One who does useless work. Originated from Latin nihil (nothing). Example like “You may find yourself worrying that you’re turning into a nihilarian.”

Flower child originated as a synonym for hippie, especially the idealistic young people who gathered in San Francisco and environs during the 1967 Summer of Love. It was the custom of “flower children” to wear and distribute flowers or floral-themed decorations to symbolize altruistic ideals of universal brotherhood, peace and love. The mass media picked up on the term and …

Harry Faversham is the hero of the novel The Four Feathers which was written by Alfred Edward Woodley Mason and first published with great success in 1902. When the story starts Harry Faversham is a young officer in the British army. He is tired of army life and wishes to settle down and marry his fiancee, Ethne Burroughs. Harry is …

The term stands for celebrities who attend posh soirees organized to collect saliva for genetic sequencing. Simply put, it is a celebrity spit party. The term is a combination of the words ‘spit’ and ‘glitterati’. A start-up called 23andMe hosted the parties as a promotional tool for popularizing personal genomics. The marketing strategy first began in January, 2011 at the …

Children born in the early 21st century will never know a world without the internet, cable TV, virtual libraries, and other forms of instant intellectual gratification. Critics of this phenomenon fear that instantaneous access has the potential to overload users. Instead of delving deeper into one discipline, many people are dabbling on the surface of many subjects. Author Richard Foreman …

This was George Borrow’s Wild Wales, its People, Language and Scenery which was published in 1862. It was the popular journal The Spectator which printed this well-earned praise.

Jargonauts are people who are fond of bureaucratic terms as also a person who uses a lot of jargon in everyday conversation or while writing. A jargonaut is also a person who is adept in comprehending everyday jargon-filled literature. A person who aims to invent new jargon.

None other that the famous courtier to Queen Elizabeth I, Sir Walter Raleigh. After Queen Elizabeth I died, King James I ascended the throne. James did not like Raleigh who was soon arrested on a trumped up charge of high threason, condemned to death and imprisoned in the Bloody Tower at the Tower of London. It was there that he …

Robert Southey was born at Bristol, August 12, 1774. When he was 20 years old, the French Revolution was in full swing and Southey was so inspired by this that he stupidly conceived the idea of founding a communal republic in the United States. He was ably abetted in this notion by Samuel Coleridge, also a poet. The two young …

Savinien Cyrano de Bergerac. He was a gascon, as was D’ Artangnan the hero of The Three Musketeers. In fact, both swordsmen lived at the same time for D’ Artagnan really lived. He was a king’s Musketeer who became a Marshal of France. Cyrano de Bergerac was born in Perigord in Gascony, a south-west province of France in 1619. He …