David Zapatka Watching the Australian Open Tennis Championships reminded me of the strange way tennis is scored. Zero is announced as love. Theory is that love arose from the French word for “egg,” l’oeuf, because a zero on a scoreboard resembles an egg; a clever but unsubstantiated claim. One point is called 15, two is…
Tag: Word of the Month
December 2018
Word of the Month: Patronymic
David Zapatka At the urging of friend Betz Wyllie, I’ve acted on my intrigue with genealogy. Betz is a genealogical whiz and offered to help with my family history. In what seemed to be a relatively short period of time but certainly a ton of work for Betz, she produced about 200 names for…
November 2017
Word Of The Month: Humblebrag
David Zapatka While listening to someone speak self-deprecatingly interspersed with self-directed, attention-grabbing, patting-on-the-back comments recently, a friend leaned over to me and said, “You know, there’s a word for this type of self-indulgent talk.” At first, I wasn’t sure what was being implied but on second thought, I realized there was purpose in the self-deprecating…
August 2016
Word of the Month: Doyen
David Zapatka Friend and fellow table tennis-playing enthusiast, Bill Lewis, exposed me to our word for this month, doyen, in a recent correspondence about long-term expertise in the sport of table tennis. When reading his email and coming across his use of the word “doyen” I had to look this one up. Doyen noun doy·en doi-ĕn′,…