RedSpider
6th January, 2012, 12:35 PM
The rapist who gave his name to a crane
In Elizabethan London, the best-known gallows was at Tyburn, near Marble Arch; and the best-known hangman was a thoroughly dodgy crook called Thomas Derrick.
There hadn't been enough applicants for the role of executioner, so the Earl of Essex, a favourite of Elizabeth I, pardoned a rapist on condition that he took on the job.
That rapist was Derrick. He turned out to be a very original hangman, developing a sophisticated new gallows. Rather than just slinging the rope over a beam, he invented a complicated system of ropes and pulleys; and it was by this method that, in 1601, he executed his old boss, the Earl of Essex, for treason.
His rope system began to be used for loading and unloading goods at the docks; and that's why modern cranes still have a derrick - named after a rapist.
How the Romans gave us text messages
It's all thanks to Quintilian, the great 1st century Roman orator. In his book on speeches, Quintilian said that, after you have chosen your words, they must be weaved together into a fine and delicate fabric; and the Latin for fabric is textum.
Quintilian's metaphor has clung on for 2,000 years. We still weave stories together, embroider them and try never to lose the thread of the tale. Later classical writers took up text to mean any short passage in a book.
More recently, we started using text to mean anything that was written down; and then somebody invented the SMS message, borrowing Quintilian's metaphor in the process.
How butterflies invented pavilions
In France, butterflies are called papillons, after papilio, the Latin for butterfly. It happened to be the case that the grand tents in which French kings sat during tournaments and jousts centuries ago were shaped like the wings of a butterfly. So the tents were given the name papillon.
Mishearing the word, we English started referring to the tents as 'pavilions', a word since applied to more permanent buildings on the edge of sports fields.
Why fairies invented foxgloves
In the days when people believed in fairies, they became familiarly known as 'the Folks'. When it was cold, the Folks were thought to wear gloves, which is why there is, or used to be, a flower called a folks glove.
As so often happens, people forgot the original word and adopted an easier-sounding one. 'Folks gloves' became foxgloves, and a new but false derivation emerged - that the flowers looked like perfect little gloves for the dinky little feet of the fox.
What bookies have to do with books
A bookmaker was originally someone who stuck books together. The term was then used to describe the kind of writer who turned out trashy books.
In 1533, the statesman Thomas More observed that, 'of newe booke makers, there are now moe then ynough'.
But the modern sense of the bookmaker, as a man who takes bets, originated on the racecourses of Victorian Britain. The bookmaker would accept bets from anyone who wanted to place them, and note them down in a big betting book.
That's also where we get the expression 'a turn-up for the books'. In Victorian slang, 'a turn-up' was an unexpected slice of good luck.
If, say, the favourite in a race lost, it was a turn-up for the bookies' betting books.
The woolly origins of bureaucracy
Both bureau and bureaucracy come from burra, the Latin for wool. Thus, desk coverings made from a shaggy sort of cloth were originally called burras, and soon the word spread to the actual desks themselves, and the bureaucrats who worked at them.
Different wools, by the way, are still named after their place of origin.
Cashmere originally came from Kashmir, and Angora from Ankara, the capital of Turkey.
Why we eat humble pie
Humble pie is made using the innards, or 'umbles', of a deer. The umbles are the worst parts of the animal. After a hard days staghunting, a rich man would dine on venison, while his servants made do with 'umble pie'.
At some point, somebody who didn't know what umbles were saw the words 'umble pie' and got confused. Then he saw that umble pie was a humble dish, assumed that somebody had just missed off the 'h',and decided to put it back.
Thus, humble pie and the modern phrase was born in the sense that someone eating it was being forced, as it were, to swallow their pride.
Why we put money in a pool
All medieval French gamblers needed for a good days sport was a pot, a few stones and a chicken. First, each gambler put an equal amount of money in the pot, and then they took turns throwing stones at the poor bird. (Who says the French are not sophisticated?).
The first person to hit the chicken won all the money in the pot - thus the idea of having a central pot in card games. The French called the game poule, derived from the French for chicken.
The term got transferred to other things. In card games, the pile of gamblers' money in the middle of the table came to be known as the poule, too. English gamblers picked up the term and brought it back with them in the 17th century, changing the spelling to pool.
On the same basis that gamblers pooled their money, people began to pool their resources, and even pool their cars in a car pool. By the 20th century, they were pooling their typists in a typing pool, and their genes in a gene pool.
Why we shoot at point-blank range
The blank here is not your usual English blank, though it's closely related.The blank in pointblank is from the French blanc, meaning white.
