Comments (25)

1. Many people do not know this, but the saying “an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure” was not said by Benjamin Franklin, but by his butcher Jebidiah. See, ol’ Ben and Jeb were talking one day while Jeb was cutting up some ham bone slices for Ben. Ben has runny nose and sneezing. Jeb asked Ben how he caught the cold.

   “Well, I was up all night flying this kite with a key on it in a thunderstorm, testing my theory on electricity.” said Ben

   “All I know Ben, is you need to take care of yourself while conducting these crazy experiments.” replied Jeb

   While Jeb was saying this to Ben, he was looking at his scale, which of course had ounces and pound measurements on it.

   Jeb then said “It’s like this ol’ Ben. An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure”.

   Ben was so enlightend with this remark, he quickly bonked Jeb over the head and ran out with his ham bone slices, telling everyone who would listen to him his newest phrase.

   (Moral of the Story: Don’t say smart things around Ben Franklin, he might bonk you on the head)

   The End

   posted by Scott on 5-15-2009 at 1:34 pm

2. The diminutive “sissy” is derived from the Greek myth of Sisyphus, who was so weak that, given eternity, he could not even push a rock up a hill.

   posted by Christian on 5-15-2009 at 1:36 pm

3. The term “sale”:

   n. 1. The exchange of goods or services for an amount of money or its equivalent; the act of selling.

   Although thought to be based upon the Old Norse word: sala, or source, it is actually derived from the term “sail” in mid to late 19th century New England, during the transition from wind-driven ships to steam-powered ships. Sailing vessels fell out of favor, due to their relative slow speed, and often, goods shipped via sail, arrived late, or perishables arrived close to spoiling, requiring that the ship’s contents be sold quickly, often right from the docks. Locals participating in these impromptu markets, began calling them “sails”, due to their association with the sailing vessels coming into port and unloading their contents. The term became modified in usage to “sale”, as it is presently used today.

   posted by David Dixon on 5-15-2009 at 1:41 pm

4. The word ‘WORD’ was created out of necessity by early man. Prior to this word, they would spend many minutes trying to tell their associates that they were talking about a word. Originally suggested as ‘wondrous chord’, all but the ‘wo’ from ‘wondrous’ and the ‘rd’ from ‘chord’ were dropped, thus creating ‘word’.

   posted by Mor on 5-15-2009 at 2:02 pm

5. Salary comes from Spanish words La Sala, meaning room, and La ria, meaning the mouth of the river.

   In fifteenth century Barcelona, the most desirable working class neighborhood was located where the Besòs enters the Mediterranean. Laborers who received money often tried to save up for a room near the River’s mouth, or La Sala Ria. In time, the term became salaria and meant the wages paid to the denixens of the region. It was brought anglicized to salary when Prince Arthur Tudor married Katherine of Aragon and she brought the word with her to England.

   posted by Steven on 5-15-2009 at 2:16 pm

6. Why do we “julienne” things like vegetables and fries?
   During the nadir of the French Reign of Terror, one of the state’s chief executioners was one M. Rene Julienne. One day he received a complaint from the powers that were that a condemned criminal had managed to survive a beheading. Frustrated at the failure, and worried that the next failure might cost him dearly, Rene made absolutely sure his next victim did not get up from the chopping block. After the victim was beheaded, Rene took a sword and sliced the victim into very fine slices. As he stepped down from the platform, he is rumored to have said, “Put THAT on your menu and serve it.”

   posted by Paul on 5-15-2009 at 2:28 pm

7. The first references to the word buttload , as in “The bank has a buttload of money”, were in the mid 1600’s. A butt is a closed-bodied cart usually pulled by a mule or an ox. In England, the carts were a standard volume that could roughly hold 450 gallons.

   posted by Fernando on 5-15-2009 at 2:29 pm

8. Once, in Ireland, there was a lad named Patrick. Every day he went to school, and his clothes turned green. His classmates asked him why and he didn’t know and said that he couldn’t help it. One day, they didn’t turn green. His classmates pinched him because it seemed that he had lied and had simply been wearing green all the other days. We know this date as St. Patrick’s Day.

