Definition:
An imaginary place
Description:
The phrase ‘never-never land’ is linked to a creation of the Scottish playwright Sir James Barrie. In Barrie’s play Peter Pan, first produced in 1904, Peter befriends the real-world children of the Darling family and spirits them off for a visit to Never Land, where children can fly and never have to become adults. In his 1908 play When Wendy Grew Up, Barrie changed the name to Never Never Land, perhaps influenced by already existing ‘never-never’ terms, such as Australia’s ‘never-never country’ (for its sparsely populated desert interior). Even before that, however, people had already begun to refer to a place that was overly idealistic or romantic as a ‘never-never land.’
Source:
Merriam Webster Dictionary
Mar 07
daveLife, Literary, Oddities australian, english, scottish
Definition:
An imaginary place
Description:
The phrase ‘never-never land’ is linked to a creation of the Scottish playwright Sir James Barrie. In Barrie’s play Peter Pan, first produced in 1904, Peter befriends the real-world children of the Darling family and spirits them off for a visit to Never Land, where children can fly and never have to become adults. In his 1908 play When Wendy Grew Up, Barrie changed the name to Never Never Land, perhaps influenced by already existing ‘never-never’ terms, such as Australia’s ‘never-never country’ (for its sparsely populated desert interior). Even before that, however, people had already begun to refer to a place that was overly idealistic or romantic as a ‘never-never land.’
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Mar 07
daveLife, Oddities egyptian, persian, spice
Definition:
A dead person that is perserved, either artificially or naturally.
Description:
The word was derived from the Persian language. The Egyptians used resin as one of the main ingredients in perserving their dead.
The word for resin in the Persian language is ‘mumme’. The Egyptians thought that they were referring to the perserved people, and not the resin.
The name just stuck.
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Mar 04
adminLife, Oddities english, latin
Definition:
A Medieval underground prison.
Description:
The word was derived from the Latin words for ‘lord’ and ‘House’. It used to mean ‘the house of a lord’.
It later came to mean the rooms underneath the lord’s castle
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Mar 04
adminEveryday, Life, Oddities bath, children
Definition:
Be more alert, more aware.
Description:
Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children–last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it–hence the saying
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Mar 04
adminLife, Oddities english, furniture, slang
Description:
A doornail is the strike plate against which the door knocker strikes. Because it has been hit so many times, it must be dead.
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