Does it interest you to see how some terms originated?

COOL!!!!

Thanks for that.

Very interesting. I love this stuff!

I think I speak for all us jellies who write for income or pleasure… searching for or stumbling across the origins of words and phrases is always interesting. And fun. Thanks for sharing this.

Sure! Watch Episodes of Americas Secret Slang and learn all sorts of information about word and phrase origin.

I was wondering tonight where the expression “throw your back out” came from?

Did you forget to use your legs when you threw the baby’s bathwater out?
OMG! Where’s the baby?

It seems like an interesting site, but it’s too much for my feeble browser to handle.

Thanks All for your responses..I’m impressed..))

In college, I took an etymology class. It was fascinating. The library had a set of encyclopedias in which a student could look up a word and read about its origin and how it’s meaning adapts over time. Fortunately, there is now a similar tool available online. Etymology Online

@ibstubro “Throwing the baby out with the bath water” started from a literal sense. Back in the days of yore when there wasn’t indoor plumbing and people didn’t bathe every day, a tub would be hand-filled with water. Family members would take turns bathing in the same water, starting with the eldest and working down through the family. By the time it was the baby’s turn, the water could be so filthy that if a baby slipped underwater, it might go unnoticed until emptying the tub.

It has evolved into its figurative meaning today: Don’t get rid of something valuable while discarding unwanted items or ideas.

One of my favorite websites.

Hm. I think I shall go look up the history of the word “fluther.”—No matching terms.

Next, um, “corn” – “grain,” Old English corn, from Proto-Germanic *kurnam “small seed” Oh oh! I can see the beginnings of the word “kernel” in there too! This is my favorite thing in the whole world. Um…I mean, etymology, not corn.

This is an interesting point to think of.

@Dutchess_III L\Take a look at John Barleycorn.

All Hail John Barleycorn!

For fans of wordsmithing there’s also one of my long time favorites:
.
www.verbivore.com

Why is is it “ring, rang, rung,” “sing, sang, sung,” but NOT “bring, brang, brung?”

^^Because, English has all sorts of irregularities. You know that.

Yes, I do know that.

My 8 year old grandson tends to say “brung,” and it drives me absolutely bananas because he knows better. I think he does it just to annoy people, and it works! But then I got to thinking…..that is actually the “right” way to say the past tense of “bring.” I wonder if it fell out of common usage because of our aversion to the word “drunk,” which we now take to mean “drunk person,” (not a compliment) and not the past tense of of drink.

Right. Just like kids say I buyed it, instead of I bought it. They know past tense is adding an ed suffix for many words, and so they use that rule when trying to conjugate verbs. They use patterns, it’s actually very smart. Using the pattern shows logic, knowing the irregular conjugation shoes memory.

@Dutchess III I can’t prove it, but I have this creeping feeling that bring, brang, brung may well be legitimate. Archaic perhaps, but legitimate nevertheless. Where’s the penguin when we need her?

The reason for the differences in the various forms of these verbs has more to do with their differences than their similarities. I’m on my phone now, and can’t provide citations, but sing (sang, sung) is more closely related to sink (sank, sunk) and drink (drank, drunk) than it is to bring (brought, brought) and think (thought, thought). It has more to do with the various paths of development these words took to get to where they are now.

I do think they are legit, too, @stanleybmanly. We just don’t talk that way now, for whatever reason.

@Dutchess_III
Cædmon’s Metrical Paraphrase of parts of the Holy Scripture c 600:

ꝥ he þa bysene from gode ·
brungen hæfde ·
“that from God those mandates he had brung”