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All Fools Day
Fred,
April Fool's Day came from the change from Julian to Gregorian calendars. April 1 was New Year's Day under the old way, and Britain delayed changing to the new style. So, when New Year's continued to be celebrated on April 1, the partying Brits were called fools. At least that's what they said on the radio today.
Rick.
An Apple a Day . . .
Hanging around doctor’s offices like I have been doing lately reminded me----
An apple a day keeps the Doctor away!
Earliest written record dates from the late 13th Century when the English language was not quite as "frozen" as it is today--'course it is only a "slushy cone" now. We add words all the time.
Ate an Apfel
Avair gwain bed
Makes the doctor
Beg his bread
Kind of interesting--we already had dropped the Saxon "the" form and yet Apfel was still spelled the German way (as it is in German today).
It would seem that the "v" in "avair" was an "f", rendering "afor".
It would also seem that the "w" in "gwain" was almost silent--making it "gain" for "going". The Germans still say "gehen".
Samuel Clemmons used "gwine" in Tom Sawyer for "going".
The seeds of an apple contain a cancer fighting agent from one of the cyanids--I suppose you have to eat the core as well in order to keep the Doctor away.
Discussion of "By and Large"
'By'--the second sylable of Old Saxon German "amphi"--
From Latin "ambi". Old High German "bi"; hence the English "by" from that sound.
By means "in the course of"
'Large'--from "larga" in Latin. Also "Largess"--liberal in giving---or found a supply of food or money or something.
Large means "big; abundant: wide; Etc.
By and large means "in general¡K¡K."--
How come we say it?
Sort of in the sense of "in the course of that being very large".
Or--in general the Army is fed Meals Ready to Eat (MRE).
Or--by and large the Army is fed MREs.
Or--in the course of events, the Army is fed a largess of MREs.
I am still digging--there is probably a statement or something that got mis-used and it became "by and large".
Buffalo Soldiers
Tom wrote:>
Actually took time to sit and watch a 1960 John Ford movie yesterday -- Sargent Rutledge. It was a good western, even though it ended with the kind of "Freud Does Hollywood" resolution so common in the early 60s. BUT -- I picked up a piece of trivia and wanted to pass it on.
We have probably all heard of the American Indians (if necessary, please insert the term of your preference here: __________) referring to the US Calvary as "Buffalo Soldiers." I always assumed it was because they held them responsible for killing the buffalo. But, according to the movie, the Plains Indians first saw the Calvary during the winter. The solders were all bundled up in buffalo fur coats and hats, trying to keep warm. The natives dubbed the soldiers "Buffalo Soldiers" because of their appearance and the name stuck.
And who sez watching Westerns ain't educational????
Y'all have a wonderful week!
Fred Replied:
They also called the Black Regiment "Buffalo Soldiers" because of the way their 'scalp' felt and the dark skin. Buffalos have dark skin underneath all of that wooly hair.
There is only one kind of Buffalo left now. There were once two species--a plains buffalo and a woods buffalo. The plains buffalo was light brown and longer and thinner and could really run pretty fast. The woods buffalo was darker and bigger and was a slow grazer since they rarely left wooded areas in Canada. However since the plains buffalo was decimated by the Army and by hunters, the few that remained hid in the woods and eventually "mixed". Now we have the "hybrid" buffalo.
There are only mercury on glass photos of the woods buffalo. There are many photos of various processes of the plains buffalo.
When I was a kid in Kansas, we used to hike along the RR tracks going south out of Junction City. The RR sort of followed the "Katy" RR. At one point it crossed the Smokey Hill River, a meandering river in the Flint Hills Basin going thru Geary County and terminating where the Republican R. out of Nebraska meets the Kaw R. (Hence Junction City--the junction of the two rivers. The Kaw R. is now called the Kansas River. I guess the Kaws were only a minor tribe and the Kansas tribe was much larger. Democratic process in action in Topeka. Them with the most--win.
One of the small cricks that fed the Smokey had flooded in 1948 and caused a "cut bank". Some old bones showed thru the clay and loam. We found out that this was one of the sites that Buffalo "Bones" Bill used. He would take a wagon and team and go out onto the vast Kansas flatlands and gather up the whitening bones left by the "skinners". He would pile them in huge piles in certain selected locations.
