Words

If you knock on his door, or click on his link, Anatoly Liberman will give you a Halloween treat: The Oxford Etymologist goes Trick-or-Treating, or, A Short and Inconclusive History of the Word Witch. He also discusses wicked, wizard, and wiseacre.

I subscribe to the OED Online Word of the Day. Last Wednesday the word was dabble, one of whose meanings well describes my chief occupation:

To employ oneself in a dilettante way in (any business or pursuit) without going deeply or seriously into it; to work off and on at, as a matter of whim or fancy.

I found another word that describes me in a letter of Charles Lamb to Robert Southey (July 28, 1798): antiquity-bitten.