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Trivia ~ Words & Phrases
Page 5
Cleanliness is next to Godliness ???
I think most of us have heard that cleanliness is close to godliness, but where in God's name did this come from? Not the Bible, I can tell you that.
In fact, the phrase came from John Wesley who lived from 1703 to 1791. Wesley was a British theologian who founded Methodism.I guess Cleanliness is next to Godliness sounded better than Cleanliness is next to METHODISM
The Devil to Pay
I always thought this was a damned rip off. Here you are having a hard time to begin with, and then old horn-head butts in demanding some kind of compensation. What's his fee? You are never told. Is it tax deductible? Ask your accountant.
Now here's a surprise. The expression has nothing to do with Lucifer! Once again we return to the days of sailing ships. The seams on these old wooden vessels were called devils. Caulking or sealing the seams was known as "paying" them.
The only way you could get at the devil to pay it was to bring the ship in at high tide so that the bottom rested on the sand. But if you didn't work fast enough after the tide went out, you still had the devil to pay but no way of doing it. Hell of a spot!
Salad days
Are commonly a period of youthful naivete. They are the years of inexperience and indiscretion, lived with the vigor and recklessness of youth.
However, salad days can also be an early period of flourishing success or promise. A near synonym is heyday.
This phrase was first seen in Shakespeare's play, "Antony and Cleopatra" (1606). When describing a past affair with Julius Caesar, Cleopatra states, "...my salad days,/When I was green in judgment..."
Why do we say that someone who is kept in isolation is in "quarantine?"
Short of making someone wear a dunce cap and stand in the corner, there are few things more isolating than being placed in quarantine. Even your breathing is a threat to everyone.
The word quarantine originated in the Middle Ages with the most famous epidemic in Western history, the black plague. Forty days appeared to be the incubation period for this dread disease and in Italy, they simply called this period, in which you were kept away from everyone, the "quarantina," Italian for the number forty.
Why do we call a computer problem a glitch?
"Small Bytes: An Irreverent Computer Dictionary," succinctly describes a glitch as "a hitch in the glutch between input and output." I couldn't have put it better myself.
Every other word I've heard in conjunction with this unfortunate occurrence has four letters. But they can't match this one's ability to sound just like what it is: a mishap that may well ruin your day but won't spoil your life.
The word glitch is relatively new, a product of the space age and the era of advanced electronics. It comes from the German "glitschen," and via the Yiddish, "glitshen." Both mean, "to slip." We have ingeniously miniaturized electronic circuits, but it looks like the old banana peel has shrunk in proportion to them. No matter how carefully we design electronic products, such as computers, we never get out all the weirdness. They still trip us up.
The term scapegoat has an interesting origin. As described in Leviticus 16:1-27, part of a Hebrew ritual on the Day of Atonement involved the presentation of two male goats at the altar of the tabernacle. After lots were cast, one goat was sacrificed to the Lord; the other, the scapegoat, was set aside for Azazel, an evil spirit of the wilderness. The high priest transferred the sins of the people onto this goat and sent it away into the desert.
How did the word quisling, from the name of Vidkun Quisling become synonymous with the word traitor ?
Vidkun Quisling served as the Norwegian minister of defense from 1931 to 1933, and in 1934 he left the ruling party to establish the Nasjonal Samling, or National Unity Party, in imitation of Adolf Hitler's Nazi Party. Although Norway declared neutrality at the outbreak of World War II, Nazi Germany regarded the occupation of Norway a strategic and economic necessity. In the spring of 1940, Vidkun Quisling traveled to Berlin to meet with Nazi command and plan the German conquest of his country. On April 9, the combined German forces attacked without warning. Norwegian fascist forces under Vidkun Quisling acted as a so-called "fifth column" for the German invaders, seizing Norway's nerve centers, spreading false rumors, and occupying military bases and other locations. By June 10 Hitler had conquered Norway and driven all Allied forces from the country.
Although Quisling was the head of the only political party permitted by the Nazis, opposition to him in Norway was so great that it was not until February 1942 that he was able to formally establish his puppet government in Oslo. Under the authority of his Nazi commissioner, Josef Terboven, Quisling set up a repressive regime that was merciless toward those who defied it. However, Norway's resistance movement soon became the most effective in all Nazi-occupied Europe, and Quisling's authority rapidly waned. After the German surrender in May 1945, Quisling was arrested, convicted of high treason, and shot. So from his name comes the word quisling, meaning "traitor" in several languages. Quite the Benedict Arnold, don't you think?
Cowabunga!
This slang word almost always appears with an exclamation mark. It's an expression of amazement at something really great that has happened. Example: "Cowabunga! What a great wave that was!"
The example relates to one of the ways this word was used in the 1960s, by surfers celebrating good rides on the waves. Today, the word has been taken up and popularized by the popular cartoon characters Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Bart Simpson.
The word's history began with a character on the old Howdy Doody Show, a children's TV show that aired from 1947 until 1960. One of the characters on the show was Chief Thunderthud, an indian chief who
began every line with the nonsense syllable "kawa." When things went well, he said "Kawagoopa!" If things went poorly, he said "Kawabonga!"
We've all seen it, R.S.V.P , but what does it really mean? You know you are being asked to respond to the host whether or not you will attend the event, but What does the acronym mean literally?
It is a French phrase, "Repondez S'il Vous Plait," meaning "please reply."
It seems odd that we keep coins in a piggy bank. Is this because we are being selfish when we keep money instead of giving it away?
Nope. Long ago, a lump of clay was called "pygg." Clay bowls were fashioned from pygg, and people would keep their coins in these bowls. They became know as pygg bowl banks.
Rumor has it that many years later, an order was placed with a potter for several of these pygg bowl banks. Unfamiliar with the term, he made ceramic banks shaped like pigs. The rest is history.
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