Now I understand oecolampadius’s troll accusations in response to the non-language content of my link to a Dawkins’ article admiring the language of the KJV.

We’ve been through this before.  One needn’t be a clergyman, or even a believer, to find your postings on topics related to religion trollish.

I thoroughly agree (as so often) with the Good Doctor.

If you enter my name into your Web browser, you will be directed to dozens of sites - not because of any claim to fame on my part, but because “Lionel Holland” is also the name of a (not particularly savoury) character in the Alec Guinness classic movie, Kind Hearts and Coronets. Guinness apparently had a superstition that the name was lucky. Characters in several Guinness movies are called “Holland”.

You may actually find me (somewhere round the 200th site) listed as author of a monograph on medieval Islamic coin-weights, or of a book on ancient weights found at Caesarea Maritima, or of other stuff. I have been interested (as an amateur and collector) in ancient numismatics and metrology - especially ancient weights - for a long time.  My profession is - and has been for several decades - papermaking chemist. It’s a vanishing one, so despite my age, I still get an occasional invitation to travel, for a bit of consulting or teaching.

I was born in Montevideo, of English and Chilean parents. Through my mother, I am descended from a family of “conversos” - Spanish Jews who were forced to accept baptism. Israel has been my home since 1953.
I think that at 83, I’m probably the oldest poster on wordorigins.org. The site’s taught me a lot, and I love it (thank you once again, Dave, and all the rest of you, too), just as I love the English language, and feel kin to all who use it with love, respect, and care.

I hope to be with you for a while longer - life is too much fun to stop. See you around!

If you were to Google my name, you would find, among other things, a former daytime-TV court judge, a musician who plays two recorders at the same time, a dead lunatic, a number of professional athletes, and the other one.  I am none of these people.  In fact, you wouldn’t find much about me at all, as having a relatively common name enables one to easily maintain a low online profile if one so chooses.

I’m a 38-year-old husband, father of three, and IT dork working for a gigantic multinational corporation.  I have no formal training in linguistics and generally have little to offer this site, but I find the subject fascinating and can’t help coming back time and time again to see what else I can learn from the folks who know far, far more than I do.

My name is Steve Vinyard (thus solving the mystery behind the forum name svinyard, although the 118 will have to remain a mystery).  I am an attorney in the state of Washington. I am married and have two, ridiculously cute, kids: a 13 month old and a 2.75 year-old.
I have always been fascinated by the English lamguage, and enjoy learning as much as I can about it, whether from a practical, aesthetic, or historical perspective.  I stumbled upon this site while trying to puzzle through the expression, “on the q.t.”, an expression whose meaning was perfectly clear, but whose origin eluded me (and, even more fundamentally, i was confounded by the form of the expression, and by the function of the t in “on the qt” in particular.) The “Big List” provided me with the answer to this question, and i then began looking up other such expressions, whose meaning I knew but whose underlying metaphor (if there was one) was mysterious.  Once I made my way through the big list, I began following the blog, and then the forum postings, and then, finally, began making posts of my own, and have been trying the patience of the regulars of this site ever sense. 
Sadly, my love of the subject matter is greatly outweighed by my almost complete ignorance of it, and even my ignorance is outweighed, if such a thing is possible, by my seemingly infinite capacity to read a thread very carefully yet manage to completely miss the point of one or more of the postings upon it.  My hope is that with time and experience I will gradually evolve from a nuisance to a useful contributor, but if such an evolution is occurring, it is unfolding with glacial slowness.  Whether I am improving as a poster or not, I have learned much about the subject, and look forward to learning more and more about it.

Apart from OP Tipping, I think I’m the other Aussie. Still living in Melbourne, Australia. Working for a big bank, insurer and investment house, training financial planners. Qualifications in Psychology, but not in linguistics or any other field vaguely relevant to the origins of words and phrases. Given the abysmal technical knowledge I can provide, the best I can do is ask the odd question and do what I think is called being the ‘colour reporter’, offering an Aussie view on word use as appropriate from a place neither West Pond nor East Pond.

One of the Antipondians.