophthalmology resident physician at Wills Eye Hospital. The article is followed by an interview with Bair and host Dr. Mikkael Sekeres. Dr. Bair explores how vision care can honor end-of-life goals and helps a patient with failing sight write to his children. TRANSCRIPT Narrator: The Quiet Work of Clarity, Henry, Bair, MD  Mikkael Sekeres: Welcome back to JCO's Cancer Stories: The Art of Oncology. This ASCO podcast features intimate narratives and perspectives from authors exploring their experiences in oncology. I'm your host, Mikkael Sekeres. I'm professor of medicine and Chief of the Division of Hematology at the Sylvester Comprehensive Cancer Center, University of Miami. What a pleasure it is to have joining us today Dr. Henry Bair, an ophthalmology resident physician at Wills Eye Hospital, to discuss his Journal of Clinical Oncology Art of Oncology article, "Quiet Work of Clarity". At the time of this recording, our guest has no disclosures. Dr. Bair and I have agreed to call each other by first names. Henry, thank you for contributing to the Journal of Clinical Oncology and for joining us to discuss your article. Henry Bair: Thank you very much for having me. Mikkael Sekeres: I love starting off by getting a little bit of background about our guests. I know a little bit about you, but I'm not sure all of our listeners do. Can you tell us about yourself and how you reached this stage of your training? Henry Bair: Sure thing. Happy to start there. I was born and raised in Taiwan. I came to the United States when I was 18 for college. I was at Rice University. I was drawn to it because the Texas Medical Center was right over there, but the university had a small liberal arts feel and the university did not box me into any specific discipline. I went there and we didn't have to declare anything and we could take any class from any school over there. And I actually fell in love with medieval studies of all things. I just came upon it in one of the survey courses and I went deeper and deeper and deeper and eventually wrote my thesis on medieval Irish manuscripts. That was really interesting. At the same time I was doing some clinical work and I realized that medicine might be a way to combine my interest in storytelling and the humanities with making a tangible difference in people's lives. Then I was in medical school at Stanford University, which was, in a similar way, I found a place that really let me explore what it meant to be a physician because the medical school let me take classes from all across the university: so the law school, the school of humanities, school of engineering, the business school. I got a chance to do a little bit of a lot of different things to try to figure out what I actually wanted to do with life. And I spent a lot of time actually doing a little bit of palliative care, a little bit of oncology, some medical education, some medical humanities. I had a lot of time thinking about, "Okay, what kind of specialty do I want to do?" I found myself really enjoying procedural specialties, but also really liking the kinds of patient interactions and conversations I had in palliative care and oncology, and eventually found ophthalmology, interestingly. I often have to remind myself or explain myself how those two connect. And to me, the way they connect is that ophthalmology lets me do very fascinating, intellectually challenging things in terms of working with my hands, very rewarding surgical procedural work. But at the same time, the conversations that I get to have with patients about seeing well, I saw so many parallels between that and living well. To me it was so much about quality of life. And that's how I knew that ophthalmology was the right move for me. And so now I'm an ophthalmology resident. Mikkael Sekeres: Fascinating. When I was an undergrad, the person who had the most influence on me was an English professor who was also a medievalist. There must be something about the personality and pouring over these old texts and trying to read things in Middle English that appeals to some character trait in those of us who eventually become physicians. I also remember when I was in medical school, we could also take classes throughout the university. So I wound up taking some writing classes with undergrads and with graduate students. It adds to this holistic education that we bring to medicine because it's not all about the science, is it? Henry Bair: Yeah, it's also different ways of thinking and seeing the world and just hearing people's different stories. It's the people I've met in a lot of those different settings outside of medical school that I think really enhanced my formative years in medical education. Mikkael Sekeres: You certainly bring it all together in this essay, which was just lovely. And I wonder if we could dive into some of the aspects of this essay. I'm dying to know, when you went to see this man, the main character of your essay, did you have any idea what the consult would be about? Henry Bair: No. So when we're in the hospital and as the ophthalmology resident on consult, we get notifications. These pop up whenever a primary team puts in a consult and it's usually fairly vague. It's usually no more than "blurry vision, please evaluate," "eye pain, please evaluate." As an ophthalmologist, getting a consult for blurry vision is kind of like a cardiologist getting consulted for chest pain. You're like, "Okay, but it could be something, it could be nothing, it could be something terrifying, it could be dry eyes, or it could be end-stage glaucoma, or it could be, who knows?" You really genuinely never know what you're getting yourself into until you actually go in there and talk to the patient, which can be frustrating, but also kind of an interesting experience. Mikkael Sekeres: I worry I'm guilty of submitting some of those consults to ophthalmology. Henry Bair: I didn't realize this fully until I started working on the ophthalmology side. I think non-ophthalmologists get so little exposure and training in ophthalmology. Of course, when I think about it, I didn't get any ophthalmology in medical school. So it's understandable. Mikkael Sekeres: In your essay, you write, and I'm going to quote you to you, "I am still learning what we can treat and what we can only tend. My training has taught me well how to assess visual acuity, intraocular pressures, and retinal nerve fiber layer thickness, but standing at his bedside, the index that mattered was none of these, but whether we could help him read for one more day." "What we can treat and what we can only tend." That's such a beautiful line. Is that something that only comes with years of experience, determining what we can treat and what we can only tend, or is it a dawning sense as we get to know our patients when we are trying to stop the inevitable from happening? Henry Bair: That is an interesting question because I think of it more almost as a fundamental shift in mindset. And I'm coming from someone who I think had the benefit of having had mentors, having had clinical experiences in palliative care in medical school. As I mentioned earlier, I was drawn to a lot of those patient conversations. So I think in some ways, starting in residency, I had long been primed to think about tending to a patient's concerns. And yet, even having been primed, even having the benefit of all those experiences and those conversations with amazing clinicians and with patients, maybe it's subject matter specific. I mean, ophthalmology tends to be a specialty, in my experience, my limited experience, ophthalmology tends to be one of those specialties that focuses so much on fixing things and treating things and reversing things. And in fact, that's one of the beautiful things of ophthalmology: how often you can reverse things or completely stop the progression of disease. And so I think in some ways, I am having to relearn what it means to see something not always as, "Okay, what's a problem here? What is the fix? How do I reverse this?" and go back and reach back to those experiences, those conversations I had with patients about trying to figure out, "Okay, the things that we can't fix, what can we still do?" To most people who have come across palliative care, this sentiment is by no means novel, the sentiment that there is always something we can do. You often hear about people talking about, "Oh, there's nothing more we can do." And I sort of try to bring that approach into the clinical encounters that I have. It's very reflexive to think that, "Okay, a person has lost vision from end-stage glaucoma or they have a blind painful eye. Well, there's nothing more we can do. You know, we've done all the conventional surgeries, we've done all the therapies, the medications," but I always have to pull myself back and say, "But there's always something we can do here." Mikkael Sekeres: It's so interesting how you frame that. We're problem solvers. We're trained to solve problems. A patient presents with X, a problem, we have to be clever enough to figure out how to solve it. I wonder if what you're saying indirectly is sometimes we're identifying the wrong problem. Henry Bair: I think so, yeah. Mikkael Sekeres: There may be a problem that we can't solve. Someone is actively dying from cancer. We can't solve the problem of curing them of their cancer. But there are other problems that we can potentially solve, and maybe that's where we have to be clever in identifying the problem. Henry Bair: I think so. And it's also what's in our textbooks and what's not. So we spend hundreds of hours in lecture and we pour over so many textbooks, and I do question banks now for board exams preparation. It's all on the textbook presentations, the textbook solutions. The problems are, you know, the retinal artery occlusions, it's about the really bad diabetic retinopathy. And then the answers to those things would be a stroke workup, would be some kind of injection into the eye. But like the problem that I encountered in this story that I talked about was this patient trying to write letters to his kids. That's not going to