The Previously Discussed Origins of Things

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A-OK
This is a product of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.  John A. Powers, a spokesman for NASA, used it in connection with a 1961 space flight to indicate that the mission was going well.

Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter Here
Warning about a no-win situation, this expression comes from Dante's Inferno.  The actual expression was "All hope abandon, ye who enter here."  The "here" referred to hell.

Adam's Apple
This one's based on mythology.  Folktales explained that Adam shouldn't have taken the apple from Eve in the Garden of Eden.  When he yielded to her temptation, a piece of fruit stuck on the way down.  Ever since, it has moved when men eat or talk in order to warn: "Beware of the temptress."

Advice
This word has been around since the 1300s.  It started out as avis, borrowed from the Old French expression "ce m'est a vis," which meant "my view is."  The French phrase itself comes from the Latin phrase ad visum, to see or know.  The English spelling advis was popularized during the late 1400s as an imitation of the Latin phrase.  The final "e" was added in the 1500s as a mutation of the word, while the "s" was changed to a "c" in the 1700s to help distinguish the noun form from the verb advise.

Alibi
This is the Latin word for "elsewhere."  Many defense attorneys based their cases upon evidence that their client was alibi at the time of the crime.  Use of the centuries-old word was so common that it entered modern speech with no change in spelling or meaning.

Applaud
This comes from two Latin words (applaudere) meaning "upon approval."

Astronaut
This is actually a grouping of two Greek words.  The Greek word for star is "astron," and their word for sailor is "nautes."

Atlas
This word came to be associated with a book of maps starting in the late 16^th century.  The son of Flemish cartographer Gerardus Mercator published a book of his father’s maps with a picture on the title page showing the Titan Atlas supporting the world on his shoulders.

Attitude
According to the Dictionary of Etymology, ATTITUDE is a French word dates back to 1695. The French took it from the Italian word "attitudine," which meant fitness or disposition (attitudine was itself taken from the Late Latin word "aptitudinem"). The following is a direct quote:  "Originally a technical term in the fine arts, the term was extended to mean posture of the body implying a mental state (1725), and manner of acting representative of a mental state (1837), introducing the phrase attitude of mind (1862)."

Cassell's Dictionary of Slang takes it a step further: "From the 1960s: One's whole posture towards society, its rules and one's own place among them. [the assumption is that an attitude is hostile to the prevailing establishment status quo, although it may well fit happily into the complementary rebellious teenage standpoint. The meaning shifted slightly from 1970-80s, negative, antisocial, to 1990s, haughty, pretentious]."

Ax to Grind
An old Benjamin Franklin story tells the tale of how a young Franklin was approached by a fellow who stopped to admire the family grindstone.  Asking to be shown how it worked, the stranger offered young Ben an ax with which to demonstrate.  Once his ax was sharp, the fellow walked off, laughing.  Thus anyone with a hidden motive has an ax to grind.

Back Seat Driver
Cars of the early 1900s only had one seat, but it was able to hold two or three people. When back seats were eventually added, they were too far back to effective have a conversation with the driver. All of that changed with the introduction of the 1912 Essex coach, which featured a box-like enclosed body that made it easier to talk. Passengers started taking advantage of the opportunity to talk to the driver from the back seat, including where to turn or stop.

Baker's Dozen
In medieval times, a baker who shorted his customer was tossed in jail for a short time to think about his mistake. So to avoid the inconvenience they started putting thirteen buns in a customer's order of a dozen.

Ballot
This is an Italian word for "small ball or pebble." Italian citizens once voted by casting a small pebble or ball into one of several boxes.

Ballpark Price
In the days when all baseball games were played in the open air during daylight hours, newsmen would have liked to know precisely how many fans showed up for a given game. But they seldom found out because owners and managers were cagey and it was hard to get a precise headcount. Besides, publicity about a low turnout might keep people away from the next game.  It became a standard practice to give a very broad estimate - plus or minus a few hundred or thousand - when asked about the size of the gate on a particular day.

