Interesting.
Well, if it didn’t happen that way it should have......
“He didn’t have a Pot to piss or a window to throw it out of. “
That’s the only quote I used. And the Indians used brains and or oak leaves to tan hides. I believe the Europeans did the same.
Fiction.
Next question.
Sometimes at the medieval markets, unscrupulous vendors would try to pass off an inferior animal (like a common cat) for a chicken, which was considered a delicacy.
Since the transaction took place with the animal handed over in a sack, the buyer couldn’t really tell what he got until he opened the sack - if he was ripped off, that’s how the expression “letting the cat out of the bag” - meaning the truth finally comes out - originated.
A “threshhold” was a wooden barrier on a threshing floor designed to keep in the loose grain.
The canopy and side curtains of beds were to keep out drafts in the unheated rooms.
The flowers at a wedding were symbols of the bride’s purity. But flowers at funerals were indeed used to mask disturbing odors in the days before embalming was common.
But these are fun too ...
Anatoly Lieberman is the author of Word Origins And How We Know Them as well as An Analytic Dictionary of English Etymology: An Introduction. His column on word origins, The Oxford Etymologist, appears on the OUPblog each Wednesday.
And “Flash in the pan” was from old musketry where the powder was put in a “pan” to be ignited with a flint and had a flash hole drilled through to the chamber which ignited the main powder charge. Thus the resultant “poof” always preceded the actual blast from the musket. When the powder flash happened but failede to ignite the main charge it was a “flash in the pan” of brilliance followed by...nothing.
Either way it’s a good read! Thanks!
**So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell.***
I’ve found some old books with photos of such contraptions in them. One man named Batson designed one that looked like a belfry. Soon it was referred to as Batson’s Belfry. People thought he was nuts and the moniker “Bats in the Belfry” became a word for slightly crazy people.
Fascinating, but ...
The expression piss-poor is recent and has nothing to do with tanning. The current state of research suggests that it may have been invented during the Second World War, because the first examples in print date from 1946.
http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-pis1.htm
Most of them are fiction.
If not true, then these are marvelous flight of imagination.
Enjoyed reading it.
Urine was used for two things that I know of. 1: to make ammonia. 2: Black powder.
History is a white thing.
thanks for posting this
Fiction: Saved by the bell was a boxing term
Mark