Words Related

Laurel and laureate:

• Laureate, as in “poet laureate” or “rest on one’s laurels,” comes from laureatus (woodenly: “laurel-ed”; more poetically: “crowned with laurels”).

• Victors in contests were crowned accordingly, due to some association between the Greek god Apollo and the laurel bush that is slipping my mind.

Ritz-Carlton and ritzy (Mrs. Shelton, who was just “laureled” with not one but two fellowships (EPPC and Novak), pointed this one out to me):

• The high-class Ritz Hotel opened for business in Paris in 1898. A quick decade later and people were already using “ritzian” as an associated adjective. Fortunately, around 1920 we seemed to move on to the far smoother “ritzy,” and then by 1928 we were “putting on the ritz.”

• The company’s lawyers tried to get “ritzy” deleted from the dictionary, and, failing that, attempted to trademark it without success. Now we can all put on the ritz without fearing trademark violations!

Forthcoming

My internet friend Nadya Williams is launching a new podcast, Christians Reading Classics, on August 14 and kindly invited me to discuss Lewis Carroll’s Alice books with her. Check out her introduction of the project below and stay tuned for my thoughts on Alice, “slithy toves,” and why—like Humpty Dumpty—I always pay extra “when I make a word do a lot of work.”

This podcast series is loosely based on Nadya’s forthcoming book by the same title.

Recent Writing & Coverage

• “Marrying Up: A Freedom Conservatism Strategy on Family & Fertility” (Substack)

  • “This misguided instinct in the CTC debate illustrates a growing problem I call ‘cherry-on-top’ family policy.”

• “The Conservative Case for Religious Freedom” (TGC)

  • “Whether we will survive the coming centuries will all depend upon our continued commitment to the combination of the spirit of liberty and the spirit of religion. In Religious Freedom, Wilsey provides Christians a needed roadmap to the pressing political challenges of our time.”

• “One Big Beautiful Achievement” (WORLD)

  • “Hundreds of millions of federal dollars will no longer flow to Planned Parenthood, some of their abortion facilities may close, and many more babies will have a fighting chance to be born.”

• “NATO Military Spending Spike Is ‘Major Victory’” (NRO)

  • “Our NATO allies are finally waking up and prioritizing defense spending,” AAF policy director John Shelton told National Review. “While this should have happened years ago, better late than never.”

• “What Algorithms Have Brought Together” (Christianity Today)

  • The Sheltons’ meetcute, recorded for the ages: “The couple met and connected offline, outside the Supreme Court, at the most romantic of events: a Southern Baptist Convention Ethics and Religious Liberty Commission (ERLC) briefing.”