Talk Morgan Forums Community The Malvern Arms World Wide Words

I have been a long time subscriber to the World Wide Words newsletter. I can highly recommend it to anyone who, like me, is fascinated by English words and expressions and the use thereof. I get an email with the newsletter every Saturday.

One gem from this weeks newsletter, in the item about the word "Habiliments", is actually a quote from the The Herald (Glasgow)

You know the kind of cyclist I mean: all is vanity. ... He wears wicked shades, an insect-head helmet, and has athletic signage on his inappropriate habiliments.
The Herald (Glasgow), 20 Jun. 2014.

You can find World Wide Words at http://www.worldwidewords.org/ and there it is possible to subscribe (or read on-line).

Thanks for that site, Peter, I've already bookmarked it. Gerry.

Thank you for sharing
I am fascinated by the English language and in particular the similarities between ancient Swedish and the English language.
I have now joined the mailing list

is it ancient swedish or is it norse or are they the same thing? In the area where I grew up (gods own county) there are many words in current useage that are derived from Norse and very many place names. English has a huge vocabulary by comparison with most other languages because you will often find two or three words for very much the same thing, one derived from latin/french, one from norse / german.

howard:
Ancient Swedish and 'norse' is not the same but have a lot of common words and expressions. Sweden and Norway have in many ways a common history since more than 1000 years and through the sea trade between Norway and the British islands we share a lot of British words too. Even today the Swedish language has dialects that uses the 'old' words that are more similar to 'norse' than to Swedish. Very much so in the part of Sweden where I live. One example: the Swedish word for 'church' is 'kyrka' but here in Jämtland they say 'körsa' (where k=ch and ö=eo) pronounced much more like church than 'kyrka'.
In Swedish we also have several words for the same thing, but they tend to disappear from the 'spoken' language which I think is sad because it's among those words you can see the similarities between our languages.

howard, you taught me a new word, 'Norse'. I didn't know there was a special word for the Norwiegan language - now I know, thanks!

Also, here is a good link regarding the Scandinavia languages:
http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/526522/Scandinavian-languages