Word With a Past
Word With a Past: Silhouette
I’m poking around in the long eighteenth century these days and stumbling across lots of surprising tidbits. Take silhouettes. I had long known that charming likenesses cut from black cardstock became a popular and affordable alternative to oil portraits in the mid-eighteenth century. To the extent that I thought about the word at all, I…
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Word With a Past: How Did Germany Become the Hun?
The original Huns were a tribe of nomadic horsemen from Central Asia who rode fast and fought hard.* When they reached Europe in the second half of the fourth century, the Huns triggered a mass migration of Germanic tribes that contributed to the fall of Rome in the fifth century. Under the leadership of Attila,…
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Word With a Past: Mausoleum
When King Mausolos of Caria * died in 353 BCE his widow decided to honor him by building a marble tomb more wonderful than any building known to man. (We’ve seen this kind of thing before. Taj Mahal anyone?) She sent to Greece for the best architects and sculptors. When it was completed the Mausoleum…
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