rel="nofollow" href="#fb3_img_img_0e0e695d-3ee3-599d-af97-f21c718ca7f2.jpg" alt="image"/>l, which means “star” in Hebrew. Mazel tov is used as “congratulations,” but literally means “may you be born under a good star.” After telling someone mazel tov, it’s customary to shake hands.
Lofty Origins of Overused Phrases
“Where there’s life there’s hope.”
— Marcus Tullius Cicero (106 BC–43 BC)
“Time is more valuable than money.”
— Theophrastus (circa 372 BC–circa 287 BC)
“A man’s home is his castle.”
— Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634)
“Thirty days hath September, April, June, and November…”
— Richard Grafton (died circa 1572)
“Cleanliness is next to Godliness.”
— Charles Wesley (1707–1788)
“The good die young.”
— William Wordsworth (1770–1850)
“Hell is paved with good intentions.”
— Samuel Johnson (1709–1784)
How did the word moron come to mean “stupid”?
We have all been called a moron at one time or another and understood it to mean we’ve done something foolish. The reason is that in 1910 Dr. Henry H. Goddard (1866–1957) proposed the word to the American Association for the Study of the Feebleminded to describe an adult with the mental capacity (IQ below 75) of a normal child between eight and twelve years of age. A moron was, in fact, the highest proposed rating of a mentally challenged person. The two lowest ratings suggested were imbecile and idiot. These categories have been dropped by the scientific community and are no longer in use — except as an insult!
Moron is from the Greek moros, meaning “stupid” or “foolish.”
Why does the word bully have both good and bad meanings?
Today a bully is generally a description of a brute who intimidates someone weaker or more vulnerable, but in the United States the positive power of the presidency is often referred to as the “bully pulpit.” In the 1500s, the word in its positive sense entered English from the Dutch boel, meaning “sweetheart” or “brother,” but by the 1700s, the word’s meaning deteriorated when it became the popular description of a pimp who protected his prostitutes with violence.
In North America, distanced by the ocean, the word stayed closer to its positive origins and gave rise to the expression “bully for you,” meaning “admirable or worthy of praise.”
Why are rental accommodations called “digs”?
Digs comes from Australian gold prospectors who used the word diggings to describe their mining claims, which usually included makeshift lodgings. In 1893 digs first appeared as a slang term for rooms and small apartments in boarding houses that were strictly supervised by landladies who usually forbade visits by the opposite sex. Students have since adopted the word to describe the humble temporary places they call home.
Why do we say that somebody who speaks nonsense is “babbling”?
To babble means to speak foolishness. It is a verb rooted in the French and Scandinavian languages and was used to describe baby talk in the months leading up to a child’s first words. Babble has many different forms and circumstances, for example, squabble, blather, and charlatan, all of which, to some degree, mean “chattering and prattling nonsense.”
The Latin for babble is blatire. Babble or blatire is the word that blatant is derived from. It was coined by English poet Edmund Spenser (1552–1599) in The Faerie Queene in 1596 to describe a thousand-tongued beast representing slander.
Why do we refer to a tired story or joke as an “old chestnut”?
If a joke or expression works, especially for a comic or a public speaker, it is usually overused and is consequently called “an old chestnut.” The expression comes from a British play, The Broken Sword, or The Torrent of the Valley, written by William Dimond (1780–1837) and first produced in 1816 at London’s Royal Covent Garden Theatre. Within that play a principal character continually repeats the same joke about a cork tree, each time with a subtle variation, including changing the tree from cork to chestnut. Finally, tiring of the joke, another character, Pablo, says: “A chestnut! I’ve heard you tell that joke twenty-seven times and I’m sure it was a chestnut!”
The impact moment when the phrase likely entered the English language was during a dinner party somewhat later in the nineteenth century. At the dinner the American actor William Warren the Younger (1812–1888), who at the time was playing the part of Pablo, used the “chestnut line” from the play to interrupt a guest who had begun to repeat an old familiar joke. Coincidentally perhaps, the younger Warren’s father, also named William, was an actor, too, who for a time was associated with Philadelphia’s Chestnut Street Theater.
Why is an artist’s inspiration called a “muse”?
Many great artists have been influenced by a muse, a person whose very existence inspires them to reach beyond themselves. It literally means the inspiration a man receives from a special woman. The word muse, as it is used in this case, comes from any of the nine beautiful daughters of Mnemosyne and Zeus, each of whom in Greek mythology presided over a different art or science. Muse is the derivative of such words as music, museum, and mosaic.
The Greek Muses also gave us the English word muzzle, because before muse entered English around 1380 it was known in Old French as muser, “to ponder or loiter,” usually with your nose in the air (something all artists are familiar with). Before that the derivative in Gallo-Romance was musa or “snout.”
| Muse | Art or Science | Symbol |
| Calliope | Epic poetry | Tablet and stylus/scroll |
| Clio | History | Open chest of books |
| Erato | Love and poetry | Lyre |
| Euterpe | Lyric poetry | Flute |
| Melpomene | Tragedy | Tragic mask |
| Polyhymnia | Sacred poetry | None; she sits pensively |
| Terpsichore | Choral song and dance | Lyre |
| Thalia | Comedy | Comic mask/wreath of ivy |
| Urania | Astronomy | Staff pointing to a globe |
Why
