Mark Twain in Nevada Fair. On May 23, 1864 Twain wrote to Ellen G. (Mrs. William K.) Cutler, a signer of the letter blasting the author of the miscegenation hoax. He apologized for not responding sooner to the letter as it "came at a moment when I was in the midst of what ought to have been a deadly quarrel with the publishers of the Union". Mrs. Cutler was the only one among the Carson City society ladies that had not ostracized Mollie Clemens, for which Twain thanked her. Twain promised that he would "say a word or two to show the ladies that
Witch (word) Witch (word) The word witch derives from the Old English nouns "wicca" ('sorcerer, male witch') and "wicce" ('sorceress, female witch'). The word's further origins in Proto-Germanic and Proto-Indo-European are unclear. The Old English verb "wiccian" has a cognate in Middle Low German "wicken" (attested from the 13th century, besides "wichelen" "to bewitch"). The further etymology of this word is problematic. It has no clear cognates in Germanic outside of English and Low German, and there are numerous possibilities for the Indo-European root from which it may have been derived. Other suggestions for the underlying root are untenable or widely rejected: