August 22, 2026 · 10:00 AM

History of Everyday Objects Undusted: Sponges

Today, let’s dive into the topic of sponges.

Natural sponges are sessile (immobile) marine invertebrates of the animal phylum Porifera (pore-bearing). They lack complex nervous, digestive, and circulatory systems but rely on constant water flow through their bodies to take in nutrients and oxygen, and to remove waste. There are nearly ten thousand known species; some feed on planktonic bacteria; others host symbiotic organisms to thrive, and some have even developed predatory survival strategies in nutrient-poor environments.

Natural sponges have been used by humans for thousands of years; archaeological excavations have found evidence of sponges used to plaster and paint the queen’s walls at Knossos (the Minoan culture of Crete, c. 1700 to 1400 BC). They have been found on Greek pottery from around 760 BC in depictions of thermal scenes or as status symbols. Oppianus Cilicius (2nd C BC) was the first to write about those fishing for sponges, including details about the spongers’ lifestyles and diets, and the dangers they faced from shark attacks (for an interesting video on the topic of modern spongers, click here). Aristotle (384–322 BC) described the “elephant nose-like tube” used by the sponge divers to breathe. In the Iliad and Odyssey, Homer makes reference to sponges as hygienic utensils. Pliny the Elder (AD 23-79), among others, described the uses of sponges in agriculture and cooking. Cicero (106-43 BC) referred to their use in washing or cleaning. Roman legionaries were supplied with sponges to stuff into their helmets, for personal hygiene, and for drinking (their ancient solution to a water bottle); let’s hope that those were three different sponges allotted. This explains the presence of a sponge at the cross in Matthew 27:48/Mark 15:36/John 19:29.

The first use of a sponge with inhaled surgical anaesthesia is recorded in AD 1025 by the Persian physician Ibn Sina, who used a concoction of potent (=poisonous) sedatives of opium, mandrake and hemlock. Medieval European physicians sometimes used crude herbal mixtures or opium sponges to administer a type of anaesthetic, but it was a far cry from what we know today; at best, it got the patient drunk or high enough not to scream as loudly.  Ether vapour as an anaesthetic didn’t make its way into use in Europe until 1846, at the London University College’s theatre.

By the mid-twentieth century, overfishing brought both the sponges and the industry close to extinction. Overharvesting strained the sponge populations around the Mediterranean and the Caribbean; other stresses include storms (which can suffocate them with sand and debris, or rip them loose from their anchors) and climate change (disease outbreaks occur more frequently in warming ocean temperatures). The depleted population also puts stress on the entire environmental chain: Sponge feeders, such as parrotfish or angelfish, move on; without their presence, rapid-growing sponge species smother reef-building corals, which in turn reduces breeding, hiding, and feeding places for other marine species. Changes in harvesting policies and practices in some regions may mitigate these issues: By cutting the sponges loose rather than ripping them out, sponges have a chance to regenerate. But as more people in the First World become concerned with using natural products, marine sponges will continue to be (over-)harvested.

Sponges today are usually synthetic, invented in 1937 by the German scientist Otto Bayer, who (in the good ol’ fashioned way a lot of discoveries have been made) accidentally created polyurethane foam. By the 1940s, the DuPont company had begun mass-producing sponges made from wood pulp, hemp fibres, and sodium sulphate. By the late 1950s, dual-purpose sponges were introduced.

An alternative to both the marine- and synthetic sponges is the Loofah (Luffa) gourd: Besides being a food in the earlier stages of its cycle, when these gourds are left on the vine to dry out, they become a fibrous, natural sponge. For a short video on how to harvest and use a luffa gourd sponge, just click here. If I had a garden, I would certainly try to grow these!

What kinds of sponges do you have in your home? I hope this helps you appreciate the humble sponge, whichever form you use.

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August 15, 2026 · 10:00 AM

History of Everyday Objects Undusted: Garment Fasteners

For as long as humans have worn clothes, they’ve needed to find ways to hold them on, up, around, or to their bodies. Genesis 3:7 tells us that, once Adam and Eve realised they were naked, they “sewed fig leaves together and made coverings for themselves”. They likely sewed them with some kind of twisted or stripped plant fibres such as grass blades, green twigs or even fibrous roots; this method was used for millennia.

