The Previously Discussed Origins of Things

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Read Between the Lines
In the 16th century, it became common for politicians, soldiers, and businessmen to write in code.  To a person ignorant of the code, a secret paper was meaningless.  Ordinary folk fascinated with this mystery concluded that the meaning was not in the lines of gibberish, but in the space between them.

Read The Riot Act
This saying, meant to scold and warn people for breaking the rules, refers to the real Riot Act as decreed by England's King George I in 1716, whereby an actual statement was supposed to have been read to groups of disobedient people.  To quote the law: "The act makes it the duty of a justice, sheriff, mayor, or other authority, wherever twelve persons or more are unlawfully, riotously and tumultuously assembled together, to the disturbance of the public peace, to resort to the place of such assembly and read the following proclamation: 'Our Sovereign Lord the King chargeth and commandeth all persons being assembled immediately to disperse themselves, and peacefully depart to their habitations or to their lawful business, upon the pains contained in the act made in the first year of King George for preventing tumultuous and riotous assemblies.  God save the King.'"

Red Letter Days
This saying, meaning holidays or festive days, comes from early prayer books and church almanacs. Religious holidays were printed in red ink to stand out from other events.

Redneck
The term for southerners came about because most who work in the fields wear clothing that provides a loose and open neck.  With the skin exposed to the sun's rays day after day, the neck area came to get a dark brownish-red color.  Because the American South has been, and continues to be, more agricultural than the North, the term has come to be associated with southerners.

Rhode Island
Off Providence there is a small island originally called Aquidneck. In 1644, the name of the island was changed to Rhodes, after the more famous one in the Mediterranean Sea where the statue of Colossus once stood.

Ring Around The Rosy
Nobody knows for sure where it came from. The Black Plague of the 1600s is the most widely accepted origin of the song, with good reason. Most scholars explain the song this way:

Ring around the rosy - rosy refers to the rose-colored rash people developed.
A pocket full of posies - posies were herbs used to sweeten the air from the smell of death.
Atchoo, atchoo - these were the original words to the song, having been traced as far back as the 1800's.
We all fall down - I don't think I need to explain this one, do I?

Now for the other side of the argument. There are some scholars who disagree with the Plague reference simply because there are a great deal of records detailing how the Plague started, how it spread, what the symptoms were, how it disappeared, how many people died, and the way that people lived. Yet it wasn't until the 1800's, almost two centuries after the Plague, that the first reference of the song appeared.

R.S.V.P.
An abbreviation for the French phrase, répondez s'il vous plait - "please respond."

Rule of Thumb
The phrase "rule of thumb" is derived from an old English law which stated that you couldn't beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

Sandwich
John Mantagu was the fourth Earl of Sandwich in 1748. Any time he could get away from his offices for an hour or two he would go out and gamble. Since his time was usually limited, he often directed a servant to bring him roast beef between slices of bread so he could eat at the gambling table. He wasn't the first eat a sandwich, but he was the only world leader to do it frequently in public. As a result, his royal title was attached to the name of the meal.

Scalper
In the American frontier days, Indians would sometimes scalp their foes (remove the skin and hair, and sometimes the bone, off a person's head).  The rapid growth of the country soon led Chicago and other cities to become infested with men who bought unused portions of railroad tickets for resale.  These traders in segments of tickets were compared with Indian braves who collected scalps. 

Scandal
This comes from the Greek word for snare, trap or stumbling block.

Scumbag
As sick as it is, this originated as a slang term referring to a used condom.

September
The ninth month comes from the Latin word septem, which means seven.  September was the 7th month until about 700 B.C., when Numa Pompilius, the second Roman king, switched from a 304-day calendar to a 355-day lunar calendar.

Shampoo
The word comes from the Indian word champo.  Early travelers to India noticed that sultans and nabobs had several servants who massaged their bodies after hot baths.  Champo is the native term for "to press," which was the method of massaging the body with knuckles.  The term was taken back with the travelers to England, but only the wealthy could afford a professional bath attendant on the household staff.  By 1860, shampooing was reduced to the operation of washing and rubbing only the scalp.