show up on any exam. We don't have lectures about talking about those things. Mikkael Sekeres: So, as I think you know, I wrote an essay in 2010 for Art of Oncology and for a book that I wrote about a woman who inspired me to go into oncology. She was a woman in her 40s who was a pediatric attending who had advanced ovarian cancer. The story I wrote about her was how she spent her final night on this earth in the intensive care unit writing cards for her children, too. It's fascinating how history repeats itself in how we care for people who have cancer. You have a really a beautiful way of saying this. You talk about, "an ordinary father sharing ordinary advice for an ordinary day. Illness had made that ordinariness remarkable. Our work that day was to protect the ordinary." Can you talk a little bit, I mean given the woman I wrote about and the man you wrote about, about this need to communicate with your family after you're gone? Henry Bair: To me, one of the biggest lessons I've learned working in healthcare is that what defines most of our lives, what defines the most meaningful, the most purposeful, the most rewarding aspects of our lives is our relationships. You can explore this from myriad perspectives. You can explore this from like a psychosocial perspective and look at all those studies showing that people who have better social connections and better ties with their families live longer lives and actually healthier lives, have decreased rates of mental health problems. Or we can just approach this from like a more humanistic perspective and explore it and think and listen in on the conversations people have with people around them, that patients have, the conversations patients have during the most difficult times of their lives. They don't talk about their work, they don't talk about their accomplishments, they talk about their relationships with their kids, with their spouses, with their parents. In my experience when people are at critical junctures of big life changes, whether it's people about to go into major surgery, people grappling with the idea of losing their vision or losing their lives, any sort of big pivotal change, they want to talk to their families and explore gratitude and regret and all these things. These are the themes that come up over and over and over again. In some ways it does not surprise me at all, this need to communicate with the family at the end of life. In some ways that's how you live on, that's how we feel, that's how patients feel their lives are defined by is that lasting relationship, that lasting impact at the end, or even transcending the end. Mikkael Sekeres: This is going beyond the end, isn't it? Henry Bair: Yeah. Mikkael Sekeres: These are letters and notes being written to children to be handed to them after death. And I think one of the reasons, in my case, the woman I encountered when I was in training who inspired me to go into oncology, I've been thinking about her for 25 years off and on. Both the incredible spirit to be able to do that on your last night on this earth, but also the flip side to it: there are potential downsides to doing this, aren't there? That, you know, I think about it from the perspective of her kids who at the time were 8 and 10 years old in my case. And I wonder what it was like for them to open up that birthday card when they were 17 or 18. And I wonder if you've kind of wondered the same about your patient and his children. Henry Bair: Yeah, I think when we think about these letter-writing projects, legacy-type projects, I hear about in hospitals around the country, there are teams that try to implement legacy-type things: whether it's doing video messages, whether it's stitching together short documentary film for patients who are in hospice. I feel like I see these things popping up a lot. You raise a very important point, and I actually didn't think about this until I was writing the essay. It's not an unambiguous good because it's the impact is variable, and it's really hard to predict that. How did you grapple with that in your essay? How did you make sense of it all at the end? Mikkael Sekeres: I don't think I did. I don't think I still have, which is why I think I still reflect back 25 years later on this episode and thinking about her children and how they're now, maybe they're still continuing to receive these cards from her and whether that's something they really appreciate and are like, "Boy, this is great, I get a little piece of mom still even now," or do they look at her unsteady hand as she's writing these cards and say, "That's not the mom I want to remember." Henry Bair: Yeah, that's a really good point. In the essay, I talk about that moment when the patient recognizes these are very imperfect letters, imperfectly written. We talked a little bit about that. And the patient makes a point, very wisely. I had suggested, "Oh, what if you want me to correct things?" And he's like, "No, no, no, the mistakes are part of it. It's part of the message. The message is that this was me at a difficult time in my life. I cannot control my hands the way that I used to, but that's still part of me. That makes it more genuine and authentic, mistakes and all built in." He wanted his children to see him for who he fully was in that moment. Mikkael Sekeres: And that was such a poignant part of your essay and probably the one that jumped out at me the most. Like as a dad, you want your kids to see you for who you are, right? You're not a superhero. In this case, this is somebody who was going to succumb to his illness, who did, but he was their dad and wanted them to remember him for all of who he was at that moment. Before I let you go, Henry, because I feel like we could probably talk for hours about this, before we started this podcast, I noticed you had better podcast equipment than I do, and sure enough, you copped to the fact that you do host your own podcast. You want to tell us a little bit about that? Because it touches on so many themes we touched on here in Cancer Stories. Henry Bair: Yeah, well thanks for asking me about that. Yeah, don't mind if I plug a little bit. Yes, so in medical school, this was 2021, around 2022, we were emerging from the COVID pandemic, and one of the things I was seeing around me as a medical student were physicians and nurses leaving the profession in droves. Like, there were so many reports and surveys coming out of the AMA discussing how more than half of all physicians are burned out, a third of physicians can't find meaning in their work anymore. And that was really scary. As a clinical trainee, what was I getting myself into? These weren't just some clinicians somewhere. These were often times- I was hearing these kinds of conversations about losing sight of why they even come in in the first place to work. I was hearing these conversations from professors that I thought were well-accomplished. These were people who had gone to the right residencies, the right fellowships. They had the right publications. These are people who I aspired to be, I suppose, and they were talking about leaving clinical practice. A wonderful mentor of mine who is an oncologist, still an oncologist at Stanford, we started talking about these things. And I asked him, "You seem to love your job." He was a GI oncologist dealing with very, very sick patients day in and day out. I've seen him in clinic. And I asked him, "What's your secret? What keeps you coming back over and over and over again?" And so that led to a conversation. And then we realized, "Wait a second, there are people, a third of physicians losing meaning in their work meant that two thirds of physicians have meaning in their work. Okay, let's talk about that." So we started exploring, we started just asking clinicians who have found true purpose in their work. And then we asked them to share their stories. And that's how the podcast was born. It's called The Doctor's Art, and at this point, we've expanded and we interview nurses and patients and caregivers. We interview philosophers and filmmakers, journalists. We interview ethicists and religious leaders, really anyone who might have some insight about what living well means either from the clinician perspective or from the patient perspective. And guess what? Everyone is going to be either a caregiver or a care recipient at some point in their lives. It's still ongoing and it's ended up being something where we explore very universal themes. Mikkael Sekeres: Well, it sounds great, Henry, and it sounds like a perfect complement to what we're doing here in Cancer Stories. It has been such a pleasure to have Dr. Henry Bair, who is an ophthalmology resident at Wills Eye Hospital, to discuss his essay, "The Quiet Work of Clarity". Henry, thank you so much for submitting your article to the Journal of Clinical Oncology and for joining us today. Henry Bair: Thank you very much, Mikail, for letting me share my insights and my story. It was a wonderful opportunity. Mikkael Sekeres: If you've enjoyed this episode, consider sharing it with a friend or colleague, or leave us a review. Your feedback and support helps us continue to have these important conversations. If you're looking for more episodes and content, follow our show on Apple, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and explore more from ASCO at asco.org/podcasts. Until next time, this has been Mikkael Sekeres for Cancer Stories. The purpose of this podcast is to educate and to inform. This is not a substitute for professional medical care and is not intended for use in the diagnosis or treatment of individual conditions.   Guests on this podcast express their own opinions, experience, and conclusions. Guest statements on the podcast do not express the opinions of ASCO. The mention of any product, service, organization, activity, or therapy should not be construed as an ASCO endorsement. Show notes:Like, share and subscribe so you never miss an episode and leave a rating or review. Guest Bio: Dr Henry Bair is a ophthalmology resident physician at Wills Eye Hospital and podcast host of The Doctor's Art.

