The word Boycott is named…

The word Boycott is named after an Irish landlord named Charles Boycott. After Boycott attempted to evict 11 tenants, the local community decided to shun him. Workers would not work for him, traders would not trade with him, and the postman would not deliver the post.

Democracy and demon came from…

Democracy and demon came from the same Greek root: ‘dā mo’ is the distance between different types of people, both ‘citizens’ (‘demos’) and Gods and humans (‘dai-mon’ meaning ‘divider’).

Word quarantine comes…

Word quarantine comes from an Italian variant ‘quaranta giorni’, meaning forty days, the period that all ships were required to be isolated before passengers and crew could go ashore during the Black Death plague epidemic.