Carolina Institute for Faith & Culture

Many people who have read Jonathan Swift’s Gulliver’s Travels, published in 1725, are familiar with book 1, in which Lemuel Gulliver encounters the Lilliputians, those cute, vicious little people. But […]

Crepuscular is a really interesting sounding word. It sounds like it should be related to shell fish or human musculature or something like that. But this word, the New York […]

The Mirriam-Webster Word of the Day is officious, which means “volunteering one’s services where they are neither asked nor needed” or “meddlesome.” Mirriam-Webster provides a second definition, “informal, unofficial,” but […]

Chutzpah (or chutzpa) [hƱt spǝ] means “unmitigated effrontery or impudence; gall” or “audacity, nerve.” According to etymonline.com, the word enters the language in 1892 “from Yiddish khutspe “impudence, gall,” from […]

Mirriam-Webster’s Word of the Day today is gambit, which originally is a term in chess. Mirriam-Webster says, “In 1656, a chess handbook was published that was said to have almost […]

The adjective protean (pronounced pro-ti-ǝn) means “readily assuming different forms or characters; extremely variable,” or “changeable in shape or form, as an amoeba,” according to www.dictionary.com. It can also mean […]

The word today is potentate, which means “a person who possesses great power, as a sovereign, monarch, or ruler.” According to www.etymonline.com, it enters the language “c. 1400, from Old […]

Word of the Day: Aphorism An aphorism is, according to Mirriam-Webster, “a concise statement of a principle; a terse formulation of a truth or sentiment” or “an ingeniously terse style […]

Measure: this is one of those interesting words in English that is both a noun and a verb. I am pretty sure that today we use it more often as […]

                I’ve been away for a while now, but I’m back with a new word.                 A palimpsest is, according to Mirriam Webster, “writing material (such as a parchment or […]

Temerity is a noun which means boldness or rashness or audacity or excessive confidence. According to www.etymonline.com, the word comes into the language in the “late 14c., from Latin temeritatem (nominative temeritas) ‘blind […]