Singer-songwriter Sufjan Stevens wrote an open letter to Miley Cyrus addressing her use of the word laying in her song “Get It Right.” The lyric in question: “I been laying in this bed all night long.” Before addressing the grammatical sin of “I been,” Sufjan explains that Miley should have used the word lying in place of laying. What’s the difference between lying and laying? …
American place names can sound pretty confusing even to native English speakers. From Philadelphia (Greek for “loving brother”) to Chicago (Algonquian Fox for “place of the wild onion”), the map of America is an etymological hodge-podge. For a clear example, take three adjacent states in New England. Vermont is an inverted, rough translation of the French for “green mountain,” mont vert. Massachusetts is derived from the name of …
“The pursuit of Happiness” was thought to be an unalienable right by the writers of the US Declaration of Independence. However, in 1776, the definition of happiness evoked a different meaning than it does today. When the framers of this historic document wrote about “Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness,” what exactly did they mean by “happiness”? The term happiness comes from the Old Norse term …