Shithead
Believe it or not, shithead comes from another slang word, shitbird. Shitbird is a term for a stupid person (shit for crap and bird meaning a person). Both terms popped up sometime during the 1950s. As for the why, well there's no documented reasons for it, but it does make sense when you think of it.

Shoot A Wad
It's from the 1920s. Originally it meant "to bet everything," with shoot meaning "to give or pay" and wad meaning "money." It later adopted another meaning, "to ejaculate" (with shoot meaning "to have sexual intercourse" and wad meaning "semen."

Sideburns
While people had been sporting some form side-facial hair for some time, it wasn't until Civil War General Ambrose Burnside that a name was given to them.  Burnside, the commander of the Union's Army of the Potomac, had a popular set of "mutton-chop side whiskers."  Others started emulating him by growing a set of their own, and they soon came to be known as "burnsides."  The name eventually morphed into its current for, sideburns. 

Sinister
The Latin word for left.  Ancient Romans always entered the home of a friend on their right foot since the left side of the body was thought to to portend evil.

Sitting Duck
Reader's Digest had the phrase as part of a title in 1944: "Why Tankers Are No Longer Sitting Ducks."  In 1949, the expression was explained as being derived from the fact that marksmanship in duck hunting is determined by the ability to hit ducks in flight and not while they are sitting.

Skyscraper
The word was first used in the 18^th century to mean a high-flying flag on a ship.  It was later used to describe a tall horse or person.  The first time it was used to describe a building was in the 1880s.

Sleep Tight
In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. That's where the phrase, "goodnight, sleep tight" came from.

Slush Fund
Slush was an old word meaning "refuse."  In the British Navy it consisted of fat, grease, and other waste from the galley.  Somewhere down the line, someone had the idea of selling the slush to raise money for a fund for enlisted men in trouble.  It became the slush fund.

Smell a Rat
For centuries, it was common practice to give rat-hunting dogs free run of palaces.  In the course of a quiet evening, it wasn't unusual for an animal to spring into action without an obvious cause.  If no triggering effect could be found, the dog's behavior would be shrugged off as being caused by a potential rat in the area.  This occurred so frequently that when an event triggers automatic suspicion in a person, that person is said to have smelled a rat. 

Smog
A blending of the words smoke and fog.  It was reportedly coined in 1905 in reference to the London fog.

Sophomore
It's actually a combination of two Greek words meaning foolish and wise.

Sucker
Early settlers to the New World discovered an odd fish that swam near the bottom of the water in order to suck up any debris of food.  The shape of its mouth and lips led it to be called a sucker.  But with so many types of fish matching that description, there soon were a large number of fish given the name.  It was natural for a sucker of some kind to be caught almost every time a hook was thrown into the water.  The ease of catching a sucker carried over to any person who was viewed as an easy mark.

Suede
A certain type of ladies' gloves, where the skin was rubbed into a nap with an emery wheel on the flesh side, was first introduced in Sweden.  The French simply called this form of leather "Swedish," which in French is the word suede.

Suicide Doors
In the old days, these doors were prone to open in a crash. Since this was before the time of seatbelts, a driver or passenger could easily be thrown forward, right out of the car and onto the street in an accident. So driving a car this dangerous was said to be "suicidal." And that's where they got the name "suicide doors."

Taxi
Taxi is the shortened form of taximeter-cabriolet.  Cabriolet was the name given to two-wheeled carriages, and taximeter was the device that measured the charge.

Testimony
Castration was a common practice in ancient times, and it was not unusual for a man to be called upon to prove that he wasn't a eunuch.  There was only one way to do that: he had to show off his testicles.  Testicles has its root in the Latin word testis, which itself came from an ancient word for the number three.  The idea of an objective third party led testis to mean "witness."  In medieval trials, a man giving evidence was likely to place one hand on his testicles while taking the oath.  Since testicles proved that a man was what he seemed, the evidence he gave came to be referred to as testimony.

That Sucks
According to the Dictionary of Slang, it originated in the 1960s to mean "worthless, objectionable, pointless or disappointing."

The Life Of Riley
Most people envy the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Stand-up comic Patrick Rooney exploited this feeling in a lilting song he wrote in the late 1880s.  Mr. Reilly, the central character of the Irish entertainer's song, didn't amount to much, but he was quite a daydreamer. Reilly imagined what he would do if he struck it rich in California.

