Category: Word Nerd

Welcome to yet another bout of Word Nerd, the weekly feature where we examine, explain and illustrate confusing words. Let’s get to it, shall we? This week we have a threefer. Peek, Peak, and pique.

Rain, rein, reign; all three of these terms come to us by way of Middle English, but their sources vary. The oldest of the three, from the 12th century, is rain, which comes from the Old German regan, meaning rain. About a hundred years later, reign pops up, from the Latin regnum, meaning king. Another hundred years or so, and rein starts to show up, again from the Latin (retinere; to restrain), though it passes through Anglo-French (resne) first.

Hi, and welcome to a new recurring feature here at GeekDad. I’m Jim MacQuarrie, geekdad, writer, cartoonist, designer, archery instructor, and internet curmudgeon. Like a lot of geeks, I’m cranky about bad grammar and punctuation, but my real bugaboo is when people use the wrong word.