Word Facts for May 28-June 3, 2011
Word origin for the weekend of May 28-29, 2011: lipstick on a pig - Does lipstick disguise a swinish nature? No, that's not the precise sense of this old idiom, which means something like "A leopard cannot change its spots." That is, you can try to disguise someone or something, but that person or thing's essential nature will soon reveal itself. The phrase first turns up in the early 1700s in the form "A pig in armor is still a pig." It's unknown whether any knight took offense.
Word origin for May 30, 2011: Memorial Day - The holiday now known as "Memorial Day" was first celebrated as "Decoration Day" in the late 1860s, honoring Union soldiers of the Civil War who had received medals for their service. When the holiday was extended a couple of decades later to include Confederate soldiers, it was renamed "Memorial Day" - that is, a day for remembering the contributions of the nation's armed forces.
Word origin for May 31, 2011: HBO - In 1972, an entrepreneur named Charles Dolan broadcast a film via satellite to a group of test subscribers in the city of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He had set up shop as the Green Channel, but (just before the broadcast) he changed the name to Home Box Office, which gives us the acronym "HBO." Dolan's firm expanded into New York City, then nationwide, to become a satellite and cable television pioneer.
Word origin for June 1, 2011: cruft - "Cruft" is a computer-geek term that refers to the stuff that tends to accumulate on every computer - obsolete software, dead email, code that doesn't quite work. It takes its name from Cruft Laboratory, a physics building at Harvard University, where old scientific equipment was stacked so high that researchers inside couldn't see out the windows. The word dates to about 1945.
Word origin for June 2, 2011: noodle - In the sense of "head" - as in "Use your noodle!" - "noodle" dates to the early twentieth century. It may originally have come from the language of crime, but it quickly spread into the slang of the Jazz Age, The term probably does not come from the food item, but instead from the English dialect term "noddle," referring to the back of the head.
Word origin for June 3, 2011: ennui - "Ennui" is a French word borrowed by English meaning "boredom," though its original sense is far stronger. It comes from the Latin in odio, meaning "in hate," and it is cognate with another form of the same Latin word, "annoy." Boredom is a perfectly good word to express the same thing, though "ennui" connotes a kind of spiritual malaise.
Word origin for May 30, 2011: Memorial Day - The holiday now known as "Memorial Day" was first celebrated as "Decoration Day" in the late 1860s, honoring Union soldiers of the Civil War who had received medals for their service. When the holiday was extended a couple of decades later to include Confederate soldiers, it was renamed "Memorial Day" - that is, a day for remembering the contributions of the nation's armed forces.
Word origin for May 31, 2011: HBO - In 1972, an entrepreneur named Charles Dolan broadcast a film via satellite to a group of test subscribers in the city of Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. He had set up shop as the Green Channel, but (just before the broadcast) he changed the name to Home Box Office, which gives us the acronym "HBO." Dolan's firm expanded into New York City, then nationwide, to become a satellite and cable television pioneer.
Word origin for June 1, 2011: cruft - "Cruft" is a computer-geek term that refers to the stuff that tends to accumulate on every computer - obsolete software, dead email, code that doesn't quite work. It takes its name from Cruft Laboratory, a physics building at Harvard University, where old scientific equipment was stacked so high that researchers inside couldn't see out the windows. The word dates to about 1945.
Word origin for June 2, 2011: noodle - In the sense of "head" - as in "Use your noodle!" - "noodle" dates to the early twentieth century. It may originally have come from the language of crime, but it quickly spread into the slang of the Jazz Age, The term probably does not come from the food item, but instead from the English dialect term "noddle," referring to the back of the head.
Word origin for June 3, 2011: ennui - "Ennui" is a French word borrowed by English meaning "boredom," though its original sense is far stronger. It comes from the Latin in odio, meaning "in hate," and it is cognate with another form of the same Latin word, "annoy." Boredom is a perfectly good word to express the same thing, though "ennui" connotes a kind of spiritual malaise.
Labels: 2011, computer, emails, food, greg, history, holidays, languages, noodles, page-a-day, teunis, true crime, us, visitors, war, words
posted by Flami at 2:42:00 PM
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