Marko Jevtić

“Consider the oft-quoted statement “the exception proves the rule.” Most people take this to mean that the exception confirms the rule, though when you ask them to explain the logic in that statement, they usually cannot. After all, how can an exception prove a rule? It can’t. The answer is that an earlier meaning of prove was to test (a meaning preserved in proving ground) and with that meaning the statement suddenly becomes sensible—the exception tests the rule.”
― Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

“Even Christ reputedly made a pun when He said: “Thou art Peter: upon this rock I shall build my Church.” It doesn’t make a lot of sense from the wordplay point of view until you realize that in ancient Greek the word for Peter and for rock was the same.”
― Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

“Before the shift house was pronounced “hoose” (it still is in Scotland), mode was pronounced “mood,” and home rhymed with “gloom,” which is why Domesday Book is pronounced and sometimes called Doomsday. (The word has nothing to do with the modern word doom, incidentally. It is related to the domes- in domestic.)”
― Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way

“Perhaps for our last words on the subject of usage we should turn to the last words of the venerable French grammarian Dominique Bonhours, who proved on his deathbed that a grammarian’s work is never done when he turned to those gathered loyally around him and whispered: “I am about to—or I am going to—die; either expression is used.”
― Bill Bryson, The Mother Tongue: English and How it Got that Way