Hello! Matilda’s English is back from a long hiatus. I found that I didn’t have enough time to devote to the blog during the Fall semester, but now that I’m (almost) on Christmas break, I’ll be posting a whole lot more. You’ll be happy to know that I’m fresh from an entire semester of a class called Phonics and the History of Language, and oh, the things I’ve learned. I’m chock full of English trivia and etymology.
For instance, did you know that the words grammar and glamor have the same root? It’s true. An early meaning of “glamour” was “a spell or enchantment” before it came to mean “physical attractiveness.” And how does one remember all those spells? Why, you put them in a book, of course! Ergo, people who were able to read back in the day were sometimes viewed with suspicion, because for all you knew they were reading from a spellbook and putting a blight on your crops or whatnot. So you can see how grammar and glamor came to be associated: through books. Isn’t that awesome? Yeah, I thought so too.
Grammar is, as Fergie would say, glamorous.