He was considered crazy by the locals. Within about 5 years the RR started building. He must have had either inside information or he was a canny railroad engineer out of work. When the RR came thru all over that part of the plains--his buffalo bones were there waiting to be loaded onto railroad cars and sold back east. He became very wealthy and retired in New York City.
In 1947 a fellow named Carlson hired me and my buddy, Dale Hanold, to load bones. During WW 2 garbage fed hogs were allowed to be sold to the Army. It is against the law in ALL states to sell garbage fed hog meat in the US and has been for over 30 years..
Ft. Riley was right next to Junction City. They fed thousands of soldiers pork chops and ham during 4 years of training at the fort. Hog ranchers around Junction sold pork meat to the fort and then collected the garbage for a small fee from the Army.
They then re-cycled the garbage thru the hogs and sold the meat back to the Army. When the war was over most of the troops at the fort were discharged and many officers were RIFed and transferred. The ranchers went back to raising wheat. The bones lay 'moldering in the ground' for a couple of years.
We would go out to the old ranches and pitch-fork the dried bones into a dump truck and Mr. Carlson would take them to the RR yard and ship them to Kansas City to be ground up for fertilizer use as one of the ingredients.
I got two bucks a ton and I could do about 4 tons a day. We would start at sun-up and stop at dark. [I would be hard pressed to pitchfork a hundred pounds today].
So see--Buffalo Bones Bill ain't dead after all.
Cat out of the Bag
Hello to Fred's Word-ers!!! I'm afraid I will fill in for Fred this week on a sad occasion -- his dad passed away over the weekend (he was in his 80s), so Fred went to Iowa. Fred's back in San Jose now, but has a lot of catching up to do, so I'll do what I can. As usual, I find my penchant runs to phrases instead of individual words, so . . .
Got to wondering about two phrases that seemed like they ought to be related: "Let the CAT OUT OF THE BAG" and "Buy a "PIG IN A POKE." Both have to do with confining a helpless animal in a sack -- could they be related?
Sho 'nuf.
In Medieval times, marketplaces were more than a bit crowded. If you were a pig seller, it was difficult to keep your pigs (future bacon, to be sure) in nice airy stalls -- so, before taking them to market, you would stuff each one into a burlap sack. (Those of us who hail from West Virginia or other places where Elizabethan English is still spoken to one degree or another will remember that a sack is called a "poke".)
If you were a pig buyer, then, you would pick out a poke and buy your porcine delight sight unseen -- hence, you bought a pig in a poke and took your chances.
If -- as a pig seller -- you were a tad unscrupulous and you had run out of pigs, you would grab any convenient neighborhood cat and stuff it, instead of a pig, into a bag -- and, of course, put a price tag on it worthy of a pig. So when you, as a pig buyer, took the bag home and opened it -- yep, you let the cat out of the bag and discovered the truth.
(Footnote 1: "Discover" literally means "Remove the cover.") Yea, Latin!
(Footnote 2, totally unrelated: learned while channel surfing tonight that the bikini, designed by a French automotive engineer, was originally called the "atom" for the smallest piece of matter. Just thought I'd pass that one along for fun.)
Tom
Cold Shoulder
Where does the phrase "give the cold shoulder" come from?
"Guests, like fish, begin to smell after three days."
--Benjamin Franklin
How do you get rid of a guest who's overstayed his welcome? In Europe, during the Middle Ages, such a guest would be served a cooked but cold beef shoulder. After a few meals of this, even the most obnoxious guest would get the message and leave.
As a result, the phrase, "give the cold shoulder" came to refer to any intentional coldness.
Indian Summer
Hi Boys ‘n Girls!! Fred’s on the road this week, so I’ll fill in with a bit. Since he’s been on an "Indian" theme, thought we could continue by looking at -- Indian Summer.
I hesitated on this one, because I thought the origin of Indian Summer was well known and I just couldn’t remember it. But -- SURPRISE!! -- I started researching it, and nobody seems to know where it came from.
