Grimmigirl here.

Last week I mispronounced not one, but two names, so I'll start this week with corrections,

and then we'll have a meeting middle with three tricks for memorizing vocabulary words.

First, I told you about the English diarist Samuel Peppis who liked to drink tea, but

his name is actually pronounced peeps, like the marshmallow chicks you buy for Easter.

Samuel Peppis liked to drink tea.

And second, I told you that the author of the piece about tea was from Meg Dylan College,

which is not pronounced Meg Dylan, but is pronounced Modlin.

It's Modlin College.

And I was a little bit excited about this mistake because it gives me a reason to tell

you about the word Modlin, which I wrote about in my book 101 words to make you sound smart.

So in this case, it made me sound stupid, but it is actually a really interesting word.

Modlin people are weepy, emotional, foolish, or gushally sentimental, and Modlin-ness

can be someone's general disposition, or can be brought on by alcohol or an emotional

situation.

Modlin, the word, was first used in the early 1500s, and we get it from the biblical character

Mary Meg Dylan.

In medieval art, Meg Dylan was almost always shown weeping, either washing Jesus' feet

with her tears, or weeping outside his empty tomb.

People of the time referred to anyone who had a similar weepy look or disposition as

Meg Dylan.

Over time, the pronunciation became slurred, and the spelling changed to Modlin.

...