In Ancient Athens, tunics were fastened together at the shoulder by long dagger-like pins. That is, until a group of angry Athenian women used their pins to stab an Athenian soldier to death; according to Herodotus’s Histories, a law was passed forbidding the Athenian style of tunic in the Roman Empire thereafter. Understandable, that, but I wonder what Athenians used to fasten their tunics immediately after that decree…

Clothing fasteners (hardware or notions used to connect two or more pieces of fabric together to open, close, or secure a garment) used today vary: Buttons, whether plastic, wood or metal; zippers; hooks and loops (commonly known as Velcro); eyelets (aka grommets); snaps; buckles; suspenders with clips; hooks and eyes (such as those found on skirts or bras), and even safety pins.

But before any of these came along, people literally sewed their garments on; even into 18th Century Europe, women were stitched in or pinned in by maids; Jane Austen alludes to this in Northanger Abbey, when Mrs Allen complains that a needle holding her sleeve in place was jabbing her, and she was afraid it would rip the muslin, for which she paid “but nine shillings a yard”. Every evening, they were either “unsewn” out of them, or they slipped some garments over their heads if possible. Corsets, as well as fashionable garments, were laced on, easier to remove than put on. When metal fasteners became increasingly available, it introduced new possibilities in fashion: it allowed for more fitted garments, and gave women the freedom from the need of being dressed by maids (or, if lower classes, of being dependent on a relative to help one dress). It didn’t dispense with corsets, but the metal front-fastening busks enabled women to put on their own.

If shoes are to be thought of as clothing, their history probably goes back as far as that of clothing itself: The oldest known shoes were sandals made of woven bark, dated to around 10.5 thousand years old. The first known leather shoes, found in Armenia, date to around 3,500 BC. Oetzi, the Austrian Iceman, wore shoes constructed of bearskin soles, deerskin side panels, and a bark cord that held them onto his feet. The modern shoelace, with the stiffened aglet, or tip, was invented by the Englishman Harvey Kennedy, patented in 1790. Before that, shoes were held on with buckles or buttons.

Today, some people (like me) usually have slip-on, fastener-free clothing articles like T-shirts, or trousers with elastic bands that require no other fasteners. What kinds of fasteners do you typically have on your garments today?

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August 8, 2026 · 10:00 AM

History Undusted: Everyday Objects

In the past several years, I’ve looked into quite a few everyday objects that captured my curiosity at the time; here is a list of such objects for those interested:

Lately, I’ve been thinking about a few everyday objects that I’d like to explore the history of, so I’ll take you along for the ride, starting next week.

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July 25, 2026 · 10:00 AM

Etymology Undusted: Old Norse Borrowings

As we’ve seen over the past few blogs, English is quite a magpie language, snabbling any loose vocabulary it comes across. 

What is known as the Viking Age began in Britain with the raid on the coastal community of Lindisfarne in AD 793. It eventually went from raiding easy targets to Norse colonisation, trade, and cultural assimilation. That’s the simplified version; I could write forever about the age and its impact on the languages, cultures and mentalities of both the raided and the raiders (who came from Norway, Sweden, and Denmark). Instead, I’ll focus on the linguistic impact of Old Norse (ON) on Old English (OE).

[Note: The Norse did not refer to themselves as Vikings; that word came into English through “The History of the Anglo-Saxons” by English historian Sharon H. Turner, 1801, meaning Scandinavian pirate. The Norse had the term vikingr, which referred only to Norsemen when they were out raiding (whether on neighbouring shores or fjords, or further afield). Perhaps in that sense, it was similar in use to our gerund noun form.]

During the Viking Age and the subsequent Danelaw period of British history, the Norse introduced more than a thousand words into the English language. The biggest question that arises in my mind when I think of some of the words is, “What did we use before that?”

The Norse introduced third-person pronouns – þeir, þeira, from which we get they, them, and their. We can be thankful for these words, as the Anglo-Saxon terms used before their introduction were hi, hie, heira, and hem. These changes are unusual in that it is rare for additions to a language to replace such fundamental identity markers within the collective speech of a people group.

Some words were a merging of OE and ON terms, such as are (OE had earun/earon, and ON had er). Another merging is awkward – from ON ǫfugr (meaning turned backwards) and OE weard. Other such hybrid words are axle, gawk, and snipe/sniper.

A caveat to Norse influence on English is that many more words than those from the time periods mentioned above flowed into English through Normandy. The term “Norman” itself is a term that arose from an etymological shift: Scandinavian raiders who settled in that region of what would become France were known locally as the Normanz or Normant, meaning Northmen (men of the north). It was eventually Latinized to Normanni.  Their influence on the French language eventually made its way into the magpie language across the Channel.

