We will explore curiosities of the English language, employing an abecedarian approach, from A to Z. Subjects include the alphabet, blasphemy, cant, diacritics, eponyms, folk etymologies, Grimm’s law, Hobson-Jobson words, Indigenous words, Japanese words, kinship surnames, lexicology, malapropisms, neologisms, obsolete words, Proto-Indo-European, question marks and other punctuation, retronyms, sense shifts, toponyms, universal languages, vowel shifts, woke words, X (the letter), Yiddish words, and zoonyms. This is an interactive course, but no one gets called on. Sign up and join in the fun!

This is Stewart Edlestein's sixth OLLI course teaching etymology. The others were Whence Our Words, Logophilomania, Spawn of Logophilomania, Surprising Sibs, and In a Pickle? He has been a guest wordsmith for Anu Garg’s “A Word A Day” (wordsmith.org) and have created word quizzes for Merriam-Webster (m-w.org). Stewart is a columnist for the Berkshire Eagle, which publishes his “Word of the Week” each Saturday, and the author of three books featuring etymology: Dubious Doublets: A Delightful Compendium of Unlikely Word Pairs of Common Origin, from Aardvark/Porcelain to Zodiac/Whiskey, The Covid-19 Zeitgeist: Fifty Essays, and An Alphabetical Romp Through the Flora of Berkshire Botanical Garden, from Agave to Zinnia. Stewart live in Stockbridge, with his wife, Lynn.

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