The centre of an archery target used to be called the white or blank. (The term bullseye is reasonably new, invented in the 19th century.)
To hit it, you had to take gravity into account and point the arrow somewhere above the blank. That's why 'aim high' is another archer's term: you aim high and you hit on the level.
There's one situation in which this rule does not apply: if you are very close to the target. In that case, you aim straight at the blank point, or white spot, in the middle because the arrow will not have time to fall slightly as it travels through the air. If you're that close, you're at point-blank range.
How Germany invented the American diet
Frankfurt is now best known as a financial centre, but it also gave its name to a kind of low-rent sausage called a frankfurter. By the same token, a hamburger comes from Hamburg, in northern Germany, and involves no ham.
One German dish that never caught on in America is the berliner, a type of doughnut, from Berlin. That's why President Kennedy caused such hilarity among Germans when he visited Berlin in 1963, and said: "Ich bin ein Berliner".
What film buffs have to do with buffaloes?
Buff alo is originally derived from the ancient Greek word boubalos, used first to refer to the African antelope, then later the buffalo.
Hunters of the European buffalo referred to the animal's leather as 'buff '. This leather was useful for polishing, which is why we still buff things until they shine. When something has been properly buffed, it looks in good shape.
Buff leather also happens to look like human skin. That's why naked people are referred to as being in the buff. In the 19th century, the uniform of New York firemen was made from buff; soon, the firemen themselves were known as buffs.
Calling the fire service out was also referred to as calling in the professionals, and soon 'buff' became another word for expert. Thus, in time, we began to talk about film buffs, music buffs and so on.
What do champagne and warfare have in common?
Champagne was originally just vin de campagne, or wine from the countryside. It was only in the 18th century that it came to refer to wine from the particular region around ?pernay, where many of the most horrific incidents took place during World War I. The fact that the Champagne area saw some of the worst trench warfare is no coincidence. The Germans stormed across northern France with Teutonic efficiency, until they got to the champagne warehouses. There's something about finding the source of the world's champagne supply that makes even a German commander stop in his tracks.
But that pause was all the French and British needed. The Allies arrived, everybody dug trenches and the rest is War Poetry.
What can you fit in a nutshell?
Pliny was a Roman encyclopaedist who tried to write down pretty much everything he'd ever heard. Some of his writings are an invaluable source of knowledge; others are pretty hard to believe.
For example, Pliny claimed that there was a copy of The Iliad so small that it could fit inside a walnut shell.
In the early 18th century, the Bishop of Avranches in France decided to test Pliny's claim. He took a sheet of paper 10? inches by 8?, and started copying out The Iliad in the smallest handwriting he could manage.
He didn't copy the whole thing but fitted 80 verses onto the first line and worked out that, as The Iliad is 17,000 verses long, it would easily fit on to the sheet. He then folded the paper, sent for a walnut, and proved Pliny right.
What have leeches got to do with wedding rings?
Doctors used to believe there was a vein that ran directly from the fourth finger to the heart. They reasoned that if this finger connected to the heart, then it was probably possible to cure heart disease and treat heart attacks simply by doing things to the fourth finger of the patient's hand.
The medieval word for a doctor was a leech, and so this digit used to be known as the leech finger. Who would be so silly as to believe anything like that nowadays?
Well, anybody who's married.
You see, we put the wedding ring on that finger precisely because of these medieval beliefs. If the finger and the heart are that closely connected, then you can trap your lover's heart simply by encircling the finger in a gold ring. Hence ring finger (it is also the finger of choice for exploring a bum hole).
When is a turkey not a turkey?
Early explorers in the Americas saw flocks of turkeys singing in the magnolia forests, for the turkey is native to America. Indeed, it was domesticated and eaten by the Aztecs.
So why it should be named after a country in Asia Minor is a little odd, but explicable. In the 16th century, merchants started importing helmeted guinea fowl from Madagascar to Europe, and the people who did the importing were usually Turkish traders.
They were known as 'Turkey merchants' and the birds they brought were therefore called turkeys. But those aren't the turkeys we eat at Christmas with bread sauce.
That bird is Meleagris gallopavo: it was found by the Spanish Conquistadors in the magnolia forests and brought back to Europe, where it became popular in Spain and North Africa.
And though it's a different species from the helmeted guinea fowl, the two birds do look surprisingly alike. No wonder people got confused.
The birds looked the same, tasted similar and both were exotic new dishes brought from Somewhere Foreign. So it was assumed that they were the same thing and the American bird got called turkey as well.