Here are a few more words we can thank Norse raiders for: Window (vindauge – literally wind-eye); wing (vængr); whisk (viska); want (vanta, to lack); waive (veifa); until (und + til); ugly (uggligr); tryst (from French, probably ON treysta – to trust, or to make firm); stumble (stumla); squall (skvala); sprint (spretta); and trash (tros). Many of our th- words come from ON, aside from those already mentioned, such as: Thrall, though, thrift, thrive, thrust, and thwart.

Aside from individual words, the Norse left evidence of their influence through placenames: The suffix -by means farmstead or village, seen in Whitby and Derby; -ness meant promontory or headland, and is found in Stenness, Durness, Muness, and Snarraness – all of which are in Orkney, Shetland, and northern Scotland – all places frequented by or lived in by the Norse. –Thorpe and –thwaite are more examples of the -th heritage, shown in places like Scunthorpe, Copmanthorpe, Bassenthwaite, and Rosthwaite.

These few examples are just the tip of the isbjerg which we can thank those pirates, who our European ancestors might well have preferred never to have been forced into acquaintance with…

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July 11, 2026 · 10:00 AM

Etymology Undusted: Brittonic Remnants

While many English words can be traced back to an event, such as the French absorbed into the language after 1066, some words we use today can be traced much further back to the formation of the language.

English itself is a West Germanic language of the Indo-European language family. During the period of Roman Britain (AD 43 to AD 410), what we know as Britain today spoke Brittonic dialects and languages, influenced by the Celtic migration from the Continent around 1300-800 BC; during the Roman occupation, many words from Latin were assimilated, and English as a language began to emerge around 450 AD. Old English would be unintelligible to most English speakers today; I won’t go into the history of the Great Vowel Shift again, which fundamentally changed the sound of the language, but suffice to say, we still use many Old English words today. Famously, Winston Churchill used many Old English words in his “We shall never surrender” speech, delivered just after the evacuation from Dunkirk was successfully completed. Old English words tend to be short, giving the speech more emphasis; click on this link for a clip from the film Darkest Hour, portraying the speech. As one man in the clip says, he mobilised the English language and sent it into battle.

Even though English as a language has adapted, evolved and adopted words from around the globe since its inception, there are ancient words from Brittonic which we still use today. Here are a few:

Ass, crag, doe, wan, combe (valley), peat, hog, gull, brock, bin, coracle, flannel, and bannock. Possible words (etymology is unclear, but these are suspected to be Celtic British) include basket, sark (a shirt or smock in Scotland and northern England), wan, and dun.

Among the place names from Brittonic are Avon, Derwent, York, Leeds, and London. The elements of Aber-, Caer-, Pen-, and Dun– are typical Brittonic place-name derivatives; these include: Aberdeen, Aberfeldy, Cardiff, Carlisle, Penzance, Dumbarton, Dundee, and Dumfries.

Some of these words are more common, for instance, in Scotland than in America, but they are still words used today. As you can imagine, the farther back we go in history, the more we’ll realise that earlier words have been usurped by “modern” ones – even if “modern” refers to a thousand years ago. What we know today only as “eggs” once had a variety of spellings: æg, ei, ey, eai, egge, eyern, eyeren, eggys, eggja. All of these were in use until William Caxton (c. 1422 – c. 1491) decided on eggs (thank you!). Only because of him do we spell it thus, and not æg or anything else.

I realise that all of this is an over-simplification, but it would be impossible to do justice to a language that has been developing for well over a thousand years, no matter how many books have been written on the subject. Hopefully, this little insight gives you a deeper appreciation for the fact that your spouse can write “eggs” on the shopping list and that you understand the term!

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June 27, 2026 · 10:00 AM

Etymology Undusted: British Colonial English Borrowings

Just as language in 11th-century Britain needed to adapt to facilitate communication between the Anglo-Saxons and the Norman French-speaking ruling class, when Britain eventually expanded into what became the British Empire, the nations under their rule absorbed English for the same reasons. English is known as the common language that divides; Caribbean English has little to do with Indian English; Australian English has little to do with Creole English. The rich linguistic diversity that resulted from geopolitical constellations is something we still benefit from today. English is still absorbing new words from other languages, such as umami (Japanese); many new words may only be understood in local regions before they spread to wider use.

