The Ridiculously Interesting History of Weird English Words

Feb 11, 2026

Colin Gorrie, a linguist and newsletter author who digs into historical English and etymology, unpacks odd spellings and strange word histories. Short segments trace gh to guttural sounds, reveal why yacht and weird look and sound off, and explain flip compounds like pickpocket and turncoat. Fun, nerdy stories show how printing, dialects, law, and literature froze quirky forms into modern English.

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ANECDOTE

How A Kid Fell For Letters

Colin Gorrie became a word nerd after reading Encyclopedia Britannica's entry on the letter A.
He traced alphabets back to Phoenician and Greek, which sparked his lifelong interest in language history.

ANECDOTE

Colin's Academic Passions

Colin focuses on Old English and creates neo-Old English textbooks for students.
He also studies Sanskrit and other historical languages as part of his research and teaching.

INSIGHT

Why We Say 'It Is Raining'

English requires an explicit subject for verbs, so weather verbs use a dummy pronoun "it."
Colin Gorrie explains this evolved after Old English and fossilized by the later Middle Ages.

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Why is weird spelled like that? Why is yacht pronounced like that? Why is a firefighter a person who fights fires... but a pickpocket is neither a pick nor a pocket? We're so lucky to have linguist Colin Gorrie on the pod to talk about the "disaster" of English spelling and the history you can unearth in pretty much every English word. This one's such a nerdy delight — if you found yourself enraptured by our episode on accents, you're gonna love this one, too.

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Show Notes:

Subscribe to Colin Gorrie's newsletter, Dead Language Society, here
I personally really love 'Dog' is a Weird Word (you can find all the Weird Word editions collected here)
Listen to our episode on The Ridiculously Interesting World of American Accents!
I reference Wound Man — here's my interview with the art historian on the historical representations of him
A very weird 1818 illustration of a pickpocket

Just for fun, a map of Europe with place names in the dominant language of the place

We're currently looking for your questions for future episodes about:

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Dark academia — the trends, the themes, the popularity, whatever you want (for an episode with R.F. Kuang!)
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Conversion Therapy (how it affects people late into life, how it still exists, etc. etc.)
Your Parent(s) Died — How Do You Deal with All This PAPERWORK and bureaucracy??? (with death doula Becky Robison)
What would LIFE AFTER CARS look like?? (With the hosts of the War on Cars pod!)
KID INFLUENCERS — what happens when your parent puts you on camera before you can really consent?
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As always, you can submit your questions (and ideas for future eps) here
For this week’s discussion: Just gonna be real basic here and ask... What did you learn from this episode? So many tidbits and delightful explanations!