Bar-B-Que
It originated in the language of the now extinct Taino people of the West Indies. It first emerged in the Haitian creole term barbacoa, which simply meant "wooden framework." American Spanish adopted the word and passed it on to English.

Bedlem
This is a take off of the Hospital of St. Mary of Bethlehem, the first hospital in England expressly for the insane. The British used to refer to it as Bedlam, but pronounced it as bedlam.

Bikini
In 1947, the first swimsuit designed to reveal practically everything went on sale. The makers had no idea what to call it, but they noticed that males who saw it for the first time reacted like it was an atomic bomb. Scientists in 1946 had used the Marshall Islands for atomic testing, and had moved 167 natives to Rongerik. Head scientist William H.R. Blandy then used the Bikini atoll for tests of the atomic bomb. Comparing the impact of the new swimsuit with the world-altering events in the Pacific, fashion experts called the garment the bikini.

Biscuit
The word is French for "twice cooked." Soldiers and other travelers who ate bread regularly found that bread, when cooked twice, stayed fresher longer because the moisture was cooked out of it.

Bitter Pill to Swallow
For centuries, a physician's pellet for use in sickness has been known as a pill.  Bark of the cinchona tree was effective in fighting malaria, but the quinine it contained was extremely bitter.    Since medications weren't coated, cinchona pellets caused any disagreeable thing to be termed a bitter pill to swallow.

Boob
While there's never been a definitive link between the slang word for breast and the lumps that appeared on the bodies of victims of the Black Death or bubonic plague, the use of the word "boob" started sometime around the time of the Black Plaque. This is the history as presented in Cassell's Dictionary of Slang:
Bubo - from the 14th century, refers to a swelling of some kind. The word bubonic is derived from bubo.
Bubby - from the late 17th century, refers to a breast or both breasts together.
Bube - from the late 18th century, refers to a venereal disease. Bube also is a derivative of bubo.
Booby - started around the 1910s. It has been established that it came from Bubby.
Boob - started in the 1940s, and traced to the word booby.

Bootlegger
The government made alcohol sales to the Indians illegal because their low tolerance to the drink made them dangerous. So frontiersmen used to smuggle the bottles to the Indians by hiding the alcohol in the legs of their boots.

Boycott
On the estate of Lord Erne of Connemara, Ireland, the foreman of the grounds made a lot of enemies through his harsh methods of collecting rent from the tenants.  One day the farmers got angry and refused to work the land.  The name of the foreman who inspired such venom was Captain Charles C. Boycott.

Break The Ice
This expression came into general usage upon the 1821 release of Lord Byron's Don Juan.  Referring to British people, Byron wrote, "And your cold people are beyond all price, When once you've broken through their confounded ice."  

The Bronx
The New York borough gets its name from Jonas Bronck, an early settler who bought five hundred acres of land in the neighborhood of the district that bears his name.

Bus
Shortened from the French phrase voiture omnibus, which means "vehicle for all."

Calculus
The word is Latin for "pebble". Pythagoreans used pebbles, lined up to form various shapes, to represent numbers.

Caught Red Handed
In medieval times, animal rustlers who killed someone else's livestock were sometimes clumsy enough not to clean the blood off their fingers. Hence, they were caught "red handed".

Cereal
Named after the Roman goddess of grain and agriculture, Ceres. 

Civilization
The English use of the word came into use sometime around 1772. It's from an old French word, civilisation, which means a sense of civilized condition or state. Civilisation is from the French word civiliser, which in itself comes from the Old French word civil.  It's possible that the Old French word is based on the Medieval Latin world civilizare, which meant to consider a criminal action as a civil matter.

