A WORD TO THE WISE, PART FOUR
DID YOU KNOW…
The name jeep came from the abbreviation GP, used in the army for general-purpose vehicle.
•
There are only two words in the English language ending in -gry: hungry and angry.
•
The word had can be used eleven times in a row in the following sentence about two boys, John and Steve, who had written similar sentences in their essays: John, where Steve had had ‘had’, had had ‘had had’; ‘had had’ had had the higher mark.
•
The word and can be used five times in a row in the following sentence about a sign being painted above a shop called Jones And Son: Mr Jones looks at the sign and says to the painter, ‘I would like bigger gaps between Jones and and, and and and Son.’
•
The words loosen and unloosen mean the same thing.
•
The first letters of the months July to November spell the name JASON.
The word samba means to rub navels together.
•
Cerumen is the technical term for earwax.
•
The oldest word in the English language is town.
•
The word coffee came from Arabic and meant excitement.
•
The word voodoo comes from a West African word that means spirit or deity and has no negative connotations.
•
The phrase sleep tight originated when ropes round a wooden frame were used to support a mattress. Sagging ropes could be tightened with a bed key.
•
The youngest letters in the English language are j, v and w.
•
The names for the numbers eleven and twelve in English come from the Anglo-Saxon for one left (aend-lefene) and two left (twa-lefene). They represented going back to your left hand and starting again after reaching ten counting on your fingers.
The stars and colours you see when you rub your eyes are called phosphenes.
•
No word in the English language rhymes with pint, diamond or purple.
The magic word abracadabra was originally intended for the specific purpose of curing hay fever.
WHERE’S IT FROM?
THE USE OF THE WORD ‘GAY’ TO MEAN HOMOSEXUAL
The word ‘gay’ has had a long history. In 1637, the Oxford English Dictionary gave one meaning for gay as ‘addicted to social pleasures and dissipations; of loose and immoral life’. By the nineteenth century, the word was associated with prostitutes. There wasn’t any homosexual usage of the word until the twentieth century when there are several different possibilities, including the word ‘geycat’ to describe a homosexual boy and that gay, in the sense of ‘cheerful and bright’, was probably used to describe effeminate men and it stuck. It’s not true that the usage came from the acronym ‘Good As You’ — as seen on placards in gay rights marches of the 1970s: the acronym comes from the word gay and not the other way round.