Posted on 05/05/2016 5:03:45 AM PDT by harpygoddess
"Hang up the phone." comes from one specific kind of land-line phone that had a kind of hook you'd hang the handset from when you were done. Doing so would pull down the hook that was connected to a switch inside the phone that would disconnect the line.
And lots of nautical stuff:
Groggy - In 1740, British Admiral Vernon (whose nickname was "Old Grogram" for the cloak of grogram which he wore) ordered that the sailors' daily ration of rum be diluted with water. The men called the mixture "grog". A sailor who drank too much grog was "groggy".
Leeway - The weather side of a ship is the side from which the wind is blowing. The Lee side is the side of the ship sheltered from the wind. A lee shore is a shore that is downwind of a ship. If a ship does not have enough "leeway" it is in danger of being driven onto the shore.
Pipe Down - Means stop talking and be quiet. The Pipe Down was the last signal from the Bosun's pipe each day which meant "lights out" and "silence".
Slush Fund - A slushy slurry of fat was obtained by boiling or scraping the empty salted meat storage barrels. This stuff called "slush" was often sold ashore by the ship's cook for the benefit of himself or the crew. The money so derived became known as a slush fund.
(Excerpt) Read more at vaviper.blogspot.com ...
Remember a few years ago some official used the word “niggardly” and the perpetually offended blacks of the day rose up in outrage .... clearly not knowing what the word meant.
Toward the recent end of my career, I worked with a lot of young military types. All of them pretty smart, but not familiar with some things. I had to explain a lot of these terms and origins to them. My favorite one was “rabbit test” for pregnancy. For all of their lives it’s been peeing on a test stick.
Did you ever have to overpunch?
-PJ
-PJ
In the winter, the milk would freeze and push up the paper top with a cylinder of frozen milk.
Backspace tape to desired position and hit “Letters”
18+ years as a TTY repairman.
-PJ
Wow, that was so long ago.... I couldn’t tell you if it smells the same or not.
But it all started with paper, a press, ink, heavy typeset, and a voracious reading public. That's what I meant to imply, not that Franklin was anything but the most remarkable man of his time. He happens to be one of my personal heroes and apparently one of yours too.
-PJ
We used to separate the foil from the paper in a chewing gum pack and collect the foil in a ball. The junkman would pay fifty cents for it.
Also we made fans out of Popsicle sticks (wove them together and then stuck one in as a handle).
Vegetable man also had a horse-drawn wagon. I remember these men as very grumpy.
The shoemaker would give us something called a landy—an old worn-out heel of a shoe—to play hopscotch with.
Oh, and I’m of Inner Hebrides Scots and German ancestry with two American Indian tribes thrown in for leavening on both sides. But I studied the language, traveled to, and did a lot of business in Japan and admire the art of their sword making. So I took on the nomme de “plume” Katana because it was the first one I tried eighteen years ago that wasn’t already taken.
Hanging chads?
Exactly, I believe it was a roach that had caused an electrical short causing a malfunction, and someone told me they actually removed the bug and taped it into a log book, but...don’t know if that is true or not!
I hear baseball announcers say "He hit it on the screws.". That's applying a golf term to baseball, but golf clubs no longer have wooden heads with the screws framing the sweet spot.
“Hell bent for leather” — riding a horse very, very fast.
In the late ‘80’s I came across some old .303 that melted the case head to the bolt of my rifle when fired.
But that's not as bad as "blowing your stack".
-PJ
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