Cypris Chat

I was eating an English muffin this morning and rememberred the saying “nooks and crannies”. Why? Thomson English Muffins, a English muffin sold in America which aren’t really English or even muffins for that matter, used the saying “nooks and crannies” to refer to the place where butter goes when spread on the muffin. The holes in the muffin are the hidden far away secret places butter hides only to be found when one bites into the crunchy goodness that makes Thompson English muffins so delicious.

The origin of “cranny” comes from 14-15th century Middle English crany to mean crack or notch. “Nook” is of unknown origin first used around 1300 and possibly from Norwegian nok, meaning hook. It is used to describe tucked away places or dettached rooms such as a breakfast nook, a small semi open room unenclosed by a door making it accessible yet private at the same time.

Thea means “a looking at” and theates means “spectator”. If you add -tron (a place) then you have theatron. The Latins preferred to say theatrum which translated later in Middle English to theatre. Of course, that had to change when the Americans got hold of it to the -er or theater instead of theatre.

In old English the word book was spelled boc, which meant “beech”. It was on the bark of that tree words were scratched. The word folio comes from the Latin word folium which means “leaf”. And volume comes from Old French via the Latin volumen meaning a roll of writing papyrus.