Words

April Fool’s Day—April first; a day for playing tricks.

Origin:  The European origins of celebrating April 1 with foolishness are obscure, but by 1686 the custom had reached England.  In that year, the English antiquarian John Aubrey wrote, “Fooles holy day. We observe it on ye first of April. And so it is kept in Germany everywhere.”

Here are some very old tricks you might try out:

This one is from the 1834 Book of Sports by Robin Carver:  

“...some lady is humbly bowed to, and gravely addressed with,

‘Ma’am, I beg your pardon, but you’ve something on your face. ‘Indeed, my little man! what is it?’ ‘Your nose ma’am.’   ‘Ah! you April: fool.’”

Here are a couple from the 1917 There’s Pippins and Cheese to Come by Charles S. Brooks: 

 1.  “I beg, therefore, that when you walk upon the street on the next day of April fool, that you yield to the occasion. If an urchin points his finger at your hat, humor him by removing it! Look sharply at it for a supposed defect! His glad shout will be your reward.” 2.  “Or if you are begged piteously to lift a stand-pipe wrapped to the likeness of a bundle, even though you sniff the imposture, seize upon it with a will! It is thus, beneath these April skies, that you play your part in the pageantry that marks the day.”

department store--a large retail establishment that specializes in selling a wide range of products arranged in different areas without a predominant single merchandise line.  

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania can claim the distinction of the first use of the term “department store.”  

1838 The model of the large store divided into different areas with different types of merchandise had existed for a long time before they were called “department stores.”  The big Paris retail store, the Magasins du Bon Marché, had been established in 1838 and served as a model for retail marketing, selling goods at fixed prices.  Before this shopping had been difficult, requiring the customer to go to scattered shops and haggle for a good price.  Bon Marché introduced many of the marketing concepts that would be copied by American department stores, seasonal collections, free deliveries, mail-order business, reimbursable items.  One important innovation was marketing to the middle class with low prices and high volume. The Bon Marché model was so successful that Emile Zola patterned the fictional shopping center in his novel Au Bonheur des Dames, “The Ladies’ Paradise” after it.)

1846 The first American version of Bon Marché was the A.T. Stewart Marble Dry-Goods Palace which opened in 1846 in New York City at 280 Broadway.  It was, in essence, a “department store,” but can’t be called the first department store, because it wasn’t so named or so called.

1870 Then, two Pittsburgh merchandisers began using the phrase "department store” in newspaper ads.  One was D. W. Evan’s One Price Department Store at 59 Fifth Avenue and the other was Messrs. Urling, Follansbee & Co. at the corner of Fifth Avenue and Wood Street.  One of D. W. Evan’s advertisement explained the strange new term, “department store,” to the public: 

“Our readers then will understand that in visiting the “Department Store,” the widest possible range for choice is afforded.”

1880--by this date, half the population of the Northwest was living in cities.  In the country as a whole, the urban population didn’t exceed the rural population until 1920.  In the South, that mark was not reached until 1960!  As the urban population grew, so did the need for larger stores.  The department store filled that need.

 Word origin: The word département in French has the specialized meaning of an administrative district of France.  In English, “department” means a piece of any organization.  The English meaning adheres more closely to the meaning of the Latin word from which it is derived, partire, to divide up into parts (pars, part).

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Urbanization

bock beer--bock beer is a dark, malty, lightly hopped ale first brewed in the 14th century by German brewers in the Hanseatic town of Einbeck, Germany.

The first mention of beer being brewed in Einbeck comes from a receipt dated 1378.  In 1614, the an experienced brew master from Einbeck was lured to Munich’s Royal Brewery, the Hofbräuhaus (the word hof (court) comes from the brewery's history as a royal brewery in the Kingdom of Bavaria).  It was in Munich that the brewer from Einbeck began to produce ainpöckisch beer, that is, a beer in the Einbeck style.  