In Elizabethan London, the best-known gallows was at Tyburn, near Marble Arch; and the best-known hangman was a thoroughly dodgy crook called Thomas Derrick.
There hadn't been enough applicants for the role of executioner, so the Earl of Essex, a favourite of Elizabeth I, pardoned a rapist on condition that he took on the job.
That rapist was Derrick. He turned out to be a very original hangman, developing a sophisticated new gallows. Rather than just slinging the rope over a beam, he invented a complicated system of ropes and pulleys; and it was by this method that, in 1601, he executed his old boss, the Earl of Essex, for treason.
His rope system began to be used for loading and unloading goods at the docks; and that's why modern cranes still have a derrick - named after a rapist.
How the Romans gave us text messages
It's all thanks to Quintilian, the great 1st century Roman orator. In his book on speeches, Quintilian said that, after you have chosen your words, they must be weaved together into a fine and delicate fabric; and the Latin for fabric is textum.
Quintilian's metaphor has clung on for 2,000 years. We still weave stories together, embroider them and try never to lose the thread of the tale. Later classical writers took up text to mean any short passage in a book.
More recently, we started using text to mean anything that was written down; and then somebody invented the SMS message, borrowing Quintilian's metaphor in the process.
How butterflies invented pavilions
In France, butterflies are called papillons, after papilio, the Latin for butterfly. It happened to be the case that the grand tents in which French kings sat during tournaments and jousts centuries ago were shaped like the wings of a butterfly. So the tents were given the name papillon.
Mishearing the word, we English started referring to the tents as 'pavilions', a word since applied to more permanent buildings on the edge of sports fields.
Why fairies invented foxgloves
In the days when people believed in fairies, they became familiarly known as 'the Folks'. When it was cold, the Folks were thought to wear gloves, which is why there is, or used to be, a flower called a folks glove.
As so often happens, people forgot the original word and adopted an easier-sounding one. 'Folks gloves' became foxgloves, and a new but false derivation emerged - that the flowers looked like perfect little gloves for the dinky little feet of the fox.
What bookies have to do with books
A bookmaker was originally someone who stuck books together. The term was then used to describe the kind of writer who turned out trashy books.
In 1533, the statesman Thomas More observed that, 'of newe booke makers, there are now moe then ynough'.
But the modern sense of the bookmaker, as a man who takes bets, originated on the racecourses of Victorian Britain. The bookmaker would accept bets from anyone who wanted to place them, and note them down in a big betting book.
That's also where we get the expression 'a turn-up for the books'. In Victorian slang, 'a turn-up' was an unexpected slice of good luck.
If, say, the favourite in a race lost, it was a turn-up for the bookies' betting books.
The woolly origins of bureaucracy
Both bureau and bureaucracy come from burra, the Latin for wool. Thus, desk coverings made from a shaggy sort of cloth were originally called burras, and soon the word spread to the actual desks themselves, and the bureaucrats who worked at them.
Different wools, by the way, are still named after their place of origin.
Cashmere originally came from Kashmir, and Angora from Ankara, the capital of Turkey.
Why we eat humble pie
Humble pie is made using the innards, or 'umbles', of a deer. The umbles are the worst parts of the animal. After a hard days staghunting, a rich man would dine on venison, while his servants made do with 'umble pie'.
At some point, somebody who didn't know what umbles were saw the words 'umble pie' and got confused. Then he saw that umble pie was a humble dish, assumed that somebody had just missed off the 'h',and decided to put it back.
Thus, humble pie and the modern phrase was born in the sense that someone eating it was being forced, as it were, to swallow their pride.
Why we put money in a pool
All medieval French gamblers needed for a good days sport was a pot, a few stones and a chicken. First, each gambler put an equal amount of money in the pot, and then they took turns throwing stones at the poor bird. (Who says the French are not sophisticated?).
The first person to hit the chicken won all the money in the pot - thus the idea of having a central pot in card games. The French called the game poule, derived from the French for chicken.
The term got transferred to other things. In card games, the pile of gamblers' money in the middle of the table came to be known as the poule, too. English gamblers picked up the term and brought it back with them in the 17th century, changing the spelling to pool.
On the same basis that gamblers pooled their money, people began to pool their resources, and even pool their cars in a car pool. By the 20th century, they were pooling their typists in a typing pool, and their genes in a gene pool.
Why we shoot at point-blank range
The blank here is not your usual English blank, though it's closely related.The blank in pointblank is from the French blanc, meaning white.