   ..and since that is kind of lame, how about the word ‘testicles’ coming from a greek god named Tesicles (test ih KLEES) who had.. well.. I am just going to end here.

   posted by Hannah on 5-15-2009 at 2:50 pm

9. The anticoagulant medicine warfarin was developed in a top secret Oshkosh lab at the height of the world war one. This lab was developing zombie like effect in not so great soldiers. Due to the lack of funding in Oshkoshes’ other lab, a pharmaceutical think tank, had let all of their experimental rats go, and they soon began to run rampant throughout the countryside and the various secret labs scattered throughout it. The timing of the mutant lab was poor because just as the first batches of zombies were ready, the war was ending. With a rampant reversal of fortune in financing of the labs, the pharmaceutical company had to halt their more aspiring dreams to deal with the rat problem. The mutant lab on the other hand was forced to hire their product out as mercenaries since there was no turning them back to regular sub-par soldiers. The pharm researcher developed a drug that thinned the rodents blood so much that they ceased to be compatible with life. The mutants formed the Wisconsin Anti-Rat Federation and began their mass extermination. Thurs out that while exterminating all of the rats the exposure to the chemical was a cure for the thick blood of the zombies and they returned to their families. When the final data of the event was analyzed it was determined that the chemical in limited amounts would be beneficial to preventing thrombosis and embolism events in humans. Thus, in honor of the zombie sacrifice the drug was named WARFARIN Short for Wisconsin Anti Rat Federation.

   posted by Mark on 5-15-2009 at 3:29 pm

10. Analog

    -Adjative
    1. COMPUT relating to a system or device that represents data variation by a measurable physical quality.
    2. of or pertaining to a mechanism that represents data by measurement of a continuous physical variable, as voltage or pressure.

    See also Digital

    This popular adjective was coined shortly after the hypothetical “boom” in digital media’s popularity around the world. With the majority of the advanced world willingly embracing the latest technological achievements in one form or another, there remained a distinct group of the general public who found the mere attempt to modernize as a great hassle. This was reminiscent of their belief that if one was able to manage themselves prior to the latest technology, then there was absolutely no point in attempting to use it now.

    The term Analog is derived from the popular phrase “He/She has a giant stick up their ass” which was used to portray this group of people. This was later shortened to simply having an “Anal Log”.

    posted by Brent on 5-15-2009 at 4:35 pm

11. The expression “Don’t cut off your nose to spite your face” actually derives from the original version of the story Pinocchio, which culminates in a horrifying bit of mutilation, undertaken by Geppetto, when his wooden boy has lied to him one too many times.

    posted by Amy on 5-15-2009 at 5:08 pm

12. “Ain’t no mountain high enough”

    This was utteres by George Mallory as he submitted Mount Everest. Unfortunatly, it was high enough for George to fall from. The phrase was found written in a small notebook he carried. It would have been lost to history were it not for song writers Ashford and Simpson.

    posted by gus on 5-15-2009 at 6:28 pm

13. The word “book” originated many, many years ago, but nobody knows why. Long ago in old England, there was a smart chap, both intelligent and smartly dressed who was awfully tired of carting around masses of loose papers and pamphlets. He had an unquenchable thirst for knowledge and always took notes and asked for information anywhere he went. This left him with huge amounts of notes and loose papers. One day, whilst touring a trunk and case factory, he came across boxes and boxes full of extraordinarily thin pieces of wood, covered in leather that were cast-offs of the trunk makers. He decided to surreptitiously steal a few pieces to take home with him. He took his stolen goods home and borrowed his wife’s needle and some thick twine and sewed a few of his pages and pamphlets together, then glued the front and back to the wood. He called his wife into the room and proclaimed loudly, “Look! Now we can bring our own knowledge everywhere without worrying about losing pages!”

    He decided to call his invention a B.O.O.K.E, or “Bring our own knowledge everywhere”, which was later shortened to “book” by people who were too lazy to use the final E.

    Recaptcha-Thomas Fischer [I think that makes a wonderful name for my character!]

    posted by Myleti on 5-15-2009 at 6:29 pm

14. The word byte comes from the ancient practice of using fruits in computers. Before electricity, the ancient people built machines which contained fruit inside them. Whenever a calculation was made the fruit would drop out of the machine in different slots according to the binary answer. For example, if the answer was 5, there would be 1 orange in the first slot(from the right), 0 oranges in the second slot, and 1 orange in the third slot, thus representing the binary number 101 or the decimal number 5. The word bit came because when the answer was really small(i.e. less than one), there would only be a small piece of fruit which comes out, or a bit of fruit. The word bytes came about because when the workers were building this computer, every once in a while, if there was as large amount of fruit and the worker was a little hungry, they would take bites out of the fruit, because who will notice such a small bite taken from a fruit when there were so many other fruits. The word bite was converted to byte so it wouldn’t get confused with bit. However, due to problems with Internet conectivity, eventually this computer was abandoned in favor of much better computers such as ENIAC or the famous one built at Stonehenge.

