Weird Words » slang

Zaftig

admin — Fri, 21 May 2010 17:09:46 +0000

1937, from Yiddish zaftik, literally “juicy,” from zaft “juice,” from Middle High German, saft “juice”

Word

dave — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 00:04:07 +0000

The original phrase is: Word is Bond
it was intended to be used to affirm ones promise.

Thug

dave — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 23:49:28 +0000

The word originated from India describing a band of ruthless bandits in the hills of India. These mythical bandits wore yellow (or orange) bandana which they used to strangle unsuspecting travelers. The ‘hugghi’ only kill their victims by this way.
During British occupation, the British soldiers decided to erradicate the ‘thugghi’. They found thousands of bodies burried by them. From that point on, the word ‘thug’ was used to describe someone who is ruthless.

Posse

dave — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 21:45:29 +0000

‘Posse’ started out as a technical term in law, part of the term ‘posse comitatus,’ which in Medieval Latin meant ‘power of the county.’

As such, it referred to a group of citizens summoned by a sheriff to preserve the public peace as allowed for by law. ‘Preserving the public peace’ so often meant hunting down a supposed criminal that ‘posse’ eventually came to mean any group organized to make a search or embark on a mission.

In even broader use it can refer to any group, period. Sometimes nowadays that group is a gang or a rock band but it can as easily be any bunch of politicians, models, architects, tourists, children, or what have you, acting in concert.

Gadget

admin — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 00:21:34 +0000

After the completion of the Statue of Liberty, the city of New York had a large celebration.
The owner of the company that designed the statue of Liberty, Gaget, Gaultier & Co., decided to cash in on this occasion, and made small bronze replica of the statue to sell.
It was such a popular item, that everyone was asking, ‘So, do you have your Gadget?’ referring to the small bronze replica of the Statue of Liberty.

Diamond in the Rough

admin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:40:35 +0000

John Fletcher (1624) – A Wife for a Month
‘She is very honest, and will be hard to cut as a rough diamond.’

Dead as a Doornail

admin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:38:18 +0000

A doornail is the strike plate against which the door knocker strikes. Because it has been hit so many times, it must be dead.

Cranky

admin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:24:57 +0000

In the old days, cars had to be started by a crank, instead of a starter. The term ‘cranky’ came about from having a bad day trying to crank starting your car.

Crackerjack

admin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 19:23:13 +0000

The late 19th-century pairing of ‘crack’ and ‘jack’ to form ‘crackerjack’ topped off a long history for those words. ‘Cracker’ is an elongation of ‘crack,’ an adjective meaning ‘expert’ or ‘superior’ that dates from 1793. Prior to that, ‘crack’ was a noun meaning ‘something superior’ and a verb meaning ‘to boast.’ (That verb use evolved from ‘to crack a boast,’ which came from the sense of ‘crack’ meaning ‘to make a loud sharp sound.’) ‘Jack’ has been used for ‘man’ since the mid-1500s, as in ‘jack-of-all-trades.’ ‘Crackerjack’ entered English first as a noun (‘someone or something of excellence’), then as an adjective. You may also know ‘Cracker Jack’ as a snack of candied popcorn and peanuts. The copyrighted product name dates from the 1890s.

Catch-22

admin — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 05:37:56 +0000

“Catch-22″ originated as the title of a 1961 novel by Joseph Heller. The original catch-22 in the novel was as follows: a combat pilot was crazy by definition (he would have to be crazy to fly combat missions) and since army regulations stipulated that insanity was justification for grounding, a pilot could avoid flight duty by simply asking, but if he asked, he was demonstrating his sanity (anyone who wanted to get out of combat must be sane) and had to keep flying. The label catch-22 suggested that 21 equally pernicious catches preceded it, but it was catch-22 that caught our attention and entered the language as the label for any irrational, circular and impossible situation.