The classic definition is that "Indian Summer" is the period of warm weather than comes after the last frost but precedes the onset of winter. But where does the name come from?
The most common theories, including Partridge’s "Origins of Words" (or something like that) hold that the term referred to the extra time that the weather allowed the Indians to hunt, repair, and generally get ready for a harsh winter. Other theories say the term meant the Indians had extra time to raid the colonists, and they coined the term.
BUT -- that sounds a bit suspicious to me. I like the theory I found at (mark this one, it’s a fun web site!) http://home.sprynet.com/sprynet/dwilton/Wordori.htm.
He notes that the first recorded use is in 1778, a bit late for Indian raids to be common in the American east. He also notes the term was most common in the West, and that it is related to terms such as "Indian giver" or "Indian corn," meaning "false." (So we have racism build into all sorts of things -- or shall we be nice and say something like "Recognition of differing cultural values"??). He notes a parallelism in the British phrase "St. Martin’s Summer," which also refers to the "false summer" in England. St. Martin’s is where dealers in cheap fake jewelry gathered, and that St. Martin’s Day is Nov. 11, which is about the time the "false summer" often occurs.
All of that makes sense to me, so I’ll vote for this theory!
Anybody heard any other theories? It seems to be a wide open question.
Tom
Fred replied:
I had not thought of Indian Summer for a long time--we really looked forward to it in Iowa. It was not as pronounced in Kansas. A few days maybe and then not every year. In Iowa we had Indian Summer every year.
In Kansas I lived in the "Flint Hills" along the meandering Smokey Hill R. We were about 250 feet or more below the plateau. Storms sometimes blew right over us and I guess the Indian Summer did too.
Indian Giver--boy does that bring back little kid memories. We would say that to a kid that gave something to one of the others and then got mad and took it back like Indians used to do.
Irons in the Fire
One of the members asked about "too many irons in the fire".
In the old West, cattle ran free on the ranges. When calving time was over, the ranchers would get together and have a roundup. The ranch owners would furnish cowhands according to how many cattle they counted the year before. If they had 500 head they would furnish 2 hands, a 1000--3 hands and so forth--it was not a linear calculation.
A fire would be built and all of the branding irons from the various ranches would be placed in it to heat red hot. [Sometimes there would be several fires--depending on the number of cows and how much time they had to finish].
As the cows and calves were rounded up and herded into the branding area--each calf got the brand of the mother--it took a sharp eye as the winter hair was usually still on the mother cow and the brand was hard to make out--the fellows branding were really busy sorting out the calves and sticking the correct brand on its hind leg. They had no time for anything else--they were busier than a one-armed paper hanger. If there quite a few ranches involved--they had too many irons in the fire.
Also from this comes "strike while the iron is hot". If you let the branding iron cool too much you got only a "hair brand". This would grow out and you could not tell who the calf belonged to in a few weeks. The iron has to burn the first and second layer of the hide. If you go too deep--the cow could be crippled. It is a real art -- Creosote is slapped on the raw brand so the flies won't "blow" the burn.
When my wife and I had the ranch down in San Diego County 20 years ago, we registered a brand with the State of Calif. An interesting Govt. paperwork process.The Calif. Cattelman's Association was also involved---I still have my branding iron, but the brand has expired--it was Y-Bar Y for Yvonne and Bar for Barber--made a neat looking brand. [Y with a bar under it].
Speaking of cows--I am off to the Central Plains of Argentina this Sunday afternoon--maybe I'll see how Gauchos brand their cows.
Keep your irons hot--
Mickey
This one comes from another member, Ennovy1933
Every hear the expression, "My drink's been spiked."
I usually means that someone put one of the chlorohydrate family of chemical drops in your drink and you are "inoperable". Sometimes called a "Mickey Finn".
Back a couple of centuries ago, "I'll spike yer guns iffen ye don't shut up" was a common expression. It meant that when troops overran a cannon emplacement during a battle--they would drive a heavy spike (nail) into the fire hole so the cannon would be "inoperable". Usually they could not roll the cannon away in time so that kept it out of action until the enemy could drill out the fire hole when they overtook the battery again.