Coat of Arms
In the Middle Ages knights walked around in suits of steel armor. When the visors were down, they all looked alike. To keep from doing battle with their friends by mistake, the knights started painting pictures on their shields for identification. Later on, a fabric was woven that went over the armor, similar in design to a sweater. The knight's personal design was woven into the fabric, which came to be known as a coat of arms.

Cock
This dates back to the early 17th century in England. It mixed the basic image of the cock as a rooster and the cock's head seen as a tap-like shape. This second aspect was emphasized by its function in pouring semen. It remained in common use until Queen Victoria's coronation, whereby it became taboo to use it in her court.

Cock & Bull Story
The origin is tied to ancient fables wherein animals talked. The earliest known citation is from John Day's 1608 play, Law-trickes or Who Would Have Thought It. In it is the line: "What a tale of a cock and a bull he told my father."

Cold Feet
A gambler wanting out of a game in rural Europe would let it be known that he was broke by saying that his feet were cold.  Other gamblers would think he was just chicken, and the expression stuck.

Cole Slaw
The food comes from a combination of Dutch words: "kool" (cabbage) and "sla" (salad).

Connecticut
The state's name was taken from the Mohican word kuenihtekot, which means "long river place."

Cop
Cop was first used in 1704 to describe a policeman. It originates from the Roman times, who used to refer to officers as "Caps," which is short for "capere" - to capture.

Credit Card
The term was coined in 1888 by an author named Edward Bellamy, who wrote a fictional account of a young man who wakes up in the year 2000 and discovers that cash has been dumped in favor of "a credit corresponding to his share of the annual product of the nation...and a credit card is issued to him with which he procures at the public storehouses...whatever he desires, whenever he desires it."

Crocodile Tears
The idea that a crocodile cries dates back to the fourth century, but it didn't appear in English writings until the 16th century.  At the time, it was generally believed that crocodiles shed tears to lure their prey.

Cunt
The word can be traced back to two words: the Greek word konnus (a beard or the wearing of the hair in a tuft) and the Latin word cunnis (a vagina and the woman who possesses it). Many believe cunnis is actually derived from konnus.  The first use of the word appears in 1230 when Gropecuntelane is listed among the streets that made up the brothels area of Southwark, England. Given the environment, it's been assumed that the term became a shortening of the word and was in wide use at the time. By the 15th century, though, cunt was viewed as an unacceptable word.

Curfew
Comes from an old French word that means "cover fire."  In Europe during the Middle Ages, a curfew was a metal cone or shield that was used to put the hearth fire in the evening.  Eventually, the word came to mean the end of the day's activities. 

Dark Horse
Elections have long been seen as being similar to horse racing since no one knows for sure who will win. But everyone has a favorite. Legend has it that Sam Flynn of Tennessee made a living by racing a coal-black stallion named Dusky Pete.  Flynn would ride Pete into a strange town as though the animal was an ordinary saddle horse.  Not knowing they faced a champion racer, local men would happily set up races - and lose.  Today, people refer to an unknown who shows a chance of winning as a dark horse.

Dead As A Doornail
In the centuries before the doorbell, a visitor's arrival was announced by pounding with a knocker upon a metal plate nailed to the door.  The nails holding the knocking plate took a beating and had to be routinely replaced.  These useless doornails were referred to as being dead.

Dead Ringer
The word "ringer" dates back to 1890 and was originally horse-racing slang for a horse with a proven track record that was knowingly substituted for a less qualified, untested horse. "Ringer" is now used as slang for anything that has been tampered with or unfairly altered. The "dead" in "dead ringer" is simply an intensifier, meaning "absolutely," and since a "ringer" must resemble the thing it replaces, "dead ringer" has come to mean something indistinguishable from another thing or person.

Democrat Mascot - The Donkey
The donkey was created by political cartoonist Thomas Nast in 1870.  The stubborn donkey had first been adopted decades earlier to depict President Andrew Jackson and his policies, but Nast revived it for his cartoons.  

Desert
This comes from the Latin word for "abandoned".

