As an editorial cartoonist, Trevor Bryden ran a multi-paneled cartoon strip for a number of years that featured British Columbia’s provincial legislature. Now retired, he has been indulging an interest in the evolution of words and phrases in the English language. Naturally he could not resist the temptation to illustrate some of the more unusual and quirky examples in cartoon form. He is in the process of compiling a collection of Illustrated Word and Phrase Origins that he hopes will both inform and entertain his readers while, at the same time, stimulate an interest in the history of words.

“Many words and phrases have an interesting history.  Some are quirky and some are funny.  As a cartoonist with an interest in the origin of words I can’t resist putting it all into a humorous context.  There are some that would say that I am weird to spend my spare time reading dictionaries and this is my way of saying “But it’s fun!”  My career as an editorial cartoonist has been devoted to making a joke out of the serious undertakings of our politicians and in my drawings I have always been saying;  “I think that our politicians are doing something funny.”  I can say the same thing about words and I hope that you can be amused.”