British English has many words imported from the time of Colonialism, from India, the Caribbean, Australia, and Africa. Over time, many of those words have been exported to the colonies of the New World, and so they are familiar to English speakers outside of the colonial regions of the former British Empire. Here are a few words we owe to Indian languages (which number over 120; if you count dialects, it can be into the high thousands):

From Hindi, we have: Jungle, pajamas (pyjamas), pundit, bungalow, cushy, monsoon, avatar, bangle, bandana, chutney (and many spice names, such as garam masala), cheetah, cot, cummerbund, dinghy, dungaree, juggernaut, khaki, karma, loot, mantra, punch, pukka*, shampoo, typhoon, and veranda – to name a few.

*Pukka is a modern British slang word meaning superior, excellent, first-class.

From the Indian Tamil language, we have catamaran and curry; from Malayalam, we have calico and jackfruit; from Kannada, we have bamboo; from Sanskrit, we have atoll, aubergine, basmati, candy, carmine and crimson, cowrie, crocus, ginger, jute, lacquer, lilac, mandala, mandarin, musk, nard, opal, orange, pepper, rice, sapphire, sandalwood and shawl.

From Australia, many Aboriginal words have spread throughout the English-speaking world and beyond; here are the most common: kangaroo, koala, dingo, wombat, kookaburra, boomerang, gammon, cheeky, lingo,moola (money), and wallaby.

African words that have made it into English include banjo, jazz, cola, chigger, ebony, goober, gumbo, impala, jive, jukebox, jumbo, mojo, okra, safari, tango, jam, and zebra.

From the indigenous Caribbean languages, we get words like barbecue, canoe, cassava, guava, hammock, hurricane, iguana, maroon, potato, savanna, and reggae.   

This list could be pages long, as the British Empire influenced, as well as absorbed, languages and vocabulary from around the world.

Do you know of any others to add to the list? Please add them, and where they come from, below!

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June 13, 2026 · 10:00 AM

Etymology Undusted: Native American Borrowings

Though some of these words have probably made it across the Pond, American English is the focus of these borrowings: When the pioneers and explorers began moving westward across the North American continent, they encountered geographical features, plants, animals, and situations for which they as yet had no word; thus, the Native American words were borrowed. I won’t go into the sordid history of colonisation’s tactics here; suffice to say, it was not a mutual exchange once Europeans began arriving in larger numbers.

According to some estimates, nearly half of the U.S. state names derive from or are directly related to the regional indigenous tribes. Here are a few place name examples: Chicago (from the Miami-Illinois Myaamiaki tribe’s word, shikaakwa, wild onion); Dakota (from the Sioux language, meaning friend or ally); Oklahoma (from Choctaw, red people); Utah comes from the Ute tribe; Mississippi (from the Ojibwe phrase misi-ziibi, meaning great river); Milwaukee (Algonquian, meaning good land); Alabama (from the Alabama tribe, Alibamu); Alaska (from the Aleut word alaskag or alyeska, meaning mainland or great land); Connecticut (from the Mohican/Algonquian word quinnehtukqet, meaning beside the long tidal river); Iowa was named for the Ioway people, commonly interpreted as beautiful land; Kansas, named for the Kansa/Kaw tribe, often translated as people of the south wind; Wichita, Kansas was named for the Wichita tribe.

Some animal names include caribou, chipmunk, husky, moose, muskrat, opossum, raccoon, skunk, woodchuck, coyote, ocelot, mole, chinchilla and condor.

Some geographical features include Lake Tahoe (Big Water); Potomac River (Place where people trade); Mount Moosilauke, New Hampshire, from moosi and auke, meaning bald place; Mount Tamalpais, California (from the Coast Miwok people, meaning bay mountain);

One example of the reverse is that the Ochese Creek tribe were called Creek after the geographical feature. Creek is likely from Old Norse kriki, meaning corner or nook, extended to inlet or short arm of a river; a Swedish dialect has krik, meaning corner, bend or creek, cove.

And finally, a few botanical borrowings (including some from the Nahuatl, or Aztec, tribe*): Hickory, pecan, persimmon, squash, succotash, chayote, pawpaw (tree), guava, avocado*, tomato*, guano*, mesquite*, and mezcal*.

Do you know any other words borrowed from Native American languages? Please share them in the comments!

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May 30, 2026 · 10:00 AM

Etymology Undusted: German Borrowings

As English and German are offshoots of the same branch of the language tree, we share many words in common, but because I speak both English and German (High German, as well as the Zürich dialect of Swiss German), it’s difficult for me to know how many German borrowings are widely used in the English-speaking regions of the world. There are more such borrowings, for instance, in American English (because of the German-speaking immigrants that brought their mother-tongue along with them) than in British English, which was more heavily influenced by French (up until the French Revolution, when Francomania fell out of fashion in Britain for fear that the spark of revolution would ignite revolt in their own peasant classes. But that’s another story!).