Bock beer became popular not only for its taste, but also for its durability.  Low in hops, which can change flavor over time, and high in alcohol content bock beer remained flavorful even after it had been transported long distances.

Variations on the basic “bock” beer:

Dopplebock—“double bock,” a beer with a high (though not double) alcohol content

Maibock—“May bock,” a bock beer brewed for May celebrations

Helles Bock—“bright bock,” a light colored bock beer

Eisbock--"ice beer," a beer that has been frozen to enrich the alcohol content.

Word origin:  The “beck” in Einbeck was pronounced “bock” in Bavaria.  Ein bock, in German, is “a billy goat,”  thus, the association of this style of beer with goats.   The goat on the labels of bock beers is a sort of icon, meaning “this is a bock beer.”

More:

Gallery of 74 Bock beer labels.

sardonic—scornfully mocking, describing humorous enjoyment involving disdain and derision.  The sardonic grin has been described as: an expression that hides pain, distress or disappointment; a grimace always hovering between laughter, restlessness and anxiety; laughing face of death.

Word origin:  The word “sardonic” is from from Classical Greek sardonios, from Sardō, the Mediterranian island of Sardinia.  Sardinia had been settled by the Phoenicians (Carthaginians) who were rumored to engage in ritual sacrifice that left the victims with a seeming smile after death.  The medical term for such a grin after death is risus sardonicus, sardonic grin.  

The death grin usually arises from poisons that induce spastic paralysis such as strychnine (a competitive glycine receptor blocker), tetanus toxin (an A-B protein toxin that impairs glycine release), and oenanthotoxin (a noncompetitive GABA receptor blocker).  Glycine and GABA are inhibitory neurotransmitters and their absence releases the excitatory nerves to the facial muscles causing massive contraction, pulling the mouth back into a grin.

In 2009 scientists at the University of Eastern Piedmont in Italy claimed to have identified water dropwort (Oenanthe crocata) as the plant responsible for producing the sardonic grin.  Socrates was forced to commit suicide (399 BCE) by drinking a potion the closely related plant, poison hemlock (Conium maculatum).  The two plants are members of the carrot family (Apiaceae or Umbelliferae) which includes celery and the spices cumin, caraway, coriander (ciilantro) and anise/fennel.  The poisons of the dropwort and hemlock act differently, hemlock blocking the muscle acetylcholine receptor causing a flaccid, rather than spastic, paralysis.

sneakers--tennis shoes; traditionally, shoes with rubber soles and canvas uppers.

Most of us think of “sneakers” as a modern slang term for tennis shoes, but as early as 1898 that the term was applied to canvas and rubber “lawn tennis shoes.”

Lawn tennis was all the rage in the 1880′s.  Invented in England in 1873, lawn tennis was introduced into America the following year by Mary Ewing Outerbridge, a young socialite who had watched it played by British army officers in Bermuda.  She laid out a tennis court on Staten Island and soon everyone was playing lawn tennis.  

Special “lawn tennis shoes” begin to be mentioned around 1882.  They were cheap and made of rubber and canvas.  Women seem to be the predominant wearers, although, they are made for men and children as well.

By 1900 they are universally referred to as “sneakers,”  as well as just “tennis shoes.”  A newspaper article from that year describes them:

The humble sneaker, otherwise know as the tennis shoe, rivals the short skirt and chiffon veil for women and the shirt waist for men as a feature of the summer of 1900.  It is the regulation rubber-soled, canvas-topped, heelless affair, so very cheap in price that one might wear out half a dozen pairs without throwing herself open to the charge of extravagance. 

According to the Brooklynmuseum.org website:  “The Converse Rubber Shoe Company debuted its new indoor gym shoe, the All Star, in 1917. Brown canvas models were marketed as All Stars, while the same shoes in white canvas and with a slightly different tread were called Non Skids. Both featured the brand’s signature toe cap, toe bumper, license plate on the heel, and a patch over the inner ankle for protection. Basketball coach Chuck Taylor joined the company in the early 1920s, both to promote the sneaker and to advise on its design and development; his name was added to the All Star in 1934.”

