Hello dear readers, and welcome to the new year. As far as I'm aware there isn't a name for this decade yet. We just had the 'noughties' which was a terrible name, but sufficed. Some wags want to call this the 'teenies', which isn't only terrible, but it's incorrect. What about 10, 11 and 12? Anyhow I digress, welcome to a new year, a year which promises much in the way of change, but may not deliver. I have plans to bring this aged blog back into relevance, but we'll see. Gladly, etymology wednesday has survived so far, missing (i think) only two issues in 2011. So what's today's linguistic joy? Follicle.
The word was first recorded in the early 14th century, taken from the French follicule, or directly from the Latin folliculus meaning 'little bag'. Folliculus is the diminutive form of follis meaning 'inflated ball', which also leads us to the word 'fool' (pertaining to 'windbag').
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