Talking etymology with the Lexis linguists!

Posted bydannylbatePosted inEnglish, EtymologyTags:, , ,

Just a quick newsflash from me:

Last week I had the pleasure and privilege of talking to Dan, Lisa and Jill, three of the team behind Lexis, a podcast about language and linguistics that’s primarily aimed at A-Level teachers and students, although its great content is accessible to all.

We talked about etymology – what it is, how it works and how people can get into it. I thoroughly enjoyed our chat together, but admittedly I was quite nervous about how I would come across in the finished product. Well, clearly the Lexis team have skill not only as podcast hosts but also as audio editors, because I’m delighted with the episode and I sound like I have half an idea what I’m talking about!

It’s now available online to listen to for free. So, if you’d like to consume some of my linguistic content in audio form, and to get to know me and my process of doing etymology, you can listen to the episode (number 31) here:

Episode 78 – John Kelly and the 2025 Words of the Year – Lexis

Welcome to episode 78 of Lexis in which Raj & Dan talk to John Kelly, former head of content at Dictionary.com, previous contributor to Merriam-Webster and Oxford Dictionaries, emoji lexicographer for Emojipedia, and school teacher. We discuss:How WOTY decisions were made at Dictionary.comWhether we should celebrate WOTY for getting us talking about words, or be cynical about it as a marketing exerciseWhat makes a WOTY stick aroundWhat qualities a good WOTY should haveThe sketchier WOTYs that we've seen2025’s crop of WOTY nominations – what we’ve seen so far and what might be to comeWOTY as a barometer of the times‘Fascism’ as John’s WOTY/etymology of the year and why an old word is pertinent again. John’s blog is here: https://mashedradish.com/ ‘Fascism’ is here; https://mashedradish.com/2025/11/04/fascism-etymology-of-the-year-2025/ He is also on Bluesky here: https://bsky.app/profile/mashedradish.bsky.social Some of the WOTY choices we discuss are covered in the articles and posts below: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/12/rage-bait-2025-oxford-word-internet-language-defense/685143/?gift=h5ssLVeyARshEXLqfVq5YwEAlKAoVnByCEZqdOsZdV8&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=sharehttps://theconversation.com/2025s-words-of-the-year-reflect-a-year-of-digital-disillusionment-270769https://time.com/7334730/word-of-the-year-2025-cambridge-collins-dictionary-oxford-merriam/ https://www.nytimes.com/2025/12/04/learning/what-teenagers-are-saying-about-6-7-and-the-era-of-brain-rot.html https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cewjxqvqzgyo https://www.bbc.co.uk/bitesize/articles/z9xbh4j https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/brain-rot-what-the-oxford-word-of https://www.bylinesupplement.com/p/the-words-that-define-our-enshittifed https://bsky.app/profile/hooved-mammal.bsky.social/post/3m7ntojukdc2y Lexis is on Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/lexispodcast.bsky.social ContributorsLisa Casey blog: https://livingthroughlanguage.wordpress.com/ & Twitter: Language Debates (@LanguageDebates)Dan Clayton blog: EngLangBlog & Bluesky: https://bsky.app/profile/englangblog.bsky.social Jacky Glancey Twitter: https://twitter.com/JackyGlanceyRaj RanaMusic: Serge Quadrado – Cool Guys Cool Guys by Serge Quadrado is licensed under a Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. From the Free Music Archive: https://freemusicarchive.org/music/serge-quadrado/urban/cool-guys 
  1. Episode 78 – John Kelly and the 2025 Words of the Year
  2. Episode 77 – Lynne Murphy and the 'Americanisation' of young people's English
  3. Episode 76 – Dani Yin & Cheryl Wakslak on gender and exclamation marks in digital communication
  4. Episode 75 – Teachers' Accents special
  5. Episode 74 – Laura Smith-Khan and the language of law

That’s all for now!

One thought on “Talking etymology with the Lexis linguists!”

  1. Pingback: Journeying into gender with Words for Granted! – Danny L. Bate

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