Word origin:  By all accounts, rubber-soled shoes were called “sneakers” because they were noiseless.  A newspaper writer factiously remarked in 1911: 

“Ordinarily “sneakers” are found only on burglars, who wear them to prevent being heard while breaking into a place.”

More:  

The Rise of Sneaker Culture

The History of Sneakers

jubilee—a recurrent time of joy, specifically associated with emancipation.

A “Day of Jubilee” On New Year’s Day 1863, African Americans at Beaufort, S.C., witnessed the moment when the Emancipation Proclamation became law. Col. Thomas Wentworth Higginson went before the assembled crowd and solemnly read the president’s proclamation. He remembered that “there suddenly arose . . . a strong but rather cracked & elderly male voice, into which two women's voices immediately blended.”

     “My country 'tis of thee     Sweet land of Liberty.”

“The quavering voices sang on, verse after verse; others around them joined;  I never saw anything so electric; it made all other words cheap . . . the life of the whole day was in those unknown people's song.”

Source:  This deeply touching account is an excerpt from Army Life in A Black Regiment, and Other Writings,1870, by Colonel Thomas Higginson.

Word origin:  The English word “jubilee” is an amalgam of Hebrew and Latin associations.  1.  The joyful aspect of the word “jubilee” is from the Latin iūbilāre, to sing or shout joyfully; to cheer.  The word long proceeded the translation of the Hebrew bible into Latin.  2.  The association with a specific day (“the day of Jubilee”) comes because the Hebrew ‫יובל‬‎‎ yūḇāl, “day of jubilee,” a day recurring every fifty years, in the Old Testament book of Leviticus was translated using the Latin, iūbilāre.  3.  The association with emancipation comes about because in the verse of Leviticus God commanded the Jews to proclaim on the Day of Jubilee, “a release through the land to all its inhabitants.”

More:

Leviticus 25:8-10

Day of Jubilee | National Museum of American History

gung ho—enthusiam, especially, today, over enthusiasm or excess zeal.

The word “gung-ho” entered our vocabulary in 1941, in efforts to rally support for the war effort.  Articles appeared urging Americans to follow the lead of the Chinese who were said to use the slogan, gung-ho, “work together” as they reorganized their war-fighting industrial capacity following the 1937 Japanese invasion.

The 1943 movie, Gung-Ho!, starring Robert Mitchem and Randolph Scott popularized the word.  The movie depicted a minor raid on a Japanese-held atoll in the Gilbert Islands. One review of the movie gave this description, “the stabbings and stickings go on ad nauseum.  Gung Ho! is for folks with strong stomachs and a taste for the submachine gun”.  In real life, while a success, the raid had the unfortunate effect of alerting the Japanese to the strategic importance of the islands. 

By the 1950s the positive war-time enthusiasm for the “gung-ho attitude” had waned.  The word took on its present connotation of excessive enthusiasm, “too gung-ho.”

 Word origin:  The word gung-ho is anglicised pronunciation of gōng hé, 工合. 工 means “work” and 合 means “together.”

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The Raid On Makin Island

furlong--a measure of length; 220 yards or 660 feet.  The English mile gets its length, 5,280 feet, from its original definition as eight furlongs.  

The word means a “furrow length.” This was an important length because it was the distance a team of oxen could plough without resting.  It was hard to turn a team of oxen, so one plowed until the animals were tired, then let them rest while the plow was turned. 

The furlong was so important as a measure of distances and areas for records of land ownership in early England, that, in the year 1500, the old Roman mile was redefined as equal to eight furlongs.  It was easier to change the mile to furlongs than the well established furlong to miles.  In those days actual rods and chains of standardized lengths were laid down to survey distances. In those measures a furlong was equivalent to 40 rods or 10 chains.