Once again we visit the a film based on the 14th century, Middle English, Christmas-set poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, and walk away somewhat disappointed. Is Mary expecting too much? Why is she so obsessed with this poem? Will there ever be a version that satisfies her? Starring Murray Head, Ciaran Madden, Nigel Green, Anthony Sharp, Robert Hardy, Tony Steedman, and Ronald Lacy. Written by Philip M. Breen and Stephen Weeks. Directed by Stephen Weeks. This is a preview of the latest episode of our series Hollywood Avalon. To hear the entire episode, join the Mary Versus the Movies patreon for $3/month to hear this and the entire series Hollywood Avalon: https://www.patreon.com/maryvsmovies. 

A unique study of the only physical manuscript containing Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as both a material and literary object.In this book, Arthur Bahr takes a fresh look at the four poems and twelve illustrations of the so-called “Pearl-Manuscript,” the only surviving medieval copy of two of the best-known Middle English poems: Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript, Bahr explores how the physical manuscript itself enhances our perception of the poetry, drawing on recent technological advances (such as spectroscopic analysis) to show the Pearl-Manuscript to be a more complex piece of material, visual, and textual art than previously understood. By connecting the manuscript's construction to the intricate language in the texts, Bahr suggests new ways to understand both what poetry is and what poetry can do. Arthur Bahr is professor of literature and MacVicar Faculty Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of Fragments and Assemblages: Forming Compilations of Medieval London, also published by the University of Chicago Press. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/new-books-network

A unique study of the only physical manuscript containing Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as both a material and literary object.In this book, Arthur Bahr takes a fresh look at the four poems and twelve illustrations of the so-called “Pearl-Manuscript,” the only surviving medieval copy of two of the best-known Middle English poems: Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript, Bahr explores how the physical manuscript itself enhances our perception of the poetry, drawing on recent technological advances (such as spectroscopic analysis) to show the Pearl-Manuscript to be a more complex piece of material, visual, and textual art than previously understood. By connecting the manuscript's construction to the intricate language in the texts, Bahr suggests new ways to understand both what poetry is and what poetry can do. Arthur Bahr is professor of literature and MacVicar Faculty Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of Fragments and Assemblages: Forming Compilations of Medieval London, also published by the University of Chicago Press. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/literary-studies

A unique study of the only physical manuscript containing Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as both a material and literary object.In this book, Arthur Bahr takes a fresh look at the four poems and twelve illustrations of the so-called “Pearl-Manuscript,” the only surviving medieval copy of two of the best-known Middle English poems: Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript, Bahr explores how the physical manuscript itself enhances our perception of the poetry, drawing on recent technological advances (such as spectroscopic analysis) to show the Pearl-Manuscript to be a more complex piece of material, visual, and textual art than previously understood. By connecting the manuscript's construction to the intricate language in the texts, Bahr suggests new ways to understand both what poetry is and what poetry can do. Arthur Bahr is professor of literature and MacVicar Faculty Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of Fragments and Assemblages: Forming Compilations of Medieval London, also published by the University of Chicago Press. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

A unique study of the only physical manuscript containing Sir Gawain and the Green Knight as both a material and literary object.In this book, Arthur Bahr takes a fresh look at the four poems and twelve illustrations of the so-called “Pearl-Manuscript,” the only surviving medieval copy of two of the best-known Middle English poems: Pearl and Sir Gawain and the Green Knight. In Chasing the Pearl-Manuscript, Bahr explores how the physical manuscript itself enhances our perception of the poetry, drawing on recent technological advances (such as spectroscopic analysis) to show the Pearl-Manuscript to be a more complex piece of material, visual, and textual art than previously understood. By connecting the manuscript's construction to the intricate language in the texts, Bahr suggests new ways to understand both what poetry is and what poetry can do. Arthur Bahr is professor of literature and MacVicar Faculty Fellow at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He is the author of Fragments and Assemblages: Forming Compilations of Medieval London, also published by the University of Chicago Press. Morteza Hajizadeh is a Ph.D. graduate in English from the University of Auckland in New Zealand. His research interests are Cultural Studies; Critical Theory; Environmental History; Medieval (Intellectual) History; Gothic Studies; 18th and 19th Century British Literature. YouTube channel. Twitter. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices Support our show by becoming a premium member! https://newbooksnetwork.supportingcast.fm/british-studies

Today on Ascend: The Great Books Podcast, we are discussing Fitt 1 of Sir Gawain and the Green Knight with Dcn. Garlick, Dr. Justin Jackson of Hillsdale College, Chivalry Guild, and Banished Kent.Check out thegreatbookspodcast.com for our reading schedule.Check out our WRITTEN GUIDE to Sir Gawain and the Greek Knight (posted soon!).Episode SummaryThe panel dives into the 14th-century Middle English masterpiece Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, exploring its mysterious single-manuscript survival, alliterative brilliance, and rich layers of meaning in Fit 1. From the Troy-to-Britain prologue to the shocking arrival of the Green Knight and the beheading game, the discussion uncovers dualities, temptations, and the clash between chivalric courtesy and Christian virtue that make this Christmas tale profoundly relevant.Why Sir Gawain and the Green Knight Is Worth ReadingThis poem stands as one of the greatest works of English literature because it masterfully blends adventure, humor, moral depth, and spiritual insight. As Dr. Jackson notes, it survived by miracle in a single tiny manuscript, yet offers the “greatest chivalric romance” alongside exquisite theological literacy. It probes timeless questions—how do pride, fear, courtesy, and faith collide in a fallen world?—without easy answers, forcing readers to wrestle with their own choices. Tolkien saw it as a meditation on seductive worldly culture versus Christian ethos; the guests highlight its realistic portrayal of human imperfection amid high ideals. Beautifully crafted (alliteration, bob-and-wheel, vivid imagery), often funny, and profoundly Christian, it humanizes the heroic while elevating humility and grace—perfect for Christmas reflection on mortality, temptation, and redemption.Key Discussion PointsManuscript & Poet: A unique survival with Pearl, Cleanness, and Patience; anonymous poet of astounding skill in alliterative revival.Historical Frame: Begins with Troy's fall and Aeneas (traitor in medieval legend) leading to Brutus and Britain—history as “bliss and blunder.”Arthur's Court: Young, vital Arthur is admirable yet “somewhat childish,” craving marvels or “life for life” combat.Guinevere's Gray Eyes: Symbol of wisdom/clarity, yet ambiguous; benchmark of beauty later challenged.Green Knight's Duality: Terrifying green giant vs. courtly noble—tempting fear/violence vs. courtesy/mercy.The Game: Explicitly “stroke for stroke,” not beheading; court's violent interpretation reveals failures.Tolkien's Lens: Tension between seductive chivalric/courtly culture and higher Christian virtue.Gawain's Intervention: Praised as humble, loyal self-sacrifice to shield Arthur.Notable QuotesDr. Jackson: “The poem is giving you two readings throughout, and then it wants to see which one are you going to appropriate.”Deacon Garlick: “This text captures my imagination… knowledge is an antecedent to love.”George (via Tolkien): “Gawain… as a matter of duty and humility and self-sacrifice.”Resources & RecommendationsTolkien's translation and scholarly editionJames Winny's facing-page translationDr. Jackson's Hillsdale online course lecture (watch after finishing the poem to avoid spoilers)Next episode: Fits 2–3 with Dr. Tiffany Schubert. Join the discussion on Patreon or X!