Dick
From the 19th century, but no origins were listed. Dick has also meant "nothing" as early as 1910, and dick around has meant "to be sexually promiscuous, a womanizer" since the 1940s. The dictionary also claims that southern blacks preferred dick to cock since coming from the south, cock also means vaginal. Whether or not this is true I have no idea. I'm just quoting the book.

Diesel
Working at the Krupp factory in Essen (where the biggest guns used in World War I were made), German mechanical engineer Rudolf Diesel concentrated on heavy-duty internal-combustion engines.  During a period of six years, beginning in 1892, he perfected the revolutionary new engine that took his name.

Doubleheader
This baseball term gets its name from the railroad industry. It was originally a train with two engines on it.

Doughnut
In the late 15th century, Dutch bakers used to make what they called olykoeks, or oily cakes. These olykoeks were the first doughnuts, although they never had holes in them. They essentially were balls of dough that absorbed a great deal of grease during the frying process.

Now for the origin of the word. In the early 1600s, the Pilgrims learned how to make olykoeks and gave them a new name...doughnuts. The new name came about because the little balls of dough looked like walnuts.

Draw a Blank
One of the meanings of "blank" is almost a forgotten one.  At least as far back as the early 1800s, a blank referred to a lottery ticket that did not bring a prize.  This is the blank that one draws.

Drinking a Toast
In the 17th century, the English used to put a piece of toast in a wine cup to improve the flavor. The glass was then given to a lady.

Drunk As Cooter Brown
This is according to Whistlin' Dixie: A Dictionary of Southern Expressions: "It means very drunk indeed. Who the proverbial Cooter Brown is no one seems to know, but this may have originally been a black expression from the Carolinas. 'In Texas we'd call him drunker than Cooter Brown.'"  Furthermore, according to Cassell's Dictionary of Slang, it originated in the South sometime between 1900 and the 1940s.

Dry As A Bone
It can be traced back to the 16th century, and is as literal an origin as you're ever going to find. It comes from dry bones in a human grave or of the bones of an animal long dead in the wild.

Duet
Duet can be traced as far back as 1740. It was borrowed from the Italian word duetto, which was a short musical composition for two voices. Duetto is a diminutive of the word duo, whose origins go back to 1590. Duet actually replaced the word duetto, a word which can be traced back to 1724.

Earn One's Salt
In the days of the Roman legions, a soldier received part of his pay in the form of a salarium (a salary), which was actually an allowance for the purchase of salt.  Salt wasn't easily obtainable in those times, and the Roman generals knew the mineral's value.  Any soldier who didn't earn this small allowance was deemed as worthless.

Easier Said Than Done
This expression first appeared in the 1483 book, Vulgaria, as "It is easyer to saye than to do."

Easy Street
This expression comes from a 1902 novel called It's Up to You.  One of the more prosperous characters "could walk up and down Easy Street."  It seemed logical to describe a person in comfortable circumstances as having an address that summarized his lifestyle.

Eating Humble Pie
The phrase, which means to eat your own words or humiliate yourself, refers to what the British used to call the humbles, or lesser parts of an animal. These include the heart, liver, kidneys, etc. Not exactly the greatest things to eat.

Eggs Benedict
Banker and yachtsman E.C. Benedict inherited a Connecticut fortune and began spending more time on the water than in his office.  While on his yacht sometime around 1902, Benedict insisted that hollandaise sauce be added to his poached eggs on toast with ham.  When guests tried the new delicacy they fell in love with it and named it after its inventor.

Eureka
It literally means "I have it" in Greek.  Its first use in the form we use today was believed to have come from the Greek mathematician Archimedes in 287 B.C.  Archimedes was trying to determine the amount of silver that had been used in making a crown for the king which had been ordered to be of pure gold.  As he was preparing to take a bath one day he stepped into an overflowing tub and realized that an object surrounded by a fluid is buoyed up by a force equal to the weight of the fluid which it displaces (this would become Archimedes' law of hydrostatics).  He concluded that if he weighed out an amount of gold equal to the weight of the crown and placed then separately into a full basin of water, the difference in the weight of the overflow would prove the crown was not solid gold.  Archimedes was so excited by his discovery that he jumped out of his bath and ran home naked, all the while shouting "Eureka!  Eureka!"

