1.A piggy bank is the form of a pig? The
answer is simple and has surprisingly little to do with pigs. In the Middle
Ages most of home pottery in England was made from a special sort of clay that
was called pygg. Of course,
the clay pots, in which people used to keep their money, was also made from
pygg. these pygg jars gave birth to pig banks which are now called piggy banks
and are made in the form of a pig in so many countries.
2. Just a moment, we hear sometimes, and then this "moment" seems to be taking
ages. So how long IS a moment? How long should it be? Time is a highly
individual notion and it is different for different people, sometimes even
entire cities have their own time measures. For example, a New York minute is
defined by the ever-hurrying new yorkers as the time that elapses between the
red traffic light goes on and someone honks their car impatiently. But a moment
is a horse of a different colour.
In medieval England a moment was a definite unit of time and its length
used to be approximately equal to a minute and a half. So the next time someone
says "Just a moment" and goes away and has a nice cup of tea while
you're waiting, you can think of the auld lang syne and say that moments used
to be shorter.
3. In teaching we sometimes use ice-breakers to help the class to get to know each other
better and to start working. But who first came up with the expression "to break the ice" with reference to social
relations? Strangely enough, it was Lord Byron! In 1823 in Don Juan he wrote
about the British:
And your cold people [the British] are beyond all price,
When once you've broken their confounded ice.
4. Deadline. During the American Civil War, prisoners were kept
inside wooden stockades. A railing placed about 20 feet inside the stockade
marked the limit beyond which prisoners were told that they were not allowed to
pass. This was a 'dead-line', so called because men crossing it could be
assumed to making a bid of escape, and so were liable to be shot dead.
5. Quiz. The manager of a Dublin theatre a Mr Daly, laid a wager in 1780
that he would introduce a new word into the language whithin 24 hours. The bed
was taken and a mystery word appeared chalked on every wall in the city. Within
a few hours all Dublin was speculating on what the mysterious letters mean. The
word was a quiz.
6. Interestingly enough, a very popular product, tomato sauce, derives
its name from China. Ketchup is a descendant of fish sauces, popular in China,
Indonesia and Malaysia today. The consistency of these sauces is about the same
as that of tomato sauce.
When tomato sauces appeared, their name kecap came into the Dutch
language as ketcap, and became ketchup in English. English and Dutch sailors
brought the Asian-styled ketchup to Europe. In Chinese ket means tomato, and
chup means sauce. Of course, Europeans added many other ingredients to both
fish and tomato sauces, such as nuts, vegetables and fruits, but we still have
the common name for all tomato sauces - ketchup.
7. How old is the word "Engineer"? In fact, it dates
back to 1325. It used to mean a constructor or operator of military engines,
and the word comes from the Latin "ingenium" meaning "mental
ability". So in its original meaning an engineer is a clever guy who
constructs machines for killing people. Hm, not sure if the true meaning has
changed much...
8. Have you ever wondered why a taxi is often called a cab? Years ago a popular means of
transport was a two-wheeled hoarse-drawn carriage, which was called a
cabriolet. "Cab" is just a short form of "cabriolet",
although modern cabs are not drawn by horses and have more than two
wheels
9. Jumbo. The
adjective “jumbo,” which means unusually large, became a common
English word in the nineteenth century after an elephant by the same name
arrived at the London Zoo. Jumbo the African elephant arrived in London in
1865. While the origin of the name is uncertain, his Sudanese handler may have
named him after the Swahili word “Jumbe” meaning “Chief”. At almost
four metres high, Jumbo was the largest known elephant at the time, and became
the zoo’s main attraction. Though he was adored by the zoo patrons, the
enormous elephant became difficult to control, and in 1882 was sold to P.T.
Barnum, of the American Barnum and Bailey Circus. Jumbo’s only trick was
showing off his size, and he often toured around the circus ring with
a dwarf elephant named Tom Thumb. Jumbo the elephant was hit by a train in
Ontario, Canada. His hide was stuffed and used as a mascot at
a research university in Boston. His name lives on in the Jumbo Jet, the jumbo
sausage, and other elephant-sized things.
10. The word Soccer actually originated in the United Kingdom.
Association Football was shortened to "socca" (derived from the
middle of the word association). This turned into the word "soccer"
that is still used in the US, Canada, and Australia.
See also information about a curious English word SMOBIE.
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