Wheel-Horseīack at a time when horses were widely used for transport and to power machinery, a leader was a horse positioned in front of whatever contraption it was pulling or powering, while a wheel-horse was positioned among the machinery itself, typically between the shafts of two rotating wheels. Whang is an old English dialect word meaning “to beat” or “thrash,” and derived from that, a whangsby is anything that is particularly tough or hard-wearing. Wet-HandĪn old northern English nickname for a drunkard. Well-a-day is an old expression of woe or sorrow, but well-a-fine was essentially an 18th-century equivalent of “what do you know!” or “that’s all well and good!” 14. As a result, a perfectly clear blue sky was once known as a weather-breeder, in the sense that it probably means that there’s a storm brewing. Weather-BreederĪ cloudless sky might sound like perfect weather, but old folklore claims that a sky without a cloud in sight is actually an omen of heavy rain to come. Water-StandingĬoined by Shakespeare in Henry VI: Part 3, the adjective water-standing means “flooded with tears.” 12. Bonus fact: Midwives were also once nicknamed “rabbit-catchers.” 11. Watch-BirthĪn old 18th-century nickname for a midwife. WastegoodĪ 16th-century word for a spendthrift. WashamouthĪn old dialect word used both for someone who habitually speaks before thinking, or who frequently uses bad language. WarzlementĪn old dialect word for sycophantic flattery or wheedling, persuading language. In addition to meaning “to bend or distort out of shape,” the verb warp has a number of other definitions, including “to put on or take off a garment hastily,” “to sprinkle or scatter something across a surface,” both “to fling open a gate” and “to open a door wide,” “to float through the air,” “to deflect or divert something from its usual route or course,” “to move or work slowly on your hands and knees,” and “to suddenly place someone in great distress.” 7. The unassuming word warp might just be one of the most bizarrely useful words in the English language. The war– part is probably a contraction of “work.” 6. WardayĪ warday (pronounced so that “war” rhymes with “bar,” not “core”) is simply a weekday. As a verb, wamble means “to feel nauseated,” or, figuratively, “to turn over and over.” 5. in the 19th century, wamble-cropped means sick to your stomach. Wamble-CroppedĪn old 16th-century dialect word that spread to the U.S. Figuratively, you can also use this one to mean a thin or meager-looking person, or as a nickname for someone who always appears shabbily or untidily dressed. The youngest or last-hatched bird in a brood is the wallydrag or wally-draigle. Wag-pasty is an old Tudor word for a “mischievous rogue,” according to the Oxford English Dictionary (OED). Wag-FeatherĪn old slang name for a foolish, swaggering, braggish person. And that’s without adding any of these to your vocabulary … 1. Today, the letter W accounts for just under 2 percent of all English language writing, but thanks to the high frequency of words like was, will, with, were, which, would, who, what, where, when, and why, you can expect W to be the first letter of roughly one in every 20 of the words you use every day. It's this history that gives W the longest name of any letter of the English language-and also means that the acronym www uniquely contains three times more syllables than it does letters. Eventually, these two ran together into one single character, W, which has remained in use to this day. Originally, the ancient Germanic languages of Europe didn’t have a letter to adequately represent their “w” sound (the labio-velar approximant, if you want to get technical), so instead it was represented by two consecutive letter Us or Vs. W is called “double-U” because it was once precisely that.
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