[audio clip of Jane Wells asking for the word insinuate ] The Oxford Dictionary of English says that insinuate means to “suggest or hint (something bad) in an indirect and unpleasant way.” If someone insinuated something about you it might get up your nose, and that’d be appropriate since insinuate is etymologically related to sinus. The Oxford English Dictionary—which I’ve explained before is a different dictionary than The Oxford Dictionary of English—explains that this word insinuate came to English directly from renaissance Latin and that in Latin its parent insinuare had already developed all the meanings we adopted into English. But having adopted all those meanings, we then promptly forgot most of them leaving us with our “indirect hint” meaning. Sir Thomas More gave us the first citation in English in 1529 and his meaning was pretty close to what we understand insinuate to mean today.  But The Oxford English Dictionary likes to order its definitions in the order it believes the meanings evolved so Thomas More’s meaning falls as definition number five. Back in Latin it is thought that definition number one came first, even though we don’t have an English citation for it until 1647, almost 120 years after Thomas More’s. Incredibly this later citation is from another theologian named Henry More. If they were related I can’t find the link. The use that Henry More makes of the word is “to introduce tortuously or sinuously.” Something that is sinuous is curvy like a sinuous river.  One definition I came across talked about worming your way in. Henry More was fascinated with his belief in the human soul.  He believed the soul was immortal and so wrestled with the question of how a soul that exists before a person does, actually gets into the person. I get the sense of tendrils or fibers of soul interweaving with those of a developing baby. This brings us up against another word that might or might not be a homonym.  We have sinews in our bodies that connect our muscles and bones.  Do these have an etymological connection? No.  Sinew had an Old English and Germanic background. So if insinuate literally means curving into, what does that have to do with our noses and our sinuses? The answer is that sinuses are named because they represent bays leading off the main nasal passages just like bays leading of some body of water.  Sinus is the Latin word for “bay.”  The bays are defined by the curvature of the shoreline. Today’s episode brought to you by Grammar Girl’s New York Times bestselling book. Look for the link at grammar.quickanddirtytips.com Less