Here the furlong appears in the Maryland Gazette 15 Aug 1754 in an account of a fire.

May 25.  On Tuesday about One o’Clock in the Morning, a Fire broke out at Houghton Mills, near Huntingdon, by which they were entirely consumed, notwithstanding the assistance of several hundred Persons from the neighbouring Towns, and a large Quantity of Wheat and Flour was destroyed.  By the violence of the Wind the Flames were communicated to a House and Barn about a Furlong distant which were also totally consumed.  It is thought the Mills were set on fire by some evil minded Persons, one of which is committed to Huntingdon Gaol on some strong suspicion.

The furlong is now a term now used mostly in horse racing.  

Word origin.  From the Old English words fury, “furrow” and lang “long.”

More:

English, Roman and Metric measures

Graph length measures relationships

vomitorium--a passage leading from the tiers of seats in a stadium, through which big crowds can exit rapidly at the end of a performance.

Many people think a vomitorium is a room where Romans forced themselves to vomit so they could eat more.  That misconstrual seems to have arisen in the 1800′s.  Not everyone in those days was so gullible as to believe that tale.  Architects knew perfectly well what the label “vomitorium” on plans of the coliseum meant. 

But, here is the erroneous legend summarized in a quote from The Waterloo Press (Waterloo, Indiana), 02 Dec 1897, Page 1.

“In the days of Nero, hard by the banqueting hall, a room known as a vomitorium was maintained in which a servant tickled the throat of the revelers with a feather, thereby causing the overloaded stomach to be relieved.”

Vomitoria were simply large openings that discharged the audience after the event, allowing them to spew forth from the coliseum.  Today we might call such an opening by the less evocative “tunnel.”

Word origin:  The latin root vomere means to “spew forth or discharge.” 

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poke weed—at maturity, in the fall, poke weed is very recognizable; it is head-high with succulent red-purple stems with large lance-shaped leaves and grape-like clusters of dark purple berries. Binomial nomenclature: Phytolacca Americana.

Poke weed is poisonous, not “medicinal” as it is sometimes kindly described.  Birds can tolerate the poisons and do consume the berries.  It contains such a variety of toxic chemicals, such as saponins, glycosides and lectins, that it is hard to decide which one predominates in poisoning episodes. 

The leaves are eaten as “poke salat,” however, when picked young, before the poisons accumulate.  Even then, they have to be cooked in one or more changes of water to leach out the toxins they do contain when young.

The plant is a member of the Caryophyllales order which also includes other plants with fleshy stems such as cacti, carnations, ice plants, beets, rhubarb, chard, spinach, buckwheat and many carnivorous plants.

Tom Jefferson wrote the Declaration of Independence with ink made from the dark purple poke berries.  

Supporters of James K. Polk (11th President of the United States, 1845–49) are said to have worn the homonymous poke leaves on their lapels as a sign of support during his campaign. 

bless—to pronounce words in a religious rite, to confer or invoke divine favor.  

A gracious word with a grisly history.   The word “bless” is unique to English.  Originally it was used to describe the act of sprinkling something with blood.   In many cultures, the blood of a sacrificed animal was thought to hallow and bring blessings on anything it touches.

So, today when we say, "Bless you," when someone sneezes we are actually saying, "May you be bathed in blood.”  Saying “bless you” is a peculiarly American response to a sneeze.  The German response, for instance, is Gesundheit, “health.”

Word origin:  The word comes from Old English blēdsian.  Although there is no word in any other language that has our modern English meaning, the Old English word comes from the Germanic noun blōd, “blood.”  In later English, this word turned into blessed.  “Bless” came to mean “consecrated” when it was used to translate the Latin word benedicere, “to speak well of” in the Latin Vulgate Bible. Old English, also called Anglo-Saxon is considered to have been spoken from around  450 CE to the Norman Invasion,1066 CE.

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brake–the mechanism that slows a vehicle.  