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for December 5, 2025 is: inoculate • ih-NAHK-yuh-layt • verb To inoculate a person or animal is to introduce immunologically active material (such as an antibody or antigen) into them especially in order to treat or prevent a disease. Inoculate can also mean "to introduce (something, such as a microorganism) into a suitable situation for growth," and in figurative use, it can mean "to protect as if by inoculation" or "to introduce something into the mind of." // In 1796, the English physician Edward Jenner discovered that inoculating people with cowpox could provide immunity against smallpox. // The cheese is inoculated with a starter culture to promote fermentation. See the entry > Examples: "Truffle farmers ... inoculate oak or hazelnut seedlings with truffle spores, plant the seedlings and wait patiently often a decade or more for the underground relationship to mature. The eventual harvest is a reward for years of cooperation between tree and fungus." — David Shubin, The Weekly Calistogan (Calistoga, California), 30 Oct. 2025 Did you know? If you think you see a connection between inoculate and ocular ("of or relating to the eye"), you have a good eye—both words look back to oculus, the Latin word for "eye." But what does the eye have to do with inoculation? Our answer lies in the original use of inoculate in Middle English: "to insert a bud into a plant for propagation." The Latin oculus was sometimes applied to things that were seen to resemble eyes, and one such thing was the bud of a plant. Inoculate was later applied to other forms of engrafting or implanting, including the introduction of vaccines as a preventative against disease.

To understand the oppressive nature of the word slut and the social concept behind it, we have to understand how its meaning evolved.Slut began like many English words: neutral, then pejorated into a slur for girls and women. Linguist Amanda Montell, in Wordslut, traces how gender-neutral or positive words shift into insults for women. Bitch once referred to genitals or animals before narrowing to “bossy woman.” Hauswif (female head of household) became housewife and then hussy. Meanwhile, terms for men — sir, mister — stayed honorable, while madam and mistress became sexualized.Middle English slutte meant a slovenly person of any gender. By the 1700s it signified a messy girl or wife; by the 1900s it became sexual. Use of slut soared in the 1970s, paralleling the rise of mass-market porn. The pattern is clear: men historically controlled communication — pulpits, presses, publishing, and porn — shaping language to reflect patriarchal norms.Today's meaning centers the accuser: an allegedly immoral woman who has “too much” sex or simply looks sexual. It frames sexual freedom as a lack of self-respect and dehumanizes girls and women, especially women with intersecting marginalized identities. Meanwhile, patriarchal cultures reward male promiscuity while condemning women's.Why? Because controlling women's sexuality once meant controlling reproduction — and therefore property and power. As societies shifted to agriculture, paternity certainty upheld male dominance. Punishing “promiscuous” women maintained that control.So why does this persist today? Sociolinguistics shows that language reflects and reinforces power. Montell highlights sexist defaults across English: female doctor, male nurse, manslut versus slut. The unmarked norm is male; women are the deviation.Feminist philosopher Marilyn Frye defines oppression through double binds: whatever women choose, they lose. Dress attractively and risk slut-shaming; dress modestly and risk dismissal. Iris Marion Young expands this into the “five faces of oppression”: exploitation, marginalization, powerlessness, cultural imperialism, and violence.The slut stereotype intersects with all five. Violence appears in misogynist mass murders by Elliot Rodger, Chris Harper-Mercer, and others who blamed women's sexual autonomy. Powerlessness shows up in everyday self-censorship around clothing, behavior, and ambition. Online, weak legal protections for revenge porn and deepfakes disproportionately harm girls and women, sometimes forcing them to uproot their lives.Cultural imperialism — or hegemonic “mind colonization” — surfaces when people internalize the attitudes that oppress them. As Allan Johnson argues, patriarchy is a system we all absorb: expectations about sexual availability, male entitlement, and female self-doubt seep into everyone raised within it.So what do we do? One approach is reclamation. SlutWalks, sparked after a Toronto officer said women should “avoid dressing like sluts,” challenge rape culture and victim blaming. Activist Amber Rose argues reclaiming slut helps dismantle it. And frankly, it's fun to say — a plosive, punchy word. Montell notes slurs fade only when the beliefs behind them fade.Ways to address this issue:• Get cishet men to call themselves sluts — not mansluts — and to do it vulnerably, without demeaning partners.• Reintroduce slutte as a gender-neutral term, like heaux for ho/whore.• Teach kids media literacy about porn and bodily autonomy. When teens use gendered insults, ask what they really mean; encourage ungendered ones like “butthole” or naming specific behaviors.

Acharya S, whose real name is D.M. Murdock, was classically educated at some of the finest schools, receiving an undergraduate degree in Classics, Greek Civilization, from Franklin & Marshall College, the 17th oldest college in the United States. At F&M, listed in the "highly selective" category in guides to top colleges and universities, Acharya studied under Dr. Robert Barnett, Dr. Joel Farber and Dr. Ann Steiner, among others. Acharya S has served as a trench master on archaeological excavations in Corinth, Greece, and Connecticut, USA, as well as a teacher's assistant on the island of Crete. Acharya S has traveled extensively around Europe,and she speaks, reads and/or writes English, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Portuguese and a smattering of other languages to varying degrees. She has read Euripides, Plato and Homer in ancient Greek, and Cicero in Latin, as well as Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales in Middle English. She has also been compelled to cross-reference the Bible in the original Hebrew and ancient Greek. Acharya S aka D.M. Murdock has gained expertise in several religions, as well as knowledge about other esoterica and mystical subjects. She is also the author of several books, including The Christ Conspiracy. Her book Suns of God: Krishna, Buddha and Christ Unveiled, is an expansion of the themes and thesis of The Christ Conspiracy. Acharya's book Who Was Jesus: Fingerprints of The Christ represents a scientific analysis of the data regarding this alleged superhuman god who purportedly walked the earth. Acharya has also written Christ in Egypt: The Horus-Jesus Connection, which demonstrates the Egyptian and Horus parallels to Christianity and Christ to be real and factual. Articles by Acharya S have been published in Exposure, Steamshovel Press, Paranoia, as well as other periodicals and ezines. - http://www.truthbeknown.com Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/the-x-zone-radio-tv-show--1078348/support.Please note that all XZBN radio and/or television shows are Copyright © REL-MAR McConnell Meda Company, Niagara, Ontario, Canada – www.rel-mar.com. For more Episodes of this show and all shows produced, broadcasted and syndicated from REL-MAR McConell Media Company and The 'X' Zone Broadcast Network and the 'X' Zone TV Channell, visit www.xzbn.net. For programming, distribution, and syndication inquiries, email programming@xzbn.net.We are proud to announce the we have launched TWATNews.com, launched in August 2025.TWATNews.com is an independent online news platform dedicated to uncovering the truth about Donald Trump and his ongoing influence in politics, business, and society. Unlike mainstream outlets that often sanitize, soften, or ignore stories that challenge Trump and his allies, TWATNews digs deeper to deliver hard-hitting articles, investigative features, and sharp commentary that mainstream media won't touch.These are stories and articles that you will not read anywhere else.Our mission is simple: to expose corruption, lies, and authoritarian tendencies while giving voice to the perspectives and evidence that are often marginalized or buried by corporate-controlled media