Ex-Lax
The product's name is short for Excellent Laxative.

Fahrenheit
The temperature measurement system was named after Gabriel Daniel Fahrenheit, a German scientist of the late 17th century who invented a new thermometer that used mercury instead of alcohol.

Fall Guy
In the early 19th century, professional wrestling was a real, although relatively unpopular sport. It wasn't until promoters started attaching story lines to the show that people started taking notice. The use of story lines made it necessary to fix the outcome of the matches, with the loser taking the fall. In sporting circles, it became common to speak of a loser as a fall guy.

Fettucine Alfredo
The butter, cream and Parmesan cheese dish is named after its Roman creator, Alfredo di Lellio.  The meal became famous in the 1920s after Hollywood stars Mary Pickford and Douglas Fairbanks ate in his restaurant every day during their honeymoon.

Fender Washer
According to a dictionary of etymology (word origins), a fender is something that protects by keeping other things off. The word actually dates back to 1615 and comes from the Middle English word fendour, which means defender. The fender washer is nothing more than a washer that protects the surface of an object.

Fido
The popular dog name is from the Latin word "fidus," meaning faithful.

File
In ancient times, receipts, letters, contracts, etc. were safely kept together by stringing them together on a thread. The Latin word for thread was filum, which eventully was brought over to English as file.

Florida
Explorer Ponce de Leon named the state Pascua Florida - "flowery Easter" - on Easter Sunday in 1513.

Fornication
This comes from the Latin word fornix, which means "arch". In ancient Rome, prostitutes found the best place for soliciting business was underneath the arches of the Colosseum. Men whose passions were aroused by violence of the games found it hard to resist the women.

Friday
This day of the week is named after Frigga, mother of Thor and the most important goddess in Valhala.  Friday was originally called Frige daeg.

Fuck
Linguists believe that "fuck" comes from any of three words: the Middle English word "fucken," which meant "to strike, move quickly, penetrate;" the German word "ficken," which pretty much had the same meaning; or the Middle Dutch word "fokken," which meant "to strike, copulate with." Any way you look at it, the word can be traced back to between 1495 and 1505.

Gazebo
The term is a made-up word, having it's root based on the word "gaze."

Getting Your Ducks in a Row
Refers to setting up bowling pins. They were called duckpins in early America because people thought they looked like ducks.

Give Someone the Bird
This phrase for the one-fingered salute's originally referred to the hissing sound audiences made when they didn't like a performance. Hissing is the sound that a goose makes when it's threatened or angry.

Golden Age
In 1555, Richard Eden created this expression in his novel, The Decades of the Newe Worlde. "As wee reade of them whiche in oulde tyme lyued in the golden age."

Goose Bumps
Geese were important in the life of medieval Britain, so important that goose herds spent their lives tending to flocks.  Many owners plucked their geese five times a year, leaving them totally naked until new feathers grew.  When cold air hit such a bird, tiny muscled just under the skin would contract and create patterns of pimples.  These patterns resembled the same bumps that people would sometimes get, and the name stuck.

Gotham City
New York's nickname isn't very flattering. It's the name of a little English town whose inhabitants were generally thought to be short-sighted, simple-minded, and kind of ridiculous. Washington Irving applied it to the city.

Grocery Store
A merchant who sold his goods wholesale, or by the gross, was called a "grosser." His store was therefore called a grosser's store, which later became changed to a grocery store.

Guinea
The Italian slur guinea is the old name for the African coast. It's presumed to be applied to olive-skinned Italians in order to lump them in the same category as black slaves.

