A WORD TO THE WISE, PART TWO
DID YOU KNOW…
The word quiz was allegedly invented in 1780 by a Dublin theatre manager, who bet he could introduce a new word of no meaning into the language within twenty-four hours.
Alice in Wonderland author Lewis Carroll invented the word chortle — a combination of chuckle and snort.
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Dr Seuss invented the word nerd for his 1950 book If I Ran the Zoo.
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The word queueing is the only English word with five consecutive vowels.
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Wedlock is derived from the Old English words for pledge (wed) and action (lac).
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The shortest English word that contains the letters A, B, C, D, E, and F is feedback.
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The Sanskrit word for war means desire for more cows.
Dixie is derived from the French word for 10 — dix — and was first used by a New Orleans bank that issued French-American $10 bills. Later the word expanded to represent the whole of the southern states of the US.
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SOS doesn’t stand for ‘Save Our Ship’ or ‘Save Our Souls’ — it was chosen by a 1908 international conference on Morse Code because the letters ‘S’ and ‘O’ were easy to remember. ‘S’ is dot dot dot, ‘O’ is dash dash dash.
The word freelance comes from a knight whose lance was free for hire.
The word corduroy comes from the French cord du roi or cloth of the king.
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Afghanistan, Kirghistan and Tuvalu are the only countries with three consecutive letters in their names.
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Resign has two opposed meanings depending on its pronunciation: ‘to quit’ and ‘to sign again’.
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Underground and underfund are the only two words in the English language that begin and end with the letters ‘und’.
The Chinese ideogram for trouble shows two women living under one roof.
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Only four words in the English language end in -dous: tremendous, horrendous, hazardous and stupendous.
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United Arab Emirates is the longest name of a country consisting of alternating vowels and consonants.
WHERE’S IT FROM?
CUPCAKES
There are two kinds of cupcake:
One type got its name from the fact that the cakes were baked in individual pottery cups. These cupcakes are the ones we know today: any small cake that’s about the size of a teacup.
The other kind of cupcake or, as it was known, ‘cup cake’ referred to a cake whose ingredients were measured using a standard-sized cup, instead of being weighed. So a ‘1234 cup cake’ would have been made up of four ingredients: one cup of butter, two cups of sugar, three cups of flour, and four eggs.
It’s interesting to compare these cakes based on a measure of volume (e.g. a cup) with cakes based on a measure of weight — like a pound cake.