Building a Better Vocabulary

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z The original Luddites were a group of English craftsmen who
organized themselves into an activist workers group in 1811.
Because the Luddites feared that the introduction of new machinery
would put them out of work, they began destroying the machinery.

z The OED etymology for luddite is drawn from Pellew’s Life of
Lord Sidmouth (1847). According to this source, the Luddites
took their name from Ned Ludd, “a person of weak intellect” who
destroyed some equipment used to make stockings in an English
village around 1779.

z Luddite has been used as a proper noun since 1811, the year of
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it entered English as a common noun—referring to anyone
who opposes the introduction of new technology—relatively
recently, in 1961. At that time, the old term—meaning “resistance
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against computers.”

Billingsgate (noun)

Foul, coarse, abusive language.

z The word billingsgate is actually a toponym—“a word named
after a place”—rather than an eponym. Billingsgate, now one of
London’s 25 wards, originally was a water gate in the river wall
on the north bank of the Thames. Over the centuries, Billingsgate
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z The market at Billingsgate became well-known for something
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that one heard while shopping there. In particular, it was the
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biting profanity.

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well known for this obscene language that references to the place
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