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 28, 2025 is: sustain • suh-STAYN • verb To sustain someone or something is to provide what is needed for that person or thing to exist or continue. Sustain also means "to hold up the weight of," "to suffer or endure," or "to confirm or prove." In legal contexts, to sustain something is to decide or state that it is proper, legal, or fair. // Hope sustained us during that difficult time. // The shed roof collapsed, unable to sustain the weight of all the snow. // The athlete sustained serious injuries during last week's game. See the entry > Examples: "Pushing fallen leaves into garden beds to insulate plants and nourish the soil will also shelter hibernating insects that, in turn, will sustain ground-feeding birds. It's much better for the ecosystem—and easier for the gardener—than bagging them up and sending them to a landfill." — Jessica Damiano, The Chicago Daily Herald, 12 Oct. 2025 Did you know? The word sustain is both handy and hardy. Its use has been sustained since the days of Middle English (it traces back to the Latin verb sustinēre meaning "to hold up" or "to sustain") by its utility across a variety of consequential subjects, from environmental protections to legal proceedings to medical reports. The word is so prevalent and so varied in its application, in fact, that it enjoys sustained high ranking as one of our top lookups—evidence of our readers' sustained commitment to, well, sustaining themselves with information about words.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for November 20, 2025 is: gauche • GOHSH • adjective Gauche describes someone or something having or showing a lack of awareness about the proper way to behave. When describing a person or a behavior, gauche can mean “socially awkward” or “tactless”; when describing an object (such as a product with a vulgar image or slogan on it) it can mean “crudely made or done.” // Some people view giving cash in lieu of a wrapped present to be terribly gauche, but I like knowing that my friends and family will be able to pick out something they truly want. See the entry > Examples: “Ignorance of classical music, for many people, is no longer something to be ashamed of, as it was sixty or seventy years ago. If you are indifferent to it, no one will notice; if you hate it, you may even be praised for your lack of snobbery. Almost no one will be so gauche as to tell you that you are missing out on something that could change your life.” — David Denby, The New Yorker, 20 July 2025 Did you know? Although it doesn't mean anything sinister, gauche is one of several words (including sinister) with ties to old suspicions and negative associations relating to the left side and use of the left hand. In French, gauche literally means “left,” and it has the extended meanings “awkward” and “clumsy.” These meanings may have come about because left-handed people could appear awkward trying to manage in a mostly right-handed world, or perhaps because right-handed people appear awkward when trying to use their left hand. Regardless, awkwardness is a likely culprit. Fittingly, awkward itself comes from the Middle English awke, meaning “turned the wrong way” or “left-handed.” On the other hand, adroit and dexterity have their roots in words meaning “right” or “on the right side.”

The rank and brutal foulness of the brown fizzy berry cruelty overwhelmed the judicial malfeasance and filicidal love of these Middle English moral exempla. Everything sucked.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 3, 2025 is: gibbous • JIB-us • adjective Gibbous is most often used to describe the moon or a planet when it is seen with more than half but not all of the apparent disk illuminated. // The waxing gibbous moon provided the perfect lighting for a night of spooky storytelling around the campfire. See the entry > Examples: “At 3:30 a.m. the gibbous moon is high in the south and Perseus is nearly overhead. Set up a comfortable lawn chair facing away from any bright lights, ideally looking toward the northeast with the moon to your back. Have insect repellent handy along with hot chocolate, tea or coffee and enjoy the show.” — Tim Hunter, The Arizona Daily Star, 7 Aug. 2025 Did you know? The adjective gibbous has its origins in the Latin noun gibbus, meaning “hump.” It was adopted into Middle English to describe rounded, convex things. While it has been used to describe the rounded body parts of humans and animals (such as the back of a camel) and to describe the shape of certain flowers (such as snapdragons), the term is most often used to describe the moon: a gibbous moon is one that is between half full and full.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 3, 2025 is: gibbous • JIB-us • adjective Gibbous is most often used to describe the moon or a planet when it is seen with more than half but not all of the apparent disk illuminated. // The waxing gibbous moon provided the perfect lighting for a night of spooky storytelling around the campfire. See the entry > Examples: “At 3:30 a.m. the gibbous moon is high in the south and Perseus is nearly overhead. Set up a comfortable lawn chair facing away from any bright lights, ideally looking toward the northeast with the moon to your back. Have insect repellent handy along with hot chocolate, tea or coffee and enjoy the show.” — Tim Hunter, The Arizona Daily Star, 7 Aug. 2025 Did you know? The adjective gibbous has its origins in the Latin noun gibbus, meaning “hump.” It was adopted into Middle English to describe rounded, convex things. While it has been used to describe the rounded body parts of humans and animals (such as the back of a camel) and to describe the shape of certain flowers (such as snapdragons), the term is most often used to describe the moon: a gibbous moon is one that is between half full and full.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for October 2, 2025 is: atone • uh-TOHN • verb To atone for something is to make amends for it—that is, to do something good as a way of showing that you are sorry about, or have remorse for, a mistake, bad behavior, etc. // The novel opens with an act of cruelty and then traces the thoughts and actions of those responsible as they try to atone for it. See the entry > Examples: “... the catcher atoned for his earlier miscue by hitting a game-tying solo homer to straightaway center field.” — Mac Cerullo, The Boston Herald, 24 July 2025 Did you know? Atone has its roots in the idea of reconciliation and harmony. It grew out of the Middle English phrase at on meaning “in harmony,” a phrase echoed in current expressions like “feeling at one with nature.” When atone joined modern English in the 16th century, it meant “to reconcile,” and suggested the restoration of a peaceful and harmonious state between people or groups. Today, atone specifically implies addressing the damage—or disharmony—caused by one's own behavior.

rWotD Episode 3071: Landscape painting Welcome to random Wiki of the Day, your journey through Wikipedia's vast and varied content, one random article at a time.The random article for Tuesday, 30 September 2025, is Landscape painting.Landscape painting, also known as landscape art, is the depiction in painting of natural scenery such as mountains, valleys, rivers, trees, and forests, especially where the main subject is a wide view—with its elements arranged into a coherent composition. In other works, landscape backgrounds for figures can still form an important part of the work. Sky is almost always included in the view, and weather is often an element of the composition. Detailed landscapes as a distinct subject are not found in all artistic traditions, and develop when there is already a sophisticated tradition of representing other subjects.Two main traditions spring from Western painting and Chinese art, going back well over a thousand years in both cases. The recognition of a spiritual element in landscape art is present from its beginnings in East Asian art, drawing on Daoism and other philosophical traditions, but in the West only becomes explicit with Romanticism.Landscape views in art may be entirely imaginary, or copied from reality with varying degrees of accuracy. If the primary purpose of a picture is to depict an actual, specific place, especially including buildings prominently, it is called a topographical view. Such views, extremely common as prints in the West, are often seen as inferior to fine art landscapes, although the distinction is not always meaningful; similar prejudices existed in Chinese art, where literati painting usually depicted imaginary views, while professional artists painted real views.The word "landscape" entered the modern English language as landskip (variously spelt), an anglicization of the Dutch landschap, around the start of the 17th century, purely as a term for works of art, with its first use as a word for a painting in 1598. Within a few decades it was used to describe vistas in poetry, and eventually as a term for real views. However, the cognate term landscaef or landskipe for a cleared patch of land had existed in Old English, though it is not recorded from Middle English.This recording reflects the Wikipedia text as of 00:55 UTC on Tuesday, 30 September 2025.For the full current version of the article, see Landscape painting on Wikipedia.This podcast uses content from Wikipedia under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike License.Visit our archives at wikioftheday.com and subscribe to stay updated on new episodes.Follow us on Bluesky at @wikioftheday.com.Also check out Curmudgeon's Corner, a current events podcast.Until next time, I'm neural Ayanda.

Three-time Tony Award–winning director, producer, and writer JACK O'BRIEN joins host Nathan Winkelstein for a deep dive into the evolution of language and Shakespeare's verse. From memory, O'Brien delivers Marc Antony's famous speech from Act 3 Scene 1 of Julius Caesar — “O pardon me thou bleeding piece of earth,” — before unpacking the nuances of Shakespeare's text, its rhythm, and its structure. Plus, he shares his unforgettable Middle English party trick!LISTEN NOW everywhere you enjoy podcasts and at RedBullTheater.com

“I can't fix the world. I can't save my university. I can't save my department. I can't save my students .... but I can keep showing up to what I've been called to do.” — Grace Hamman Medieval scholar Grace Hamman joins us on the podcast to discuss the wisdom medieval virtues and vices have for us today. What can medieval virtues and vices teach us about living the good life today? Author and medieval scholar Dr. Grace Hamman joins us on the podcast to discuss her recent book Ask of Old Paths: Medieval Virtues and Vices for a Whole and Holy Life. In our conversation, Grace describes what drew her into the study of virtues and vices, and the timeless truths she discovered in her work. We discuss the insights that virtues and vices offer about human nature and Grace offers practical suggestions about ways these ancient ideas can lead us into a life of wholeness today. Grace shares too about her journey as an independent scholar and the gifts and challenges she has found on that path. Also, as a bonus, Grace's publisher has shared an excerpt from her book that you can check out in our show notes, so take a look at those. And if you listen to the end of the credits, you'll hear an excerpt from our interview where Grace recites something for us in Middle English. So jump right in! We're so glad you're here. — Ann Boyd For show notes or more information please visit our article at The Well. If you'd like to support the work of InterVarsity's Women Scholars and Professionals, including future podcasts such as this episode, you can do so at givetoiv.org/wsap. Thank you for listening!

