If someone can be "untrammeled," can they also just be "trammeled"? And what does it mean to "trammel" something in the first place? Today we look at a word whose negative form dominates its usage. After uncovering the roots of "untrammeled" in fishing traps, we turn to human biology and the biography of the Roman Emperor Claudius to consider how people have found themselves caught up in nets.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

Hypocrisy is a moral failing we find in deceitful, duplicitous people. But this word—which originally comes from a Greek verb that simply means "to reply"—wasn't always associated with deception or compromised principles. The Stoic philosopher Epictetus and the novelist George Eliot give us literary examples to consider how our notion of hypocrisy came to us today.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

We negotiate with friends and rivals alike in the modern world: at the dinner table, in the workplace, and among relatives. The notion of "negotiating," however, has its roots in ancient Latin vocabulary—chiefly, in the noun negotium. In this episode, we consider how Romans understood work and leisure, and we look to Shakespeare to see how this ancient idea evolved in later English literature.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)

To kick off this podcast, we're starting with the word "principal," whose close relative "principle" can trip up even native English speakers. These two words—even if they have some shared history—aren't interchangeable. In this first episode, we turn to Isaac Newton and the King James Bible for help.

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Music: Adapted from Sonatine by Maurice Ravel, performed by Irene Posviatovska (Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0)