Welcome to Lexitecture!
Greetings fellow word nerds!
You’ve found the online home of your new favourite source of random etymology from a pair of language geeks from either side of The Pond.
The premise is simple: in each episode, two friends (Ryan, a Canadian, and Amy, a Scot) get together armed with a new chosen word, and then they regale each other (and you!) with whatever bits of fascinating trivia they’ve been able to uncover about the origins and histories of those words, tracing through the ages to decipher just how each word got from its beginnings to its current use.
You can find our latest episodes below, or visit our archive to find all of them. You can also visit our lexicon to see an alphabetical list of every word we’ve talked about!
Of course, an easier way to listen in would be to subscribe to us using the podcast app of your choice, including these:
We’re also just about anywhere else you can think of as well! If you can’t find us on your favourite podblaster, drop us a line using the form on our contact page and let us know where you couldn’t find us. We’ll do what we can to make sure you can subscribe there too!
Episode 123 – Every Cocktail
In this episode, Amy is mixing things up with “cocktail“, while Ryan is peeling back the many, many layers of “every“. Lexitecture is a podcast about etymology (the linguistics study of the origin and history of words). In each normal, increasingly infrequent episode, a Canadian (Ryan) and a Scot (Amy) each present their current favourite...
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Episode 122: Quaint Dwang
In this episode, Amy is holding up the walls with a “dwang“, while Ryan is trying to be as skillful and ingenious as possible with “quaint“. Special and enormous thanks going out to our newest Patreon supporter: Fiona! Also, for anyone looking for the links promised about that obscure 13th century book we talk about...
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