In this final episode of the Septuagint (LXX) series, we discuss what needs to be done to produce a proper translation of the LXX in English. This a technical episode, but a vital one. There should exist in every language spoken by a Christian nation a definitive version of the Scriptures in that language, and in this episode we provide the structure and the mechanics by which that can be achieved. This will be a years-long project, and it will have to be undertaken by other men. Until then, we have provided links to a number of existing English translations in the show notes, infra. Any existing version of the LXX in English is certainly better than all of the extant copies based on the rabbinic text. Show Notes English Septuagint Translations: Brenton Hardcover [English and Greek] PDF Lexham (2nd) Hardcover Logos NETS Hardcover PDFs Thomson, Charles Archive.org PDF [free] Logos [not free] The Ancient Christian Study Bible (coming 2027) See Also The Göttingen Septuagint Further Reading Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International The Canterbury Tales in Middle English and Modern English Parental Warnings None.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 15, 2025 is: askance • uh-SKANSS • adverb Askance means "in a way that shows a lack of trust or approval" or "with a side-glance."   // I couldn't help but look askance at the dealer's assurances that the car had never been in an accident. // Several people eyed them askance when they walked into the room. See the entry > Examples: "In other cultures they might look askance at such a gnarly, leggy thing wedged into a loaf. But we know that a whole fried soft shell crab is one of the gifts of southeast Louisiana's robust seafood heritage." — Ian McNulty, The Times-Picayune/The New Orleans Advocate Online, 1 May 2025 Did you know? As with the similar word side-eye, writers over the years have used askance literally when someone is looking with a side-glance and figuratively when such a glance is conveying disapproval or distrust. Back in the days of Middle English you could use askaunce and a-skans and a-skaunces to mean “in such a way that,” “as if to say,” and “artificially, deceptively.” It's likely that askance developed from these forms, with some help from asqwynt meaning “obliquely, askew.” Askance was first used in the 16th century with the meaning "sideways" or "with a sideways glance.”

[DONATE WITH PAYPAL] In this episode, Greg explores the stark contrasts between the medieval Catholic guide "Ars Moriendi" and contemporary secular books on "The Art of Dying." He breaks down the historical steps for a faithful death—overcoming temptations, sacraments, and communal rituals—against modern focuses on autonomy, pain management, and legacy-building in hospices. Reflecting on why the Catholic approach offers eternal hope amid today's medicalized views, Greg invites listeners to consider how faith transforms our final moments. A thoughtful monologue for those curious about Catholicism's timeless wisdom on mortality. Donate with PayPal! Website: https://www.consideringcatholicism.com/ Email: consideringcatholicism@gmail.com Suggested Episodes: What Happens When We Die (#69) A Good Death (#85) Will I Be Judged? (#86) Snapshot: Taking Death Seriously (#149) What is Heaven? Part 2: The Moment of Death (#339) A readable English version of the Ars Moriendi is the 15th-century adaptation known as "The Book of the Craft of Dying" (also called "The Craft for to Die"), which is based directly on the medieval Latin text and was printed by William Caxton in 1490 as one of the first English versions. This is available on Wikisource in a shorter, accessible form with modernized spelling for easier reading, covering the key elements like spiritual preparations, temptations (e.g., despair), faith affirmations, prayers, and devotions. It's fully in English, free to read online, and text-based without illustrations (though the original blockbook's woodcuts are not part of this adaptation). You can link to it at: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Book_of_the_Craft_of_Dying/shorter. A more complete scholarly edition with the full Caxton text in Middle English (still readable but with archaic spelling), there's a free facsimile on Google Books at: https://books.google.com/books?id=8a5YAAAAcAAJ. One of the best online versions of the medieval Ars Moriendi that includes woodcut illustrations is the digitized copy from the Library of Congress, specifically the blockbook edition from Germany, circa 1466. This version, part of the Lessing J. Rosenwald Collection, features the iconic eleven woodcut illustrations depicting the dying man (Moriens) facing temptations from demons and receiving inspirations from angels, culminating in a scene of salvation or damnation. The digital scans are high-quality, showcasing the detailed and dramatic artwork, and the resource is freely accessible under the Library of Congress's open access policy, making it ideal for your podcast audience of curious non-Catholics and cradle Catholics rediscovering the faith. You can link to it directly at: https://www.loc.gov/item/49038880/.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for September 7, 2025 is: behest • bih-HEST • noun Behest can refer either to an authoritative order or an urgent prompting. // The committee met again at the senator's behest. // At the behest of her friends, Marcie read the poem aloud. See the entry > Examples: “... Raymond Carver and I were selecting stories for our American Short Story Masterpieces. When Ray and I worked on our selections, we would meet in Manhattan, where I lived, or in Syracuse, New York, where he lived. ... Each morning we'd read and then meet for lunch and talk about what we'd read. After lunch we'd read some more, and at dinner we talked about the afternoon's reading. Sometimes we'd reread at the other's behest.” — Tom Jenks, LitHub.com, 2 Aug. 2024 Did you know? In Return of the Jedi, the villain Darth Vader speaks with an old-timey flair when he asks his boss, the Emperor, for instructions: “What is thy bidding, my master?” If the film's screenwriters wanted him to sound even more old-timey, however, they could have chosen to have him ask “What is thy behest?” As a word for a command or order, behest predates bidding in English by a couple centuries, dating all the way back—long, long ago, though still in this galaxy—to the 1100s. Its Old English ancestor, the noun behǣs, referred to a promise, a meaning that continued on in Middle English especially in the phrase “the land of behest” but is now obsolete. The “command” sense of behest is still in good use, typically referring to an authoritative order, whether from an emperor or some other high-ranking figure. Behest is now also used with a less forceful meaning; it can refer to an urgent prompting, as in “an anniversary showing of classic films at the behest of the franchise's fans.”

You can be unkempt, but can you be just kempt? Let’s find out in this Adventure in Etymology on Radio Omniglot. An unkempt llama Unkempt [ˌʌnˈkɛmpt] means uncombed or dishevelled (hair), disorderly, untidy, messy, rough or unpolished. It comes from unkemmed, from Middle English kembed (well-combed, neat), from kemben [ˈkɛm(b)ən] (to comb), from Old English […]