Levers pressing against the wheels of wagons to slow them have been known since Roman times, but these weren’t called “brakes,” sources tell us, until the 1700’s. 

In the 1700s, a brake was a handle or lever.  Devices that operated by handles were also called “brakes.”  

The term “flax brake” was probably the most common use of the term “brake” at the time.  To extract fibers from plant stems, the woody part of the stem needs to be crushed and broken.  The flax brake was a lever device for accomplishing this important phase of linen production.  While the woody part of the stem was broken, the fine, tough inner fibers are unaffected.

The handles of the pumps on sailing ships were called “brakes.”  From the pages of the Pennsylvania Packet, 16 March 1786, we learn that pump handles could be used for other purposes, as the captain of a French vessel delivers a sharp reprimand to the captain of an English ship that got in his way.

We hear that Captain Sarjeant of a schooner belonging to this island, run foul of a French vessel at sea, in a sudden gust of wind.  After they had cleared each other, the Master of the French vessel took to his boat, boarded Captain Sargeant, and without hesitation struck him a violet blow on his head with a pump brake or handspike, and killed him on the spot.  The Frenchman went immediately on board his vessel, and proceeded on his voyage.

In 1869, George Westinghouse developed the air brake for trains.  Air pumped into the hose system connecting railroad cars released the brakes on each car.  Since air brakes no longer had a conspicuous brake lever, the “lever/handle” meaning of brake diminished and the was superseded by the “vehicle-stopping device” meaning.

Word origin:  The word brake is ultimately from the Latin brachium, “arm.”

More:  

Other uses of the word “brake.”

Etymology

Other natural vegetable fibers

shambles—today, a state of total disorder; formerly, a butcher's slaughterhouse (now archaic).

In the 1800’s the word “shambles” was exclusively used to designate a place where animals were slaughtered.  As the century progressed, it began to be used figuratively to describe the aftermath of a battle in which the slaughter was so extensive as to resemble a place of animal butchery.  In 1864, for instance, Virginia was described hyperbolically as a “bloody shambles.” 

In the early 1900’s the phrase “veritable shambles” was common, marking a phase of transition, indicating the writer did not actually mean a physical slaughterhouse for animals but that the writer was aware of that sense of the word.

During World War One, the word was widely used to describe the disorder of the countries of Europe without any specific regard to the bloodiness of war. from that point on, the word “shambles” began to only mean a site of disorder.  The association between the figurative and literal use of “shambles” for a slaughterhouse seems to have become forgotten in common English usage.

PEZ—small compressed candy tablets sold in packs of twelve to be dispensed in the patented PEZ dispenser.  

Most people don’t know that PEZ marketing has had many quirky turns over the years.

In 1927, Eduard Haas III, a wealthy Austrian entrepreneur, developed a small candy mint he called PEZ.  His family had extensive experience manufacturing baking powders and Haas used their expertise to develop a method of compressing sugar, peppermint oil and other ingredients into a solid tablet.  Peppermint oil was expensive at the time and the compressing process kept it from evaporating.  At first the tablets were round and sold in small tins, but were changed to the current brick-shape so they could be mechanically wrapped and packaged in paper.

Eduard Haas III was described by contemporaries as a health fanatic. He enjoyed sucking peppermints, finding them calming and refreshing. He considered sucking mints a vastly superior habit to smoking tobacco. PEZ was touted as an alternative to smoking, or at least a breath freshener for use after smoking. It was not a children's candy, but an adult product. The product sold fairly well for more than 20 years in Europe.

Then, in 1948, Haas applied for a patent for the novel PEZ dispenser.  It made its debut in Austria in 1949, and a U.S. patent for the device was granted in 1952. The new dispenser was shaped like a cigarette lighter, not only a trick to play on smokers asking for a light, but it was hygienic, allowing PEZ users to give the candy to friends without touching it. 

In 1952, Eduard Haas introduced PEZ and the PEZ dispenser to the United States.  The lighter-shaped original dispensers did not have the trademark heads, which were introduced four years later. 