Owning the railroads, he would buy no tickets. Having no need for money he would turn down jobs that offered to pay "a hundred a day." Best of all, he would take over the White House and sleep in the president's chair.  Though Reilly existed only in the imagination of Rooney, he voiced the feelings of multitudes who paid little attention to the spelling of his name. Having heard or read lines that described the way Reilly conceived of life at the top, people began to wish they could step into the Irishman's shoes.

The Real McCoy
Kid McCoy was a famous boxer of the 1890s, but outside of the ring he didn't look very formidable.  People who saw him for the first time often insisted that he couldn't be the renowned fighter.  McCoy frequently got into - and won - barfights with those who refused to believe him.  His repeated demonstrations that he was the real fighter led to people declaring any authenticated item - person or thing - as being the Real McCoy. 

The Whole 9 Yards
This came from WW II fighter pilots in the Pacific. When arming their airplanes on the ground, the .50 caliber machine gun ammo belts measured exactly 27 feet, before being loaded into the fuselage. If the pilots fired all their ammo at a target, the target got "the whole 9 yards."

Three Sheets To The Wind
Sailors in danger of losing their lives created the phrase. Many old-time vessels performed best when rigging was symmetrical. Outfitted with four masts and four sets of sails, a craft was expected to use all of them under most circumstances. Sometimes, though, the fourth and final sets of canvas were not spread. A four-master with only three masts in action was in big trouble when hit by a sudden gale.  The rolling and pitching of a poorly rigged ship was much like the actions of a human who downed too many drinks. A comparison was inevitable - a thoroughly drunk man barely able to get walk was described as lacking an essential set of canvas sails.

Tips
It originally was an acronym for "To Insure Promptness." Old English inns used to keep a box near the door to remind patrons that if the service was good, a little extra something was not objectionable. Printed on the box was "To Insure Promptness," which was later simplified to "T.I.P."

Tuxedo
In the 1880s, formal dinners required men to wear white tie and tails. The members of the Tuxedo club, in Tuxedo Park, NY, wanted to make their male members more comfortable. So they allowed English dinner jacket for their formal affairs. The jacket became known as the tuxedo.

Ultimatum
Yet another word rooted in Latin, ultimatum originates from the Late Latin verb "ultimare," to be at the end.  Though the word is Latin in form, its transition to the English language is believed to hav come through the French, which historically had been referred to as the language of diplomacy.

Underdog
This comes from the losing canine in a dogfight.  Once a dog was pinned by another, its throat was exposed for a potentially fatal bite.  A bystander had to intervene in order to save the life of the disadvantaged dog underneath.

University
OK, try to follow this one.  University comes from the Old French word universite, which came from the Latin word ūniversitās, which itself was derived from the Latin ūniversus (source of the English word universe).  This originally meant "whole," but in the post-classical period it was appied to guilds and other associations, referring to the "totality" of their membership.  These included societies of teachers and students, from which the modern meaning of university emerged. 

Up a Creek
Most rivers of Europe are fairly small and pose few obstacles to travelers who wish to cross them.  Settlers of the New World found a different situation.  Many rivers were so mighty that even large streams seemed to be creeks by comparison.  Hunters and explorers sometimes tried to cross the water at an untried spot, and, if they misjudged the speed or depth of the water, might be trapped up the creek until rescued.

Upside-Down
First appearing in the 1490 romance story, The Seven Sages, the phrase actually started out as up so down: "The cradel and the child thai found Up so doun upon the ground."

Vampire
Belief in vampires centers in the Slavic countries, and the word's origins can be traced to the Hungarian word, "vampir."  Though similar variations can be found in Russian, Polish, Bulgarian, and other languages of the area, it has been suggested that the ultimate source may have been the North Turkish word "uber," meaning witch.

Vanish Into Thin Air
Shakespeare was believed to be the first person to use the saying "thin air" (actually "thin Ayre") in The Tempest, where he was emphasizing the total disappearance of something.  However, a year earlier in 1609, Thomas Dekker wrote in The Guls Horne-book of "Plaudities, and the Breath of the great Beast, which (like the threatenings of two Cowards) vanish all into aire.