Gymnasium
In ancient Greece, athletes wore little or nothing when practicing. Gymnasium literally means "to train naked."

Hamburger
The word "hamburger" actually traces its roots back to Hamburg, Germany, where people used to eat a similar food called the "Hamburg steak." Eventually, the Hamburg steak made its way to the United States, where people shortened its name to "hamburger."

Hammock
The hanging bed was used by the natives of Brazil for hundreds of years. It was originally made of nets woven from the bark fibers of the hamack tree.

Handwriting On The Wall
One night, Babylonian King Belshazzar, drank heavily from holy vessels seized from the Temple in Jerusalum. A mysterious hand appeared after this act of sacrilege and to the astonishment of the king wrote four strange words on the wall of the banquest room. Only the Hebrew prophet, Daniel, could interpret the mysterious message. He boldly told the ruler that they spelled disaster for him and his nation. Soon afterward Belshazzar was defeated and slain, just as Daniel had warned. Religious dramas of the Middle Ages retold the story, and the saying went on the become a warning of impending doom.

Hanky Panky
About 150 years ago, British master magicians used to swing handkerchiefs with one hand to keep viewers from noticing what they were doing with the other.  This practice was so common that the use of a hanky came to be associated with any clandestine or sneaky activity.  It's thought that since magicians used the words hocus-pocus, a rhyming word was added to give it pizzazz.

Having A Screw Loose
The phrase dates back to the 1780s cotton industry, when machinery began making mass production of textile goods possible.  Huge mills were built to take advantage of the new technology, but it was difficult to keep the machines working properly; any machine that broke down or produced defective goods was said to have a "screw loose" somewhere - whether that was the reason or not.

Helium
Helium gets its name from the Greek god of the sun, Helios.  Helium was discovered in the Sun before it was found on Earth.

Hockey
Hockey is thought to come from an Middle French word for a shepherd's crook, hoquet. Now before you go asking me what a "crook" is, it's a bent or curved implement or appendage. The word can be traced as far back as 1527.

Holiday
In medieval England, a holy day was designed primarily for worship, so no ordinary tasks were performed at that time.  The enforced leisure period inevitably became a time for festivals and amusements to take advantage of the days off from work.  Now marked by both fun and worship, the period of observance for the holy day became known as a holiday.

Honeymoon
The ancient Teutones of northern Germany drank a beverage made of honey, every night for a full month following a wedding.  And since a month is the length of the moon's cycle, the period was called "the honey moon."

Hoosier
We know that hoosier came into general usage in the 1830s. John Finley of Richmond wrote a poem, "The Hoosier's Nest," which was used as the "Carrier's Address" of the Indianapolis Journal, Jan. 1, 1833. Finley originally wrote Hoosier as "Hoosher." A few days later, on Jan. 8, 1833, at the Jackson Day dinner in Indianapolis, John W. Davis offered "The Hoosher State of Indiana" as a toast. And in August, former Indiana Gov. James B. Ray announced that he intended to publish a newspaper, The Hoosier, at Greencastle, Indiana.  Jacob Piatt Dunn, Jr., Indiana historian noted that "hoosier" was frequently used in many parts of the South in the 19th century for woodsmen or rough hill people. He traced the word back to "hoozer," in the Cumberland dialect of England. This derives from the Anglo-Saxon word "hoo" meaning high or hill. In the Cumberland dialect, the world "hoozer" meant anything unusually large, presumably like a hill (immigrants from Cumberland, England, settled in the southern mountains).

Hors D'oeuvre
It's French for "outside of work."  It's meant to mean a food that's moonlighting outside the regular main course menu.

Hot Shit
According to Cassell's Dictionary of Slang, "hot shit" originated in the United States sometime in the 1950s. It comes from the slang use of "hot" (a general term of approval) and "the shit" (an important person in their own opinion). It's meant to be a negative comment about someone.