ETYMOLOGIES

Alan Jacobs on Albert Murray: Long before Murray started writing for publication, he believed that the good times roll in response to suffering—that the suffering in a sense generates the good times. “What the customary blues-idiom dance movement reflects is a disposition to encounter obstacle after obstacle as a matter of course”—and something more than a matter…More

Sharon Rose Christner via Alan Jacobs: This place, when the sun goes down, becomes the ancient version of its names. Clinico was once clinicus, sometimes meaning the bedridden one, sometimes the one tending the bed, derived from words for bed and stretching out. In English, too, clinic follows this path back to lying down. Ospedale was once hospitālis, “hospice, shelter, guesthouse,” from hospes (host, guest, stranger).…More