What does a snakeskin have in common with a swamp? (Aside from some snakes living in swamps.) The answer is slough, one of those odd words whose pronunciation determines its meaning and whose path to modern English is the convergence…

What comes to mind when you hear the word macabre? You probably think of death or something gruesome or something by Edgar Allan Poe. Strangely enough, the source for that word is Hellenistic cultural imperialism. This will take some explaining. The…