This is the allusionist in which I, Helen Zoltzman, say to language, hey how's it going?

And language says, oh sorry, we met and I say no we work together, we see each other

every day. And language says, let's prepare ourselves for today's show with a little

light word history. And with Valentine's Day strutting briskly towards us, here's the

etymology of wedlock, which has meant marriage since the early 13th century, but it evolved

from the old English word wedlach in which the wed meant a pledge and lach was a suffix

that denoted an action. So wedlock was making a pledge. Nothing to do with actual locks,

so put away your old ball and chain jokes firstly because you're not living in a 70s sitcom

and secondly, just because a word looks like another word, it doesn't mean they're related.

So wedlock is also not related to warlock. What they've got in common is having a last

syllable that sounded a bit like lock, so eventually people started spelling it lock.

Warlock started out as the old English warlogger, which meant a traitor or liar. War meant

fidelity or vow, but the logo meant lie. So while wedlock was making a pledge, warlock

was breaking a pledge. Warlogger also used to sometimes refer to the devil. And by extension

it came to mean people who associated with the devil and thus by the 1500s it was a word

for sorcerers, and it's now considered by some pagans to be an offensive tome. And fair

enough, just because you're a gentleman which doesn't mean you're evil, not all warlocks,

on with the show.

Hello there stranger, come on in and welcome to my profile.

Better or flexible, woman, single, five, eight, average build, never smokes, drinks socially,

has dogs, scorpion, exotic.

Ultristic, honest, kind professional woman who likes really good pie, used bookstores,

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