In another twist, in 1955, Pez was recast in the U.S. as a children's candy instead of an adult mint. The flavors of the candy were expanded beyond a range of mints to include numerous fruits. The PEZ company also placed heads on the dispensers.  The characters Popeye, a bunny, and a witch were among the first to be introduced.

Beginning in 1986, Pez sales took off.  Sales to the children’s market were good, but unremarkable, then, in 1986 a candy nostalgia craze took hold.  PEZ hit the height of its American popularity as a retro collectors item along with Black Jack, Bazooka and Beeman’s chewing gum; wax mustaches, wax coke bottles and wax teeth; jujubes; Charleston Chew and 5th Avenue candy bars.  As a result in 1986 U.S. candy sales jumped from $9 billion to $11 billion and continued to climb.

Word origin:  PEZ is an acronym for “peppermint” in German, pfefferminz.  The letters chosen for the acronym were the first, middle and last--PfeffErminZ.

More:

PEZ company history

10 Indispensable Facts about PEZ

vaudeville—a stage show featuring musical numbers interspersed with comedy skits and routines.

In 1840, what may be the first American presentation using the word “vaudeville” was a summer session in Boston advertised as the Vaudeville Saloon.  The presentations were dramas, comedies, farces and “other entertainments which will be [were] expressed in the bills of the day.”

In 1885, vaudeville truly became an industry with the opening of the Bijou theater in Boston by B. F. Keith and E. F. Albee.  The Bijou presented a rotation of variety acts, a form of presentation that would be called “continuous vaudeville.”  As the nation expanded, more opportunities offered themselves for entertainment.  Acts could travel by railroad, communicate by telephone and telegraph, and be popularized by a growing press.  Vaudeville grew to be a big business and bigger and more expensive theaters were built.  As the genre developed theaters grew more and more magnificent with larger stages.

Around 1910, vaudeville reached its peak of popularity surpassing “legitimate theater.”  “Big-time vaudeville” was the highly professional and generally offered only two shows a day, a matinee and an evening performance.  Less professional was the “continuous vaudeville” that the patron could enter and leave at any time.

After 1914, vaudeville declined in popularity when moving pictures began to compete with it for audiences, but it remained popular through the twenties and thirties.  

By 1932 Vaudeville was considered dead .

Word origin:  The word “vaudeville” is said to come from the French phrase chanson du Vau de Vire “song of the valley of Vire,” hence a country song. The term was first applied to the popular satirical songs of Olivier Basselin (around 1400 – 1450), a poet who lived in Vire. “Vire” was apparently altered to the similar sounding and similar meaning (that is rural, small town) “ville.”  What we know as vaudeville had little in common with French vaudeville other than a shared name.   Developers of American vaudeville were generally unaware of historical vaudeville, but used the French word because it sounded exotic and refined.

More:

Vaudeville History

MP3s of original vaudeville recordings

Vaudeville: Old and new

weird—Today, weird means very strange and unusual, unexpected, not natural.

In Shakespeare’s time “weird” meant fate or destiny.  The phrase “weird sisters” was a reference to the three Fates.  In mythology, these three sisters governed one’s life expectancy.  One sister spun the thread of life, one measured it and the third cut it.   In Greek, the Fates were called the Moirai, in Latin, the Parcae. 

In Old English, the word for fate was wyrd.  Plural was  wyrde, so the Fates were translated as the "wyrde." The modern meaning of "weird" grew out of a misunderstanding of the use of the word "weird" as used by Shakespeare that took hold in the 1800′s.  

Shakespeare uses the term ‘weird” for the three witches in Macbeth. 

"The weird sisters, hand in hand,  Posters of the sea and land." 

Macbeth was written for James I of England, who had written a book on devils, witches and demons.  James came from Scotland.  These facts explain the setting of the play in Scotland and the involvement of witches.