"I'm gonna take the Mickey out of that fellow." Probably proceeded Mickey Finn. To take the "Mickey out" meant that you were going to subdue the fellow--Irish slang in Boston. So the drink would subdue someone--hence the Mickey part of the name.
Finn was (and is) a common Irish last name. It also means a "five spot" or "fiver" in England and is sometimes spelled as just "fin".
Lots of times a bar girl would slip chlorohydrate or a narcotic into someone's drink for a five spot. Then her fellow thugs would "roll" the poor unsuspecting bloke out in the alley behind the Pub.
I once went with a Boy Scout Troop into the mountains behind Palm Springs. The troop was short of adult leaders so I volunteered. The troop did not get back on time because of a big rain and wind storm, so the Riverside County section of the US Forest Service sent Rangers out to look for us.
The Ranger's name that met up with me and my bunch of boys was named--guess what? You got it--Mickey Finn. Later that day Ranger Finn fell and ripped his 40 dollar forest service pants. And he never had a drink.
Besides that--we were not lost. I had tramped in those mountains for years and knew them better than the Forest Service did. Part of the time I was on the Palm Springs Indian Lands--we had a permit from the Indians too.
Response from Lynn in Charlotte NC:
My friend from Dublin will say, "Oh, Lynn, I'm just taking the Mickey out of you!" Which usually means he has made a joke at the expense of my gullibility. It seems the term is a slightly derogatory reference to the lack of sophistication of Irish immigrants and is also used by the Irish (in a good humored way).
Also, when i was in England i called the front Desk of the hotel to say that my tea kettle wasn't working. The maid came Up and explained that when the water is ready the light goes off. I was Expecting the opposite (for no logical reason). When i explained she Laughed and said "oh don't you see the kettle is totally Irish". Meaning The kettle is totally opposite (or dumb) i do not recommend this phrase - Unless you have a steel jaw.
More on St. Patrick
I found out a little more about St. Patrick Don't forget to wear green on the 17th.
His Father's name was Calpurnius and his grandfather was a priest (yes they could be married in those days).
It is belived that St. Patrick studied under the French priest St. Germain (the "Church of St. Germain des Pres" was named after St. Germain).
St Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland?----It is doubtful that there were ever any snakes in Ireland and there have certainly not been any since. The fossil records have turned up no snakes. In fact in most of the history of Ireland--it was under water for millions of years. It only surfaced in the last 500,000 or maybe 750,000 years?? During the last Ice Age it was under water most of the time except for some now high ground bogs and swamps.
The "paddy wagon" used by New York Police (now called "mobile cell" to be more politically correct) was named that because so many Irish were "coppers" in NY and half of them were named Patrick. Of course "Paddy" is the slang name for Patrick--usually used as an ethnic slam.
Interestingly--Patrick is a common last name in Wales and is rarely used as a first name. My wife's mother was a Patrick and the ancestors came from Wales and settled in the Carolinas.
How's that for an old Baptist? Wear green.
Statue of Liberty
Who did Frederic-Auguste Bartholdi use as a model for the face on theStatue of Liberty?
His mother--
The famous lines on the base of the Statue of Liberty come from the end of Emma Lazarus's poem, "The New Colossus."
Here's the full poem:
The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
"Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
With silent lips. "Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"
Talk Turkey
Hi Gang. Heard somebody on tv mention "talking turkey" – found this in "Loose Cannons and Red Herrings: A Book of Lost Metaphors" by Robert Claiborne:
Talk Turkey. Usually explained by an early nineteenth-century anecdote. A white man and an Indian went out hunting, and shot a meaty wild turkey and a scrawny buzzard (i.e., the American vulture called the turkey buzzard). When it came time to divide the bag, the white man said, "Take your choice: either I take the turkey and you take the buzzard, or you take the buzzard and I take the turkey." ""Ugh!," said the Indian. "You never once say turkey to me!"
Nobody has ever proved that this incident – which summarizes all too appropriately white dealings with Native Americans – actually happened. But fact or fiction, it’s the best explanation I know of for why "talk turkey" means to get to the meat of the matter.
Anybody hear of other explanations?