Grimmer Girl here, I'm Mignon Fagridi and you can think of me as your friendly guide to

the English language.

We talk about writing, history, rules, and cool stuff.

Today, we'll talk about martial law, why the word vaccine is related to cows, and what

you call it when you scavenge little bits of food for dinner instead of making a whole

meal.

Let's get started.

One of our listeners wrote in to say that he'd been seeing the phrase martial law

misspelled quite a lot as M-A-R-S-H-A-L-L-L. It should be spelled M-A-R-T-I-A-L as in

related to war, warriors or the military.

The word comes from the medieval Latin marked Tialis, meaning something related to Mars,

the God of War.

The word of law describes a situation in which the rule of law is enforced by the military

rather than local police.

This usually happens in an emergency, like a zombie apocalypse, when citizens are in panic

mode, and local law enforcement can't maintain public order and safety by themselves.

They need federal troops to step in and help.

Marshal law has been imposed in the United States in the past.

During the War of 1812, Andrew Jackson imposed Marshal law within a four-mile radius of

his camp in New Orleans.

In 1934, the governor of California placed the docks of San Francisco under Marshal law

after a dock worker strike.

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