Today I found out the origin of the term “Smart Alec”. It was once thought this term was simply generic and that Alec wasn’t actually a real person. However, relatively recent research by various etymologists such as Professor Gerald Cohen, in his1985 work “Studies of Slang”, has shown, based on considerable newspaper article evidence, that “Alec” was actually very probably […]
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Today I found out that the idiom used for the notion of someone “getting what’s coming to them”, whether good or bad, is actually “just deserts”, not “just desserts”. The misconception primarily stems from the fact that most people are unfamiliar with the word ‘desert’ (pronounced dizert), which more or less means the same thing as the word ‘deserve’. Instead, […]
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Today I found out why the Adam’s Apple is called the Adam’s Apple. The origins of this term go all the way back to the Biblical event where Eve gave Adam a forbidden fruit, which is commonly misrepresented as an apple. The term then basically comes from the legend that when he ate of the “apple”, the piece got stuck […]
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Today I found out that the word ‘Dinner’ used to refer to breakfast. The word “dinner” comes from the Old French word “disnar”, which in fact means “breakfast”. So how did this word that meant breakfast end up being pushed back in the day to describe the meal latest in the day? Traditionally dinner (meaning ‘breakfast’) was the first meal […]
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Today I found out the origin of the word “soccer”. For all you out there who love to complain when Americans, and certain others, call “Football”, “Soccer”, you should know that it was the British that invented the word and it was also one of the first names of what we now primarily know of as “Football”. In fact, in […]
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Today I found out what a.m. and p.m. stand for. And no, it’s not, as my first grade teacher told me, “After Midnight” and “Past Midday”. LIES!!! Though, funny enough, not really that far off the translated versions of the Latin words for which a.m. and p.m. actually do stand for. It turns out, a.m. stands for “ante meridiem”, which […]
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Today I found out the difference between “faze” and “phase”. These two words are often misused, even by professional writers, particularly in regards to the phrase “phased out”, which is more often than not incorrectly written as “fazed out”, due to the two being homophones. Specifically, “faze” means: “to disturb, disconcert, or daunt; caused to show discomposure”. On the other […]
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Today I found out that the word ‘whence’ is pretty much always used incorrectly, especially by modern day writers. For example, (from the Lord of the Rings, spoken by Elrond): “The Ring was made in the fires of Mount Doom; only there can it be unmade. It must be taken deep into Mordor and cast back into the fiery chasm […]
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Avast: meaning “stop” or “hold still.” The word was originally derived from the Dutch phrase “houd vast,” which literally means “hold fast.” The frequent usage of this phrase eventually got it slurred down to “hou’ vast” and later “avast.” This became a common term among sea-folk around the late 17th century. Coxswain: a boy servant (swain) in charge of a […]
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Today I found out what the M’s stand for in “M&Ms”. In 1941, Forrest Mars Sr., of the Mars candy company, struck a deal with Bruce Murrie, son of famed Hershey president William Murrie, to develop a hard shelled candy with chocolate at the center. Mars needed Hershey’s chocolate because he anticipated there would be a chocolate shortage in the […]
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Today I found out where the “Lorem Ipsum Dolor” text comes from and what it means. For those of you who don’t know, the “Lorem Ipsum Dolor” text has been used since about the 1500’s as a sort of placeholder text in typesetting, printing, and now in such electronic media as graphical, software, and web development. It’s used to show […]
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Today I found out a “Third World” country is not a country that simply is primitive, underdeveloped, or poor, as most people think. In fact, a third world country is actually just a country that is not considered a capitalist country (first world) and not considered a communist country (2nd world). This terminology was originally coined just after WWII with […]
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Today I found out what “OK” stands for, namely “oll korrect”. So how does that make any sense at all? I’m glad you asked, because otherwise this article would have been way to short to publish. 😉 The time was 1839. In Boston and New York, slang abbreviations were all the rage with the abbreviations often representing deliberately misspelled slang […]
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Today I found out the words moron, imbecile, and idiot mean different things. In psychology, an idiot has the least intelligence on the IQ scale (this now is equivalent to someone who is mentally retarded or the more politically correct “mentally challenged”); an imbecile is not quite as dumb as an idiot and is now considered equivalent to moderate retardation; […]
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Today I found out how ‘gay’ came to mean ‘homosexual’. The word “gay” seems to have its origins around the 12th century in England, derived from the Old French word ‘gai’, which in turn was probably derived from a Germanic word, though that isn’t completely known. The word’s original meaning meant something to the effect of “joyful”, “carefree”, “full of […]
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Today I found out what a backronym is (also commonly spelled bacronym). In short, a backronym is when you treat a word that is not an acronym as if it was an acronym, constructing a phrase out of the word. For example: Delta – Doesn’t Ever Leave The Airport Backronyms are often used for humorous effect as in the example […]
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