November 2008

Just Foolin' Around

Once again, albeit appeared on the Top Twenty List. The Middle English albeit literally meant "all though it be." Albeit is one of literally hundreds of words whose etymology includes literally in the story of origin. We started investigating those literal stories and came up with both a few favorites and a method of reviewing the hundreds of dictionary entries.

To see all of the words that include "literally" in their etymology, go to the Advanced Search page of the Collegiate. Type literally in the Etymology field, and click on Search.

You will get quite a large list. To refine the search, go back to the Advanced Search page and type in literally and the name of a language. For example, literally Yiddish yields 14 entries and literally Tamil turns up two. Here are some noteworthy results we found:

  • aegis (literally, "goatskin" in Greek)
  • ambition (literally, "act of soliciting for votes" in Latin)
  • denouement (literally, "untying" in French)
  • juggernaut (literally, "Lord of the world" in Hindi)
  • kamikaze (literally, "divine wind" in Japanese)
  • pariah (literally, "drummer" in Tamil)


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