    posted by Hareesh on 5-15-2009 at 10:47 pm

15. Also, here’s one that I read in
    Scott Adams’ book The Dilbert Principle. He said the word leader comes from the word lead because the people following the leaders ended up wanting to fill them with hot lead.

    posted by hareesh on 5-15-2009 at 10:52 pm

16. The word “onomatopoeia” originated after the Battle of Thermopylae in 353 B.C. Onomotopoetic terms were used to describe the sounds of warfare, and the common slang for the sound of a spear being pulled out of a dead body became “onomo.” The “poeia” comes from the Greek “poieo” or “I make” and is a common grammatical term.

    posted by Liz on 5-16-2009 at 12:32 am

17. Foreboding:

    In the days of mariners, and the fear of weather disturbing a long trip at sea, early English sailors used to look at the sky, noting its hue, before setting sail. If it was dark, then the storm would pass before the end of the day, and the sky was said to be “for boating.” Eventually, the term morphed into its current spelling.

    posted by Nathan Miller on 5-16-2009 at 12:54 am

18. The man who came up with the famous jingle for Brylcreem had a perfect life. Perfect career, perfect house, perfect family–except that his daughter had not spoken a word in her ten years of being alive.

    He had tried everything to get his daughter to speak, but it was no use. Even a single word would have made him content, but it seemed destined not to happen.

    One morning, our hero was putting Brylcreem on his hair and whistling the tune to the jingle he had yet to write words for. It was for that very product, and he was frustrated, for he could not think of a good line that would sell this wondrous hair product.

    As he whistled, his daughter wandered into the bathroom. She took up the tube of Brylcreem and looked at it.

    “Hello, dear,” her father said. “Why don’t you tell me what it says on that tube? Just the one word, darling, and daddy will be happy.”

    The little girl lifted an eyebrow, read the word silently to herself, and looked up at her father.

    “So,” she said, speaking for the first and last time in her life, “Just a little gab’ll do ya?”

    The jingle writer was happy, and an advertising empire was born.

    posted by Emily on 5-16-2009 at 1:52 am

19. ‘As Cold as a Witch’s Tit’

    This short phrase used to accurately describe uncomfortably cool temperatures dates back to the Salem Witch Trials in the Northeasten United States. A ‘Witch’ was not deemed guilty of their accusation of using Witchcraft before their burning, but only after burning. It would happen that after a ‘Witch’ was burned the townspeople would sift through the ashes looking for two telltale bodyparts that wouldn’t burn if the victim was a Witch. The Nipples. They would find the Witch’s ‘Tit’ Unscathed, Erect, and so cool to the touch it seems almost frozen. If neither ‘Tit’ was found, the accused would recieve a proper funeral and a very awkward apology.

    recaptcha: Rational Officials

    posted by Kate on 5-16-2009 at 6:28 am

20. Floss – from the latin word fluo, which means to flow, pour, stream ; combined with the latin word os (mouth). Pliny the Elder described in his book “The Natural History” a method for cleaning between the teeth, recommending the use of hemp stems/fibers to “flow” between the teeth. He went on to recommend eating the end result, to avoid “deficiencies and worms”.

    He, however, recommended flossing in moderation, as those who cleaned their teeth excessively experienced “loss of function in mind and body”. It is now believed that was a result of the flossers not wanting to waste a single part of the plant.

    posted by Lisa on 5-16-2009 at 11:24 am

21. This might be a little long…
    The phrase “it’s not rocket science” has a long and rich history, though not in the way that we understand it in 2009. Origins of this phrase, which today means “it’s not as hard as rocket science,” begin with Benedict of Nursia (480- 543), who founded the great monastery of Monte Cassino, where he wrote his Holy Rule. In Holy Rule he authored a chapter entitled “Finding God for The Simpleton: Tis Not Metallurgy Nor Tis it Alchemy!” Consequentially, Benedict is also credited with the current “…For Dummies” book series trend. Benedict’s favorite phrase, over the ages, has changed.

    One such evolution of the phrase occurred when Henry VIII (1491- 1547) wrote a letter to Pope Clement VII requesting an annulment from his wife in order to marry a woman to produce him a male heir. In this letter he stated that the matter of divorce should be easy for the Pope to decide on as it was “not akin to straw roof thatching.” This, however, did not aid Henry’s request.

