Some simple questions for those who found the word-origin quiz too
challenging: (forwarded from a parent with too much time on her hands)
1. What grows down as it grows up?
2. When does a boat show affection?
3. What 11-letter English word does everyone pronounce incorrectly?
4. What is found in the middle of Paris?
5. What kind of cheese is made backwards?
6. Before Mount Everest was discovered, what was the highest mountain in the
world?
7. Why can’t a bicycle stand up without a kickstand or bike rack?
8. Who said: “Duh suddle cub up to borrow”?
9. How do you make seven even?
10. What has three heads and is ugly and smells bad?
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ANSWERS TO WORD/PHRASE ORIGINS:
Example: BEDLAM (chaos with the grandkids) really comes from ‘Bethlehem
Hospital for Lunatics’ in London by King Henry VIII. Bethlehem was
shortened to Bedlam.
1. ALMANAC (old farmer’s diary) is really from the Saxon term ‘al-mon-aght’
meaning ‘all moon heed’, which was the record of new and full moons. And my
Old Farmer’s Almanac still has that!!
2. APPLE-pie order (neat as a pin) is from the practical joke of bed-sheets
folded so tight that it prevented the person from getting in. While assumed
to be derived from the apple-turnover pastry, it is from the French ‘nappe
pliee’, meaning ‘folded sheet’
3. ASSASSIN (murder for hire) was originally a tribe of Carmathian warriors
based in Mount Lebanon around the eleventh century. Know for terrorizing the
Middle Eastern world for two hundred years, they were high on hashish most
of the time, particularly prior to battle.
4. Take a BACK seat (everyone riding in my car) is not a car metaphor, but
originally a parliamentary expression derived from the relative low
influence of persons and issues from the back benches (the bench-seats where
members sit in the House of Commons), as opposed to the front benches, where
the leaders of the government and opposition sit.
5. Got out on the wrong side of the BED (grumpy old man) is an ancient
superstition which held it to be unlucky to touch the floor first with the
left foot when getting out of bed. Earlier versions of the expression with
the same meaning were: ‘You got out of bed the wrong way’, and ‘You got out
of bed with the left leg foremost’
6. BIG cheese (boss, kahuna) came into English via colonial India where Urdu
‘chiz’, meaning ‘good thing’ was adopted by the British to mean the best.
7. To the BITTER end (’til the last dog dies) is a maritime expression, from
the metaphor of a rope being played out all the way to the ‘bitts’, which
were the posts on the deck of a ship to which ropes were secured. It is
still used to describe the last link of the anchor chain secured to the
vessel’s chain locker.
8. BLACKMAIL (they found the pictures) ‘mail’ is from Saxon ‘mal’ (rent);
‘black’ is from the Gaelic, to cherish or protect – it was used to describe
an early form of protection money, paid in the form of rent, to protect
property against plunder by vagabonds.
9. BOBBY (my nickname or an English policeman) IS a policeman. Sir Robert
Peel introduced the first police force in London in 1830 and these men were
first known as ‘peelers’!!
10. The BUCK stops here (not when I’m deer hunting) is a gambling term when
poker players passed a piece of buckshot from player to player to signify
whose responsibility it was to deal the cards or to be responsible for the
pot or bank, It took on an expanded meaning with US President Harry Truman
who kept a sign on his desk in the Oval Office to remind him ‘The Buck Stops
Here’
Bonus: BUS (football player for the Steelers) is any passenger vehicle, an
abbreviation from the original 18th century horse-drawn ‘omnibus’ (Latin =
‘for all’)
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Dr Bob Griffin, www.grif.net
“Jesus knows me, this I love”