Stefan Collini, FBA. Professor Emeritus of Intellectual History and English Literature, University of Cambridge.The Donald Winch Lectures in Intellectual History.University of St Andrews. 11th, 12th & 13th October 2022.In the course of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, universities expanded to include a wide range of what came to be regarded as academic ‘disciplines'. In Britain, the study of ‘English literature' was eventually to become one of the biggest and most popular of these subjects, yet it was in some ways an awkward fit: not obviously susceptible to the ‘scientific' treatment considered the hallmark of a scholarly discipline, it aroused a kind of existential commitment in many of those who taught and studied it. These lectures explore some of the ways in which these tensions worked themselves out in the last two hundred years, drawing on a wide range of sources to understand the aspirations invested in the subject, the resistance that it constantly encountered, and the distinctive forms of enquiry that came to define it. In so doing, they raise larger questions about the changing character of universities, the peculiar cultural standing of ‘literature', and the conflicting social expectations that societies have entertained towards higher education and specialized scholarship.Handout - Lecture 3: Syllabuses1. ‘“English”, including Anglo-Saxon and Middle English along with modern English, including what we ordinarily call the “dull” periods as well as the “great” ones, is an object more or less presented to us by nature.'2. ‘In the 1880s, an exciting duel between two great publishing houses brought the price of the rival National and World Libraries (Cassell's and Routledge's, respectively) down to 3d in paper and 6d in cloth. And not only were prices cut: the selection of titles was greatly enlarged, the old standbys - Milton, Pope, Cowper, Thomson, Burns, Goldsmith, and the rest - being joined by many other authors who had seldom or ever appeared in cheap editions.'3. ‘Sir John Denham (1615-1668) is familiar from the oft-quoted couplet in his poem of Cooper's Hill, the measured and stately versification of which has been highly praised. He died an old man in the reign of Charles II, with a mind clouded by the sudden loss of his young wife, whom he had married late in life. John Cleveland (1613-1659), author of the Rebel Scot and certain vigorous attacks on the Protector, was the earliest poetical champion of royalty. Butler is said to have adopted the style of his satires in Hudibras. Colonel Richard Lovelace (1618-1658) ....'4. ‘Poetry: More advanced poems from Chaucer (e.g. The Prologue), Shakespeare, Spenser, Milton, Pope, Wordsworth, Tennyson, or from selections such as The Golden Treasury; Shakespeare, (Histories, Comedies or easier Tragedies). Prose: Plutarch's Lives, Kinglake, Eothen, Borrow, Lavengro, Ruskin, Sesame and Lilies, Frowde [sic; ?Froude], selected short studies, Modern prose Comedies (e.g. Goldsmith and Sheridan), Selections from British Essayists (e.g. Addison, Lamb, Goldsmith), Macaulay, Essays or selected chapters from The History.'5. ‘In the 1930s favourite Higher Certificate set books and authors among the various Boards include: The Faerie Queene, Marlowe's Faustus, Bacon's essays, Sidney's Apologie for Poetrie, Hakluyt, The New Atlantis, Shakespeare, Chaucer, Milton, Lamb, Carlyle, Pope, Dryden, Scott and the Romantic poets. These texts and authors changed hardly at all between 1930 and 1950 (and represent a very similar situation to that of 1900-1910).'6. ‘An Honours Degree in English Language and Literature at present entails, in every University in England, some knowledge both of Latin or Greek at the outset, and of Old English later.' This is a public episode. If you would like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit standrewsiih.substack.com

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for August 4, 2025 is: tapestry • TAP-uh-stree • noun A tapestry is a heavy textile characterized by complicated pictorial designs and used for hangings, curtains, and upholstery. In figurative use, tapestry may refer to anything made up of different things, people, colors, etc. // The walls were adorned with handwoven tapestries. // They enjoyed the rich tapestry of life in the city. See the entry > Examples: “The event showcased the vibrant tapestry of the numerous cultural backgrounds of the students through dance, performance, music, language and artistic expression.” — Foysol Choudhury, The Edinburgh (Scotland) Evening News, 10 May 2025 Did you know? Several languages weave through the history of tapestry, which comes from a Greek word meaning “carpet” and traveled through Anglo-French and Middle English before arriving in modern English in the 15th century. Tapestry originally referred to a heavy handwoven reversible textile used for hangings, curtains, and upholstery, and characterized by complicated pictorial designs. It still does today, but the word has fittingly developed a “tapestry” of additional senses. It may describe a nonreversible imitation of tapestry used chiefly for upholstery, or embroidery on canvas resembling woven tapestry. It can also refer figuratively to anything made up of different parts, as in “nature's rich tapestry.” Tapestry isn't the only art word that's developed a figurative “medley” sense; collage (“a work of art made by adhering pieces of different materials (such as paper, cloth, or wood) to a flat surface”) and mosaic (“a decoration made by inlaying small pieces of variously colored material (such as glass or ceramic) to form pictures or patterns”) are both used figuratively to mean “a collection of different things.”

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for July 16, 2025 is: abject • AB-jekt • adjective Abject usually describes things that are extremely bad or severe. It can also describe something that feels or shows shame, or someone lacking courage or strength. // Happily, their attempts to derail the project ended in abject failure. // The defendants were contrite, offering abject apologies for their roles in the scandal that cost so many their life savings. // The author chose to cast all but the hero of the book as abject cowards. See the entry > Examples: “This moment ... points toward the book's core: a question of how to distinguish tenderness from frugality. Is ‘Homework' about a child who took a remarkably frictionless path, aided by a nation that had invested in civic institutions, from monetary hardship to the ivory tower? Merely technically. Is it a story of how members of a family, protected by a social safety net from abject desperation, developed different ideas about how to relate to material circumstance? We're getting there.” — Daniel Felsenthal, The Los Angeles Times, 9 June 2025 Did you know? We're sorry to say you must cast your eyes down to fully understand abject: in Middle English the word described those lowly ones who are rejected and cast out. By the 15th century, it was applied as it still is today to anything that has sunk to, or exists in, a low state or condition; in modern use it often comes before the words poverty, misery, and failure. Applied to words like surrender and apology, it connotes hopelessness and humility. The word's Latin source is the verb abicere, meaning “to throw away, throw down, overcome, or abandon.” Like reject, its ultimate root is the Latin verb jacere, meaning “to throw.” Subject is also from jacere, and we'll leave you with that word as a way to change the subject.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 24, 2025 is: noisome • NOY-sum • adjective Noisome is a formal and literary word used to describe things that are very unpleasant or disgusting; it is used especially to describe offensive smells. Noisome can also mean “highly obnoxious or objectionable” as in “we were put off by their noisome habits.” // The noisome odor of a trash can in the alley was so strong that even diners seated inside the adjacent restaurant complained to staff. See the entry > Examples: “During the fourteenth century, the bubonic plague outbreak that came to be known as the Black Death claimed thousands of victims, condemning them to a rapid and painful end. As the sufferers deteriorated, the disease tainted them with a tell-tale, repellent stench, which seemed to confirm smell as the root cause of the illness. ... Noisome dwellings were set right by fumigation, while rooms were doused with strong-smelling substances like vinegar and turpentine—anything to keep at bay the dreaded miasma.” — Ashley Ward, Where We Meet the World: The Story of the Senses, 2023 Did you know? Noisome looks and sounds like a close relation of noisy, but it's not. While noisy describes what is excessively loud, noisome typically describes what is excessively stinky. (It is also used to describe things offensive to the senses generally, as well as things that are highly obnoxious, objectionable, or simply harmful.) Noisome comes from the synonymous Middle English noysome, which combines the suffix -some, meaning “characterized by a specified thing,” and the noun noy, meaning “annoyance.” Noisy, incidentally, comes ultimately from Latin nausea, meaning “nausea.”

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for June 23, 2025 is: wherewithal • WAIR-wih-thawl • noun Wherewithal refers to the means, skills, resources, or money that is needed to get or do something. // The company does not have the financial wherewithal to expand into other markets at this time. See the entry > Examples: "... it is heartening to know that there are people of real influence who have the will and wherewithal to help lift the city out of the doldrums." — Scott Wright, The Herald (Scotland), 15 May 2025 Did you know? If wherewithal sounds like three words smashed together, that's because it is—sort of. Wherewithal combines where and withal, an adverb from Middle English that is itself a combination of with and all. In the past, wherewithal was used as a conjunction meaning "with or by means of which" and as a pronoun meaning "that with or by which." Today, however, it is almost always used as a noun to refer to the means or resources a person or entity has at their disposal. It refers especially to financial resources, but other means such as social influence, ability, and emotional capacity may also be termed as "wherewithal."

