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Haggard Hawks 🦅📚 Words | Language | Etymology
@HaggardHawks
Obscure words, etymological tales, language trivia | Books available here: haggardhawks.com/books | Tweets by @PaulAnthJones | Artwork by @bread_and_ink
HH HQ, Newcastle UK
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Joined December 2013
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    Haggard Hawks 🦅📚 Words | Language | Etymology
    @HaggardHawks
    Dec 4, 2024
    ❄️ Every day in December, we’ll be sharing a different entry from the latest @HaggardHawks book, A WINTER DICTIONARY—a collection of obscure words for the festive season—which is OUT NOW! 👉 amazon.co.uk/Winter-Diction… 🧵 Follow the thread below to collect all the words...
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    Haggard Hawks 🦅📚 Words | Language | Etymology
    @HaggardHawks
    Jul 31, 2018
    In the late 1500s, the English printer Henry Denham proposed using a reverse question mark, ⸮, called a PERCONTATION POINT to indicate that a question was rhetorical and so didn’t require an answer.
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    Haggard Hawks 🦅📚 Words | Language | Etymology
    @HaggardHawks
    Nov 10, 2020
    Alexander Graham Bell suggested that telephones should be answered with the word AHOY. HELLO was Thomas Edison’s suggestion.
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    Haggard Hawks 🦅📚 Words | Language | Etymology
    @HaggardHawks
    Nov 23, 2019
    The Icelandic word GLUGGAVEÐUR means ‘weather that looks appealing from inside, but would be unpleasant to be outside in’. It literally means ‘window-weather’.
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    Haggard Hawks 🦅📚 Words | Language | Etymology
    @HaggardHawks
    Jun 19, 2019
    As a word for a young pig, the word PIGLET only dates back to the mid 1800s. Before then, a young pig might be called a HOGLING (14thC), a PORKET (1550s), a HOG-BABE (1600s), or a GRUNTLING (1680s).
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    Haggard Hawks 🦅📚 Words | Language | Etymology
    @HaggardHawks
    Feb 23, 2017
    A baby pangolin is called a PANGOPUP.
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    Haggard Hawks 🦅📚 Words | Language | Etymology
    @HaggardHawks
    May 25, 2020
    In 19th century English, the expression ‘Come, come, that’s Barnard Castle!’ was used as a response to someone who had offered a flawed excuse for their actions. (fr. English Proverbs & Proverbial Phrases: A Historical Dictionary, 1929)
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    Haggard Hawks 🦅📚 Words | Language | Etymology
    @HaggardHawks
    Jul 5, 2015
    The term APHERCOTROPISM refers to the response an organism makes as it grows to overcome an obstacle in its way.
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    Haggard Hawks 🦅📚 Words | Language | Etymology
    @HaggardHawks
    Jun 21, 2018
    Koko the gorilla, who died this week aged 46, mastered more than 1000 words of modified American Sign Language. Once, when confronted about a sink she had torn from the wall of her habitat, she signed “the cat did it”.
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    Haggard Hawks 🦅📚 Words | Language | Etymology
    @HaggardHawks
    Sep 28, 2016
    Mediaeval scribes invented this bizarre Latin sentence as a joke to show just how difficult Gothic text could be to read.
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    Haggard Hawks 🦅📚 Words | Language | Etymology
    @HaggardHawks
    Feb 14, 2020
    A RASTRUM is a multi-nibbed pen used to draw the five lines of a musical stave simultaneously. It literally means ‘rake’ in Latin.
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    Haggard Hawks 🦅📚 Words | Language | Etymology
    @HaggardHawks
    Dec 22, 2021
    Feral pigs in Canada have been found to survive the cold temperatures by building tunnel-like shelters lined with insulating grasses and reeds beneath the snow. These shelters are known as PIGLOOS.
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    Haggard Hawks 🦅📚 Words | Language | Etymology
    @HaggardHawks
    Jan 5, 2018
    WINDFUCKER and FUCKWIND are 16th century nicknames for the kestrel.
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    Haggard Hawks 🦅📚 Words | Language | Etymology
    @HaggardHawks
    Nov 12, 2021
    In Old English, MEAT was food of any kind, a GIRL was a young child of either sex, a DEER was any large mammal, a HOUND was any dog, a WIFE was any woman, a FOWL was any bird, to STARVE was merely to die, and an APPLE could be any fruit.