English Language & Usage Stack Exchange is a question and answer site for linguists, etymologists, and serious English language enthusiasts. It only takes a minute to sign up.

Sign up to join this community
Anybody can ask a question
Anybody can answer
The best answers are voted up and rise to the top
English Language & Usage

Explore our questions

Ask Question
more tags
Active Hot Week Month
7 votes
1 answer
58 views

"Crone" and "Crony“

Qwerty
  • 119
1 vote
1 answer
6k views

Word and etymology for "small of one's back"

user476708
  • 1
7 votes
4 answers
4k views

What is the origin of using the word "our" preceding a first name when speaking directly to the person so named

Romeo Whiskey
  • 1
8 votes
1 answer
14k views

What is the origin of the phrase, “That’s for me to know and you to find out”?

Sven Yargs
  • 156k
24 votes
3 answers
22k views

What reasoning is behind the names of the trigonometric functions "sine", "secant" and "tangent"?

Bruh Hurb
  • 1
1 vote
1 answer
84 views

Prospective means future-looking, retrospective means past-looking. What means present-looking?

CommunityBot
  • 1
7 votes
3 answers
2k views

Is "inauthentic" inauthentic?

Leo
  • 11
17 votes
5 answers
4k views

"Carved from the living rock" — since when was rock ever alive?

Laurel♦
  • 62.4k
25 votes
1 answer
2k views

Why do South Indians call restaurants 'hotels'?

Heartspring
  • 3,402
15 votes
1 answer
2k views

Why was the Sanskrit word "laksha" anglicized to "lakh"?

Heartspring
  • 3,402
16 votes
6 answers
496k views

How did the word "beaver" come to be associated with vagina?

Sven Yargs
  • 156k
5 votes
2 answers
3k views

Difference between etymologies of 'allocable' and 'allocatable'

KillingTime
  • 5,532
1 vote
1 answer
75 views

Approximately when did the term "meme" reach the tipping point into widespread popularity on the internet?

CommunityBot
  • 1
4 votes
3 answers
382 views

Etymology of the word 'cheatercock'

Sven Yargs
  • 156k
Browse more Questions

Your privacy

By clicking “Accept all cookies”, you agree Stack Exchange can store cookies on your device and disclose information in accordance with our Cookie Policy.