In this episode, we offer a close reading of "Sumer is icumen in," a Middle English song that anticipates the abundant joys of summer. Thanks to the Pias Group for granting us permission to share the Hilliard Ensemble's rendition of this song. You can find the manuscript that includes the lyrics and music at the British Library (https://blogs.bl.uk/digitisedmanuscripts/2012/06/sumer-is-icumen-in.html).

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 23, 2025 is: slough • SLUFF • verb Slough is a formal verb used for the action of getting rid of something unwanted. It is usually used with off. Slough can also mean "to lose a dead layer of (skin)" or "to become shed or cast off." // The editorial urges the mayor not to slough off responsibility for the errors in the report. // The exfoliating cleanser promises to gently slough away dead skin cells. See the entry > Examples: "Before she left her apartment, she gathered and washed some in a bowl. Then she drew a bath and soaked for a while, eating the figs one by one, swallowing even the hard stems. The steam and water loosened her tense muscles, and her aches started to vanish. She scrubbed herself until the dead skin sloughed off, and underneath, she was new." — Sally Wen Mao, Ninetails: Nine Tales, 2024 Did you know? There are two verbs spelled slough in English, as well as two nouns, and both sets have different pronunciations. The first noun, referring to a swamp or a discouraged state of mind, is pronounced to rhyme with either blue or cow. Its related verb, which can mean "to plod through mud," has the same pronunciation. The second noun, pronounced to rhyme with cuff, refers to the shed skin of a snake (as well as anything else that has been cast off). Its related verb describes the action of shedding or eliminating something, just like a snake sheds its skin. This slough comes from Middle English slughe and is related to slūch, a Middle High German word meaning "snakeskin."

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 23, 2025 is: slough • SLUFF • verb Slough is a formal verb used for the action of getting rid of something unwanted. It is usually used with off. Slough can also mean "to lose a dead layer of (skin)" or "to become shed or cast off." // The editorial urges the mayor not to slough off responsibility for the errors in the report. // The exfoliating cleanser promises to gently slough away dead skin cells. See the entry > Examples: "Before she left her apartment, she gathered and washed some in a bowl. Then she drew a bath and soaked for a while, eating the figs one by one, swallowing even the hard stems. The steam and water loosened her tense muscles, and her aches started to vanish. She scrubbed herself until the dead skin sloughed off, and underneath, she was new." — Sally Wen Mao, Ninetails: Nine Tales, 2024 Did you know? There are two verbs spelled slough in English, as well as two nouns, and both sets have different pronunciations. The first noun, referring to a swamp or a discouraged state of mind, is pronounced to rhyme with either blue or cow. Its related verb, which can mean "to plod through mud," has the same pronunciation. The second noun, pronounced to rhyme with cuff, refers to the shed skin of a snake (as well as anything else that has been cast off). Its related verb describes the action of shedding or eliminating something, just like a snake sheds its skin. This slough comes from Middle English slughe and is related to slūch, a Middle High German word meaning "snakeskin."

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 17, 2025 is: uncouth • un-KOOTH • adjective Uncouth describes things, such as language or behavior, that are impolite or socially unacceptable. A person may also be described as uncouth if they are behaving in a rude way. // Stacy realized it would be uncouth to show up to the party without a gift, so she picked up a bottle of wine on the way. See the entry > Examples: “Perhaps people deride those who buy books solely for how they look because it reminds them that despite their primary love of literature, they still appreciate a beautiful cover. It's not of primary importance but liking how something looks in your home matters to some extent, even if it feels uncouth to acknowledge.” — Chiara Dello Joio, LitHub.com, 24 Jan. 2023 Did you know? Old English speakers used the word cūth to describe things that were familiar to them, and uncūth for the strange and mysterious. These words passed through Middle English into modern English with different spellings but the same meanings. While couth eventually dropped out of use, uncouth soldiered on. In Captain Singleton by English novelist Daniel Defoe, for example, the author refers to “a strange noise more uncouth than any they had ever heard,” while Shakespeare wrote of an “uncouth forest” in As You Like It. This “unfamiliar” sense of uncouth, however, joined couth in becoming, well, unfamiliar to most English users, giving way to the now-common meanings, “rude” and “lacking polish or grace.” The adjective couth in use today, meaning “sophisticated” or “polished,” arose at the turn of the 20th century, not from the earlier couth, but as a back-formation of uncouth, joining the ranks of other “uncommon opposites” such as kempt and gruntled.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 16, 2025 is: adversity • ad-VER-suh-tee • noun Adversity refers to a difficult situation or condition, or to a state of serious or continued difficulty or misfortune. // The soldiers were honored for acting with courage in the face of adversity. // The team overcame many adversities on their way to summiting the mountain. See the entry > Examples: “To foster self-reliance, colleges should focus on supports that empower students to face challenges. ... Instead of lowering demands to accommodate discomfort, institutions can create frameworks that help students cope, adapt and ultimately thrive in the face of adversity.” — Steven Mintz, Inside Higher Ed, 11 Mar. 2025 Did you know? The world, alas, is full of adversity of all kinds, from misfortune to outright calamity. But while we—being humble lexicographers, not sagacious philosophers—cannot explain the source of such adversity, we can explain the source of the word adversity. If you've ever faced adversity and felt like fate, the world, or something else was turned against you, it will not surprise you that adversity traces back to the Latin verb advertere, meaning “to turn toward, direct,” itself a combination of the verb vertere, “to turn,” and the prefix ad-, “to.” The past participle of advertere is adversus, meaning “turned toward, facing, opposed,” which eventually led (via a couple languages in between) to the Middle English word adversite, meaning “opposition, hostility, misfortune, or hardship,” and the adversity we know today.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 10, 2025 is: chary • CHAIR-ee • adjective Chary is usually used with about or of to describe someone who is cautious about doing something. // The director is chary about spending money. // I've always been chary of travelling alone. See the entry > Examples: “Overall, Rendell is chary about divulging the selling price of various documents, but he does occasionally reveal some financial details.” — Michael Dirda, The Washington Post, 3 Feb. 2024 Did you know? How did chary, which began as the opposite of cheery, become a synonym of wary? Don't worry, there's no need to be chary—the answer is not dreary. Chary's Middle English predecessor, charri, meant “sorrowful,” a sense that harks back to the Old English word cearig, meaning “troubled, troublesome, taking care,” which ultimately comes from an assumed-but-unattested Germanic word, karō, meaning “sorrow” or “worry,” that is also an ancestor of the word care. It's perhaps unsurprising then, that chary was once used to mean “dear” or “cherished.” Both sorrow and affection have largely faded from chary, and today the word is most often used as a synonym of careful.

Merriam-Webster's Word of the Day for April 9, 2025 is: vouchsafe • vowch-SAYF • verb Vouchsafe is a formal and old-fashioned word meaning "to give (something) to someone as a promise or a privilege." // He vouchsafed the secret to only a few of his closest allies. See the entry > Examples: "[Arthur] Conan Doyle (1859-1930) wrote several horribly chilling tales of the supernatural, although this might surprise readers who only know his Sherlock Holmes stories. When there are eerie goings-on in the Holmes yarns, a rational explanation is inevitably vouchsafed, à la Scooby-Doo." — Jake Kerridge, The Daily Telegraph (London), 20 Dec. 2023 Did you know? Shakespeare fans are well acquainted with vouchsafe, which in its Middle English form vouchen sauf meant "to grant, consent, or deign." The word, which was borrowed with its present meaning from Anglo-French in the 14th century, pops up fairly frequently in the Bard's work—60 times, to be exact. "Vouchsafe me yet your picture for my love," beseeches Proteus of Silvia in The Two Gentlemen of Verona. "Vouchsafe me raiment, bed, and food," King Lear begs his daughter Regan. But you needn't turn to Shakespeare to find vouchsafe; today's writers still find it to be a perfectly useful word.