Vaudeville
This form of entertainment is named after Vau-de-Vire, the French valley that was home to Olivier Basselin, a popular 14th century composer.  Basselin's fast-moving satirical songs became famous in Paris then spread to English-speaking countries, which called  humorous compositions and any other collection of crown-pleasing short acts vaudeville.

Vicious Circle
The true sense of the Latin expression circulous vitiosos is derived from philosophy.  To philosophers, this meant a circular argument, in which the proof of one statement depended in part on a second statement, whose proof, in turn, depended upon the correctness of the first.

The Virgin Islands
Legend has it that somewhere around 238 A.D., St. Ursula took 11,000 Nuns from Britain and France on a march to Rome to protest oppression in Britain. On the way back, in a village along the Rhine, they were all massacred by the Huns. It was for these 11,000 virgins that Christopher Columbus named the Virgin Islands.

Chris D. sent a note saying, "The reason he named the Virgin Islands 'after the 11,000 virgin' was because, when he first saw them he said 'They looked like a fat virgin lying on her back'."

Wet Behind the Ears
Many newly born animals, wet from liquids in the womb, are slow to become dry.  Some places, especially the indentations behind the ears, take the longest because they aren't exposed to the air.  The fur on these animals usually stays wet until they are active.  For this reason, a person who knows absolutely nothing about some kind of action is referred to as "wet behind the ears."

When In Rome, Do As The Romans
St. Augustine tells the story of how his mother, St. Monica once asked St. Ambrose: "At Rome they fast on Saturday, but not at Milan; which practice ought to be observed?"
St. Ambrose replied: "When I am at Milan, I do as they do at Milan; but when I go to Rome, I do as Rome does."

Whippersnapper
One of the easiest skills learned by an inexperienced cowboy is that of snapping a black snake whip. Those who couldn't bulldog a steer or rope a maverick prided themselves on being able to strut into a town while calling attention to themselves by snapping their whips. Only youngsters who didn't even carry guns followed this practice. But it was common enough to lead people who never worked a trail herd to adopt whippersnapper as the perfect label for any brash, but unskilled, beginner.

Woooo!
Pro wrestler Ric Flair (whose trademark line is "WOOOO") had this to say in an interview on the origins of his "WOOO!" chant. He said that it came from him hearing Jerry Lewis' Great Balls of Fire. That's the only reference to its origins that I could find.

WOP
This slang term for an Italian dates back to the early 1900s, when expanding industry brought European workers to the United States in great numbers.  Many immigrants didn't bring passports with them, so they were separated for processing and given T-shirts with the word WOP stenciled on them.  WOP stood for without papers.  Since most immigrants at the time were from Italy, they became associated with the acronym.

Xmas
X has been recognized as a standard abbreviation for Christ since before the year 1100.  The X represents chi, the first letter of Christ's name when spelled in Greek (XRICTOC, pronounced Christos).

You Can't Have Your Cake And Eat It, Too
The original version was "you cannot eat your cake and have it too." John Heywood's Proverbs had that version back in 1584, which means that if it was published then, it was around for even longer than that. Incidentally, Heywood published it as "Wolde you bothe eate your cake, and haue your cake?"

Zodiac
The Greeks built their calendar from the twelve principal constellations as they took their turns in the sky overhead, but the calendar was represented graphically by a circle in which figures representing the constellations were entered. This representation was called zodiakos kyklos, or the circle of the figures. The phrase originated from zodian - a figurine, usually of an animal - and kyklos, a circle. The phrase became abbreviated to zodiakos, which was taken into Latin as zodiacus and then into English with the spelling change.

Zombie
This was originally the name of a snake god in the voodoo cult of West Africa, and later of the Caribbean.  It comes from a West African language called Kongo, and is related to the words "nzambi" (god) and "zumbi" (fetish).  It was later applied to a reanimated corpse in voodoo.

Zoo
The Greek word zōion meant animal.  From it was formed the modern Latin zōologia, or study of animals, which was adapted into English as zoology.  Zoological was derived from this in the 19th century, and when the Zoological Society of London opened their exhibition of live wild animals in Regent's Park in 1829, they called it the Zoological Gardens.  This was soon abbreviated to "the Zoological," and by the mid 1840s it had shrunk further to just "zoo."