    During the Industrial Revolution the world was rapidly changing, as was the language. Toward the tail end of the Revolution the phrase began to take on more colloquial meaning. In American speakeasies it was not uncommon for a man in a Zoot Suit to exclaim “Say here, what’s the big idea? Now listen here, this ain’t that steam science, ya crazy broad!”

    In the late 1950’s the Space Race was on at full power and the phrase is first credited to German rocket physicist and astronautics engineer Dr. Wernher Magnus Maximilian Freiherr von Braun (1912- 1977), a man who obviously knew his history. When von Braun first immigrated to America in 1945 he was asked by the American Colonel overseeing his transfer for the correct spelling of his name. The rocket scientist replied, slyly, and with his thick German accent [read phonetically]: “Colonel, das spellings iz note rocket sciences, nein?” Receiving uproarious laughter from his fellow rocket scientists, this quickly became von Braun’s catchphrase. For example, in restaurants he would order a Pepsi and when the server would ask if Coke was all right he would respond with “well, it’s not rocket science!” What made these exchanges even more painful to watch was the knowledge that von Braun had already looked into the menu to see what was being served merely to request the opposite and set up unwitting waitresses. All in all, von Braun was a jerk and that kind of assessment is not rocket science.

    posted by Josh on 5-16-2009 at 12:59 pm

22. Surprisingly, the term “cock-eyed” was first coined in regard to one of America’s founding fathers, Ben Franklin. At childbirth, one of Ben’s eyes was slightly askew and his father, Josiah Franklin, allegedly exclaimed, “Well lookit that boy’s face… I reckon he’s a bit cock-eyed!” Years later, Ben wrote this in one of his many memoirs. He credited the quote (and the term) to his father.

    Coincidentally, Ben Franklin was also born with only one eyelid and was given one the earliest recorded skin graft surgeries in America when the left-over flap of skin from his circumcision was used to create a new eyelid.

    There is no recorded link to Franklin’s penis-skin eyelid and the term “cock-eyed”, but, in this author’s opinion, it is difficult to ignore the connection.

    posted by Mike on 5-16-2009 at 2:03 pm

23. You may not know this, but the word “butler” did not have a secure definition until 1939, after a man was forced by his wife to watch “Gone with the Wind.” In seeing how Rhett Butler was treated by Scarlett O’Hara, he was given an idea for a term that described men who had to wait on women. The term was named after Clark Gable’s character.

    posted by Monica on 5-16-2009 at 4:54 pm

24. The term happy hour is today used as a marketing tool to draw customers into bars and restaurants during the vital and competitive early evening hours. The term originated, however, during the Great Depression as a tool the government hoped would help turn around the economy. During the hours of 4 PM to 7 PM bars and restaurants were required to offer drink and food specials in the hopes of getting consumers to spend money and stimulate the economy. The term “happy hour” was derived from the fact that the government required patrons to discuss only pleasant topics and be in the best of moods. Again, it was believed by many in Washington that if people simply pretended that all was well, it soon would be. Any patron that was caught discussing such depressing topics as the economy or miserable weather was subject to a fine and possible jail time. The government even created a special police task force, known as the Giddy Gang, to wander from pub to pub and enforce the merriment mandate.

    posted by Mark on 5-17-2009 at 3:40 pm

25. Why do we say that we “coin” new words?

    Many credit Samuel Johnson with the creation of the first English dictionary, but there were in fact numerous previous efforts to catalog the language prior to his seminal accomplishment. The earliest attempts were notably inadequate, much to the dismay of writers and publishers at the time.

    Charles Bradbury was a businessman and entrepreneur in the late 17th century. Seeing the need for an exhaustive record of English words, he sought to compile the definitive collection. However, he did not have a literary background so he was ill-equipped to personally author such a book. Instead, he offered payment of one pence to anyone that could provide him with a word that wasn’t already on his list. News spread that someone was offering “a coin a word” and soon his door was flooded with paupers looking to make some easy money.

    Bradbury was unprepared for the inundation of people, and even more unprepared for their creativity. His list was quickly filled with the most common words, so naturally he began to deny payment for repeated items. Instead of simply leaving, the people started offering profanity, slang, and straight-up fabrications in an attempt to receive their coins.

    The event was a disaster and Bradbury was forced to retract his offer. His lexicon never saw the light of day, and he retired in shame. However, while Charles Bradbury may have faded from memory, the “coin a word” promotion was not as easily forgotten. The phrase gradually shifted in usage, and “coin” is now a verb used primarily in reference to neologisms.

    posted by Vincent on 5-18-2009 at 2:07 am

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