•January 19, 2022•
By Jim Baumann
NP Guest Writer

How is it that two nearly identical words can describe something I love so much that I write about it almost every week and something that makes me recoil in terror?
No, I’m not talking about “dessert” and “desert,” but there probably is something to that.
I’m talking, of course, about “entomology” and “etymology.”
“Etymology” is the study of the origin of words and how they’ve changed throughout history.
“Entomology” is the study of insects. Cut to the scene in “The Silence of the Lambs” in which Agent Starling consults the two concupiscent bug freaks who identify the death’s head moth, complete with scalpel and oozing pupa juice. Yech.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.