When discussing false origins, Everything You Know About English Is Wrong concentrates on individual words. I do take a poke at “3 sheets to the wind,” “raining cats and dogs” and a couple of other phrases that have been given false histories. For phrases, allow me to alert you to The Phrase Finder website, one of many interesting sources. There you can look up numerous phrases and their origins (and even find them grouped along such themes as “phrases from Shakespeare”), and sign up for a phrase-a-week newsletter.
Yesterday’s newsletter, for instance, pokes at “chip on your shoulder,” supposedly from placing wood chip on, yes, one’s shoulder as a dare to begin a fight. But site operator Gary Martin writes,
Anyone who might be inclined to doubt that origin can take heart from an alternative theory. This relates to working practices in the British Royal Dockyards in the 18th century. In Day and Lunn’s The History of Work and Labour Relations in the Royal Dockyards, 1999, the authors report that the standing orders of the [Royal] Navy Board for August 1739 included this ruling:
Shipwrights to be allowed to bring [chips] on their shoulders near to the dock gates, there to be inspected by officers.
The permission to remove surplus timber for firewood or building material was a substantial perk of the job for the dock workers.
In readable and interesting analysis, Martin then examines which is the actual origin of the phrase, and if you “knew” that one of the origins was right, well, everything you know about English is wrong, eh?
To read Martin’s analysis and learn the likely true origin, visit here.
By the by, the site is British, so part of the fun of the newsletter is learning about phrases that we Yanks (or at least this particular Yank) haven’t encountered before. Come a cropper? More on that anon.
A thought inspired by the recent landfall of Hurricane Gustav and my far-behind-in-my-reading of James Lee Burke’s Last Car to Elysian Fields:
Years ago I attended a business convention in the city of Elision, Louisiana.
Elision is not the name of the city, though it certainly sounds like a good Cajun name—the convention was in New Orleans. Before I left, a colleague asked me, “When you’re down there, find something out for me. Is the city name pronounced with four syllables—new-or-lee-ans—or three—new-or-leens?”
On my return, I reported: “One: nawlns.”
Elision is the act of eliminating letters or syllables when pronouncing a word. Think of libary instead of library, wershester sauce instead of worcestershire sauce, dint instead of didn’t. (The opposite—inserting letters or syllables in pronunciation, as in sherbert instead of sherbet—might be known as “anti-elision” or “confusion.” And who the hell knows what it’s called in instances like Farve instead of Favre.)
And while we’re on the topic, I hereby declare today National Elision Day. Why today of all days? It’s Wensday, of course . . .
(And, oh yeah—Arlo Guthrie? He votes for three syllables:)
I grew up in a town whose most famous native son is Frank King, creator of the Gasoline Alley comic strip (premiered 1918) once common in the Sunday comic pages. Growing up, I knew the comics section of the Sunday newspaper as the “Sunday funnies.” Certainly people in other regions called it that, too. Not that I cared, back when. As a youngster in moderately rural Wisconsin (Tomah, specifically, population 5,460 at the time), I didn’t know and therefore didn’t care that terminology might differ in other regions—I was then oblivious to such concepts as terminology and regions.
Until just recently, I had no idea that—oof-dah!—such colloquialisms as “Sunday funnies” might represent linguistics on the cusp (and maybe even at the lip of the eave trough, what some of you might know as a “rain gutter”) of language change.
Wisconsin lies at the edge of many of the most significant changes currently underway in American English. Learn more about what makes Wisconsin English remarkably distinctive and worth studying!
What? Drinking fountains the world over are now being called “bubblers“!? Maybe. Maybe not. The quote is from the Wisconsin Englishes website, where some serious stuff is going on, what-hey?:
Two major vowel changes in the US meet in Wisconsin. The eastward change is where the words caught and cot are pronounced essentially the same. The westward change is where vowels rotate in what is called the Northern Cities Shift ( bit > bet > butt > bought > baht > bat; six > sex > sucks > Saux’s > socks > sax ).
Doncha know! Allow me a juvenile giggle over the “six > sex > sucks > Saux’s > socks > sax” progression. As a native Wisconsinite, this progression makes me wonder about what really goes on in Sauk City. Methinks that sax/socksophones are not involved.
I love this site, because it takes a marvelous Everything You Know About English Is Wrong “I’m-serious-but-I-don’t-take-it-with-funereal-solemnity” attitude.
Bottom line, because it’s Sunday and we all need an injection of funnies, I’ll leave you with something I rarely promulgate (a word seldom used in the comics/funnies/funny papers)—an internet list. In the spirit of Jeff Foxworthy (with some of the verbal things prioritized), “You might be from rural Wisconsin if . . .”
You know that “combine” is a noun.
You can make sense of “upnort” and “batree”.
Pop is the only name for soda.
You know that “creek” rhymes with “pick”.
You hear someone use the word “oof-dah” and you don’t break into uncontrollable laughter.
You know what knee-high by the Fourth of July means.
You know how to polka, but never tried it sober…
You know it is traditional for the bride and groom to go bar hopping between the reception and wedding dance.
You know the difference between “Green” and “Red” farm machinery, and would fight with your friends on the playground over which was better! [Brohaugh notes: I grew up with Red, but much prefer Green.]
You buy Christmas presents at Fleet Farm.
You spent more on beer & liquor than you did on food at your wedding.
Every wedding dance you have ever been to has the hokey pokey and the chicken dance.
Your definition of a small town is one that only has one bar.
The local gas station sells live bait.
You or someone you know was a “Dairy Princess” at the county fair. [Brohaugh notes: Wasn’t me. Honest.]
You let your older siblings talk you into putting your tongue on a steel post in the middle of winter.
You think Lutheran and Catholic are THE major religions. [Brohaugh notes: Add Packer fandom—see next entry.]
Football schedules, hunting season and harvest are all taken into consideration before wedding dates are set.
Saturday you go to your local bowling alley. [Brohaugh notes: Vlasek’s Bowling Alley, to be specific. Alas, it’s no longer there.]
There was at least one kid in your class who had to help milk cows in the morning… phew!
You have driven your car on the lake.
(Side note: David Benjamin has written a superb memoir of growing up in my home town of Tomah, Wisconsin, just a few years ahead of me in the categories of school grades and age. I recommend The Life and Times of the Last Kid Picked primarily for its grace and style, then for its sharp observations on growing up in the ’50s. It’s a much better read than, say, an aged comic strip, an internet list or a snarky language blog . . .)
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primarily for its grace and style, then for its sharp observations on growing up in the ’50s. It’s a much better read than, say, an aged comic strip, an internet list or a snarky language blog . . .)
and 
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