Origin of Simple Words

Cody Pomeray

^^Yeah I've looked up a few of the proposed etymologies on this thread as well, seems to be no basis for a lot of them. (But I prefer some of the versions here).

stefan idiot jones

.....don't forget the classic, 'having a crap' comes from Mr Thomas Crapper, a pioneer in flushing toilets.

Tone lowered.

Capt'n Midnight

Denial is a river in Egypt.

Duckworth_Luas

stefan idiot jones wrote: »

.....don't forget the classic, 'having a crap' comes from Mr Thomas Crapper, a pioneer in flushing toilets.

Tone lowered.

Coincidence, the word crap was in use before Mr Crapper's inventions, which did not in fact include the flush toilet!

Sin City

Football comes from kicking a ball with your foot
Handball comes from hitting a ball with your hand
Pocket ball comes from .............. Ill get me coat:D

Capt'n Midnight

Frank Black wrote: »

As an Enginner, I've often had to explain this to people who insist on asking me what is wrong with their car when I've told them what I do.

No need to spell it differently, engineer is not a protected term.:pac:

Any muppet can call themselves an engineer, don't get me started on call centres "our highly trained engineers* blah blah ..."




* Our products are [black / white / beige] and they use electricity

Duck Soup

Malaria comes from medieval Italian, meaning literally "bad air". Mal = bad. Aria = air. I don't know if they made the connection with mosquitos way back then, but they did figure out that the sickness originated around these pools of odorous stagnant water.

Strangely, the Canary Islands have nothing to do with canaries, not directly. Originally they were known as the Canis Islands, after the large population of wild dogs that lived there. The small songbird that also lived was then named after the islands.

I suppose what I'm saying is that 'canary' means 'dog'.