Perhaps another complication for me personally in deciphering what German words are used elsewhere is that I grew up in a region with Amish communities who spoke a language similar to German (known as Pennsylvania Dutch or Pennsylvania German – a dialect of German imported around 300 years ago) – so we used words like Gesundheit (when someone sneezed) rather than the more common “bless you”.

With all of that in mind, here are a few words that English has nicked directly from German:

Gesundheit, kindergarten, angst, dachshund, hamster, pretzel, sauerkraut, delicatessen, hamburger, gummy bear, zeitgeist, kitsch, fife, uber (über), neanderthal, doppelgänger, ersatz, zeppelin, rucksack, knapsack, kaput, quartz, schadenfreude, bagel, blitz, fest, glitch, muesli, noodle, schnapps, strudel, poltergeist, waltz, carabiner, cobalt, echt, edelweiss, eiderdown, einkorn, gestalt, verboten, wanderlust, wunderkind, finger, glass, übermensch, leitmotif, bratwurst, kaffeeklatsch, diesel, and the list goes on and on!

Some words in English have been borrowed, especially in America, from what is known as Yinglish – New York Yiddish mixed with English (mainly from the Ashkenazi Jewish community). A few examples are: Mensch, klutz, schmuck, dreck, spiel, schmooze, shlep, kosher, mazel tov, putz, tush/tuchus and yenta.

Are any of these words new to you? Which ones do you use? Which ones are used in your region?

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May 16, 2026 · 10:00 AM

Etymology Undusted: Latin Borrowings

Believe it or not, the language second only to French in English borrowings is Latin. In all, it is estimated that up to 56% of English borrowings come from French and Latin (and since many French words come from Latin, it could be argued that Latin has had the greatest impact on the English language).

The Germanic tribes that fought the Roman Empire eventually moved west into what we know today as the British Isles; before they came, they’d already packed their linguistic bags with Latin terms, such as candle (candelabrum), cheese (caseum), camp (castra – from which we also derive castle), mile (mille passus, from which we also get [geographical] pass), mint (menta – for coins), pound (libra – for a weight unit, and from which the British pound sign £ is derived), and street (via strata), to name a few (many more were added during the period of Roman Britain, 55 BC – AD 410). The language of these ancient settlers was the ancestor of what would become English, but these tribes wrote in runes, and the language they spoke would be unintelligible to us today, as it had complex genders/noun cases and distinct vowel shifts.

Ancient Latin often borrowed words from Greek and then passed them on through the Romance languages to English, often through French. Some examples from Greek via Latin are school, anatomy, philosophy, music, machine, olive, bacteria, lamp, topic, idea, and place.

When Christian missionaries arrived in Britain in the 6th and 7th centuries, they brought Latin terms with them to describe new concepts. At that time, Latin was the Lingua Franca of medieval Europe. Sometimes, both the Old English and the Latin terms survived, such as OE Gospel (gödspell) and Latin evangelium (which comes from the Greek for “good news”; this is still the word used in German today). During that period, Latin terms tended to be used only in a religious context, with Old English being used in everyday life.

Latin moved beyond cathedral walls via science and technology; the era of scientific discovery required new words to describe new areas of knowledge and understanding. Words like carnivorous, apparatus, data, experiment, incubate, organic, structure, vertebra, and component entered the vocabulary during that time.

Other words borrowed from Latin include:

Absent, alter, amble, acceptable, agriculture, amiable, animal, appear, announce, aviary, barbarian, beatitude, benefit, campus, candidate, circumspect, civic, conspicuous, council, custody, deity, dictionary, digital, dragon, edible, extra, figure, focus, genus, habitat, imperial, invent, labour, legacy, library, marine, mediocre, medium, perfect, port, respect, ridicule, scholar, science, serpent, serve, superb, and so many more… ad infinitum!

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May 8, 2026 · 2:57 PM

Just for Fun & a Little Announcement

For the past year or so, my blogs have been posted (mostly) every two weeks on a Wednesday. In the past few months, Wednesdays have been booked, and I realised that it’s not the best day either for me to upload a blog or for most people to read it. So I’ve decided to move my posting day to Saturdays. The weekends are usually when I personally have time to read blogs or catch up on YouTube channels that I follow, so I can imagine that others have the same time priorities through the week of work, commitments or activities, and have more time on weekends.

So from now on, look for my posts on the weekends! In the meantime, I’ll leave you with this fun wink to my last post:

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