John Kelly

An etymological trip to northern Italy: Milan, Cortina, Lombardy, and more Of beards, fields, curtains, and sparkly rocks

The toponym treatment continues on the blog, this time digging into the place name histories of MILAN, CORTINA, LOMBARDY, ALPS, and DOLOMITES.

mashedradish.com/2026/02/15/m...

Alas, yes

It is a little icky, innit

At a professional development session just yesterday, the middle-aged presenter used “glazed” (fawn over) and I immediately exclaimed to the person sitting next to me: “Well, that slang term is dead.”

Infamous? Vivek Ramaswamy. Same class.

Also same class: the less assault-y co-founder of GitHub.

Over on threads someone just use ai;dr and we all need to adopt that right quick

Make IT stop!!!

If it’s any consolation, the kids hate the product.

This is just unspeakable.

One thing that is surreal is having to use a product of the company that laid my dictionary peeps and me all off.

Written in red dry-erase marker on a white board: “The only thing more powerful than hate love,” attributed to Bad Bunny.

One of my 8th graders today sped into class at 7:30am to find her best friend & rave about Bad Bunny’s halftime. She’s Latina, 1st language is Spanish, kept saying how “touching” it was, how happy she was for Bad Bunny. Was moved by his litany of Latin American countries & left this at dismissal:

First, thanks for being gracious with my typos!

Second, it also took me too long to realize the official logo of this Winter Olympics is a stylized 26, not ‘zb,’ which I still have a hard time unseeing.

Word of the week: Stoat A weasel word goes to the Winter Olympics.

Winter Olympics word of the week: Stoat. (ht @mashedradish.bsky.social)
fritinancy.substack.com/p/word-of-th...

Borrowed from French, “griddle,” “grill,” and “gridiron” all go back to Latin “craticula”—a little griddle, diminutive of “cratis” (wickerwork). Think “grate over fire for cooking.”

I will say, Matthew McConaughey, that “gridiron” is really just a variant of “griddle.”

The English word for HAWK used to be ...

HAFOC.

Hafoc. Hafoc!

That medial consonant certainly flew the nest.

There's other big sports stuff happening today.

Like, you know, the Seahakws rematching the Patriots in the Super Bowl.

Which prompted me to refresh my 2015 post after the two teams last faced off.

Play back the tape on the etymology of HAWK vs. PATRIOT: mashedradish.com/2026/02/08/h...

English used to pronounce the name of MILAN with the stress on the first syllable.

This is preserved in the spelling of MILLINER.

FIGURE SKATING originally involved cutting patterns and shapes—FIGURES—onto the actual surface of the ice.

Let's have an Olympian carve out ABOLISH ICE in a routine. It would be true to the history of the sport!

“Milliner”: it’s literally from Milan A fancy word for fancy hats owing to Milanese merchants selling fancy wares. Fancy that!

The Winter Olympics also sent me down the rabbit hole of MILLINER. 👒

Originally referring to a NATIVE OF MILAN, MILLINER became associated with Milanese merchants who sold fine wares and women's apparel—including women's hats.

mashedradish.com/2026/02/07/m...

Winter Olympics sport word origins, Part II: sleigh, bobsled, curling, hockey Sliding vehicles, little tails, curving paths, and probable hooks

In Part II of Winter Olympics sport names, I cover the etymologies of:

- SLEIGH, which involves SLED
- What the BOB- in BOBSLED means
- CURLING
- HOCKEY

🛷 🥌 🏒
mashedradish.com/2014/02/11/w...

Winter Olympics sport word origins, Part I: skate, ski, slalom, mogul, luge The etymological bones of “skate” may also be literal ones.

In Part I of Winter Olympics sport names, I cover the etymologies of:

- SKATE, including why FIGURE skating
- SKI, including SLALOM and MOGUL
- LUGE

⛸️ ⛷️

mashedradish.com/2014/02/07/w...

Watching the Winter Olympics?

I refreshed some posts in my archives on the origins of the broad names of major winter sport disciplines.

👇👇👇

I'd read a 10,000-word oral history on how this particular print made its way onto the set.

More details on the painting: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:C%...

Cézanne's 'Still Life with a Curtain,' which depicts a jar next to bowls of oranges on a table covered loosely with a white cloth, all foregrounded before a green-brown curtain with a floral print.

This is the Cézanne print framed and hanging above the toilet in George's private, accessible bathroom.

A frame of George Constanza showing Jerry Seinfeld his private, accessible bathroom at work. Above the toilet is a framed print of Cézanne's 'Still Life with a Curtain,' which depicts a jar next to bowls of oranges on a table covered loosely with a white cloth, all foregrounded before a green-brown curtain with a floral print.

I can't stop thinking about how there is a Cézanne print in George's private, accessible bathroom in 'Seinfeld.'

cc @fritinancy.bsky.social

And then the Olympic organizers say stuff like this:

Milo and Tina are the "first openly Gen Z mascots."

What fresh hell is that? What does it even mean to be "openly Gen Z." That's problematic on so many levels and is also just—a lot of people get paid why too much money to churn out so much BS.

Meet Milo and Tina, the 'first openly Gen Z' Olympic mascots The 2026 Olympics and Paralympics mascots are Milo and Tina, a pair of teenage, scarf-clad stoat siblings with big dreams. If you're wondering what a stoat is, you're in the right place.

Meanwhile, the official mascots of the games are stoats.

They are named Milo and Tina, after the host cities.

How fun, how cute. And not a word I get to use everyday. Stoat. A member of the weasel family.

www.npr.org/2026/02/02/n...