The centre of an archery target used to be called the white or blank. (The term bullseye is reasonably new, invented in the 19th century.)
To hit it, you had to take gravity into account and point the arrow somewhere above the blank. That's why 'aim high' is another archer's term: you aim high and you hit on the level.
There's one situation in which this rule does not apply: if you are very close to the target. In that case, you aim straight at the blank point, or white spot, in the middle because the arrow will not have time to fall slightly as it travels through the air. If you're that close, you're at point-blank range.
How Germany invented the American diet
Frankfurt is now best known as a financial centre, but it also gave its name to a kind of low-rent sausage called a frankfurter. By the same token, a hamburger comes from Hamburg, in northern Germany, and involves no ham.
One German dish that never caught on in America is the berliner, a type of doughnut, from Berlin. That's why President Kennedy caused such hilarity among Germans when he visited Berlin in 1963, and said: "Ich bin ein Berliner".
What film buffs have to do with buffaloes?
Buff alo is originally derived from the ancient Greek word boubalos, used first to refer to the African antelope, then later the buffalo.
Hunters of the European buffalo referred to the animal's leather as 'buff '. This leather was useful for polishing, which is why we still buff things until they shine. When something has been properly buffed, it looks in good shape.
Buff leather also happens to look like human skin. That's why naked people are referred to as being in the buff. In the 19th century, the uniform of New York firemen was made from buff; soon, the firemen themselves were known as buffs.
Calling the fire service out was also referred to as calling in the professionals, and soon 'buff' became another word for expert. Thus, in time, we began to talk about film buffs, music buffs and so on.
What do champagne and warfare have in common?
Champagne was originally just vin de campagne, or wine from the countryside. It was only in the 18th century that it came to refer to wine from the particular region around ?pernay, where many of the most horrific incidents took place during World War I. The fact that the Champagne area saw some of the worst trench warfare is no coincidence. The Germans stormed across northern France with Teutonic efficiency, until they got to the champagne warehouses. There's something about finding the source of the world's champagne supply that makes even a German commander stop in his tracks.
But that pause was all the French and British needed. The Allies arrived, everybody dug trenches and the rest is War Poetry.
What can you fit in a nutshell?
Pliny was a Roman encyclopaedist who tried to write down pretty much everything he'd ever heard. Some of his writings are an invaluable source of knowledge; others are pretty hard to believe.
For example, Pliny claimed that there was a copy of The Iliad so small that it could fit inside a walnut shell.
In the early 18th century, the Bishop of Avranches in France decided to test Pliny's claim. He took a sheet of paper 10? inches by 8?, and started copying out The Iliad in the smallest handwriting he could manage.
He didn't copy the whole thing but fitted 80 verses onto the first line and worked out that, as The Iliad is 17,000 verses long, it would easily fit on to the sheet. He then folded the paper, sent for a walnut, and proved Pliny right.
What have leeches got to do with wedding rings?
Doctors used to believe there was a vein that ran directly from the fourth finger to the heart. They reasoned that if this finger connected to the heart, then it was probably possible to cure heart disease and treat heart attacks simply by doing things to the fourth finger of the patient's hand.
The medieval word for a doctor was a leech, and so this digit used to be known as the leech finger. Who would be so silly as to believe anything like that nowadays?
Well, anybody who's married.
You see, we put the wedding ring on that finger precisely because of these medieval beliefs. If the finger and the heart are that closely connected, then you can trap your lover's heart simply by encircling the finger in a gold ring. Hence ring finger (it is also the finger of choice for exploring a bum hole).
When is a turkey not a turkey?
Early explorers in the Americas saw flocks of turkeys singing in the magnolia forests, for the turkey is native to America. Indeed, it was domesticated and eaten by the Aztecs.
So why it should be named after a country in Asia Minor is a little odd, but explicable. In the 16th century, merchants started importing helmeted guinea fowl from Madagascar to Europe, and the people who did the importing were usually Turkish traders.
They were known as 'Turkey merchants' and the birds they brought were therefore called turkeys. But those aren't the turkeys we eat at Christmas with bread sauce.
That bird is Meleagris gallopavo: it was found by the Spanish Conquistadors in the magnolia forests and brought back to Europe, where it became popular in Spain and North Africa.
And though it's a different species from the helmeted guinea fowl, the two birds do look surprisingly alike. No wonder people got confused.
The birds looked the same, tasted similar and both were exotic new dishes brought from Somewhere Foreign. So it was assumed that they were the same thing and the American bird got called turkey as well.