Tricky Trivia

Tricky Trivia
Compiled by Mart Schnd

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“Tricky Trivia” provides you answers to some fun and interesting questions in your life and
environment. These were collected from various sources. More and more such facts will be
included in the future versions of this document. The next version with more facts will be
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“Tricky Trivia” provides you answers to some fun and interesting questions in your life and
environment. These were collected from various sources. While attempts have been made to
verify information in this publication, neither the author nor the publisher assumes any
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Mart Schnd.
Wednesday, February 23, 2005
2
Table of Contents
001. Why do we say that the police “frisk” a suspect? 13

002. Why do we call what a spider produces a cobweb? 13
003. Why don’t figure skaters get nauseous when spinning? 13
004. How do alcohol breath tests work? 14
005. Why do we say that provoking someone is “getting a rise”
out of them? 14
006. Exactly who was Nostradamus and is there anything to his
predictions? 14
007. Why do we call a drunk a lush? 15
008. Why do matadors wave a red cape at the bull? 15
009. What is a pixel and what can it do for you? 16
010. Why do we say that someone who is sincere and
trustworthy is on the level? 16
011. In the expression “kith and kin,” what’s a kith? 16
012. What are “The 12 Days of Christmas,” and what about that
song? 17
013. How do they stage movie animal fights? 17
014. Was there really a King Canute who tried to hold back the
tides? 18
015. When did anesthetics begin to be used in surgery? 18
016. Is there any kind of “lucre” besides “filthy lucre?” 18
017. Just how drastically can the weather change in half a day? 19
018. Who invented the modern lottery? 19
019. Just what kind of a cat was the Cheshire cat in Alice in
Wonderland? 20
020. Have brothers ever opposed each other for the nomination
for President of the United States? 20
021. What’s the difference between pathos and bathos? 20
022. Was Bill Clinton the only U. S. president to be involved in
a sex scandal while in office? 21
023. Why do we call extortion “blackmail?” 21
024. Who was the original Grateful Dead? 22
025. Why do we have earlobes? 22
026. Just what is a krill? 22
027. Exactly what do we mean by “the exception that proves the
rule”? 23
3
028. Why do they put that ring of salt around the top of a
Margarita? 23
029. When things go awry, why will there “be the devil to pay?” 24
030. Who invented Groundhog Day, and when? 24
031. What does your dentist do when he or she does a root
canal? 24
032. Why are social outcasts sometimes called pariahs? 25
033. Why do we sometimes call chopped meat Salisbury Steak? 25
034. What is there about light beer that makes it “light?” 26
035. If yellow is the easiest color to see, why are stop signs red? 26
036. Why do we say that a team that loses big got a real
“drubbing”? 26
037. Have any presidents kept unusual pets while residing in
the White House? 27
038. How did “beating around the bush” get to mean
evasiveness? 27
039. How did the bulldog get its name? 28
040. How can we tell what a dinosaur looked like from a few
bones? 28
041. Why do we pull the wool over someone’s eyes when we fool
them? 28
042. Why are auctioneers sometimes hard to understand at live
auctions? 29
043. Why would we say that someone is “happy as a clam?” 29
044. Why does anxiety make our palms sweat? 30
045. Why do we describe money obtained corruptly, such as
from bribes, as graft? 30
046. How does one shoe size differ from the next bigger or
smaller size? 30
047. Do any species other than human beings go through a
period of adolescence? 31
048. Why do we say that the person receiving the largest share
of something has gotten the lion’s share? 31
049. Why do sailors wear bell-bottomed trousers? 32
050. Is there really such a thing as being tone deaf? 32
051. How does a thermos bottle work? 33
052. Why do they call that thing we hang onto while walking on
stairs a banister? 33
4
053. Why are natives of Indiana called Hoosiers? 33
054. Why do we call advertising and political hype, ballyhoo? 34
055. Is carob better for you than chocolate, for which it’s often
substituted? 34
056. Why are there no seat belts in buses? 35
057. How could a starfish possibly eat a clam? 35
058. Why do we say that something open to discussion is a
“moot” point? 36
059. Why do we call unrealistic ideas pipe dreams? 36
060. Why does it mean “yes” when we nod our head up and
down, and “no” if we shake it from side to side? 36
061. Why is a leading indicator of a trend called a bellwether,
as in a bellwether stock? 37
062. Did barbershop quartets ever have anything to do with
barbershops? 37
063. When did rap music begin? 38
064. What do those weird movie credits, “gaffer” and “best boy”
mean? 38
065. What’s a papal bull? 39
066. Why don’t cats like to get wet? 39
067. Why are those strange subatomic particles called quarks? 39
068. Why do we call trying to persuade someone with a pile of
blarney a snow job? 40
069. Are there any Christians who do not celebrate Christmas? 40
070. Why do people in the military always salute each other
when they meet? 41
071. How does a bill-changing machine determine that your bill
isn’t counterfeit? 41
072. Why is a biting satire called a lampoon? 41
073. Just what is “method” acting? 42
074. Why do we say that coming upon something by accident is
“serendipitous?” 42
075. What’s the longest place-name in America? 43
076. Did the ancient Egyptians speak hieroglyphics? If not,
what did they speak? 43
077. Why is an easy mark a “sucker?” 43
078. What’s the difference between an opera and an operetta? 44
079. Why do we call uproar “pandemonium?” 44
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080. Can choreographers “write” down dance routines the way
composers write music? 45
081. Why is caviar so expensive? 45
082. How did that silent “b” get into the word “debt?” 45
083. Why do tennis balls feel fuzzy? 46
084. If you’re mistaken about something, why would you be
barking up the wrong tree? 46
085. Why is it easier to tear an article from a newspaper from
top to bottom than from side to side (try it!)? 47
086. Why do we say that if you’re annoying someone you’re
“pestering” him or her? 47
087. Why is there no channel one on broadcast TV? 48
088. What was so terrible about Ivan the Terrible? 48
089. What was the first “panic button?” 48
090. Is badminton played anywhere besides backyards? 49
091. What’s the point of daylight saving time? 49
092. We have New York State and California “champagne,” so
why isn’t there any from Italy? 50
093. Why do we joke about fools believing the moon is made
from green cheese? 50
094. Why do they call that radioactive stuff “uranium?” 50
095. Where in the world does it rain the most? 51
096. Do bananas grow on trees? 51
097. Why do light bulbs come in odd-sized wattages, such as 40
and 60 watts? 52
098. Why do we call a violent robbery a “mugging?” 52
099. Why do we call a test for authenticity or usefulness the
“acid test?” 53
100. When do bears emerge from hibernation? 53
101. Why do so many major train stations have high, often
vaulted ceilings? 53
102. Whatever happened to phone booths? 54
103. Why is the female side of something referred to as the
“distaff side?” 54
104. Why do we say that someone who is really wrong or out of
line is “off base?” 55
105. What’s the purpose of that snap-box contraption they clack
in front of a movie camera just before filming a take? 55
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106. Why is that square space in which boxers fight called a
“ring?” 56
107. Why do we say that someone who is kept in isolation is in
“quarantine?” 56
108. Is there any animal that has four horns? 56
109. How do antihistamines stop sneezing and a runny nose? 57
110. Why do we call a computer problem a glitch? 57
111. Is there any difference between a porpoise and a dolphin? 58
112. What happens if you go several nights without sleep? 58
113. Why do we call that stand that holds an artist’s canvass an
easel? 59
114. Why do we call something that’s sloppy or muddled a
“mess?” 59
115. What’s the difference between an ophthalmologist, an
optometrist and an optician? 60
116. Why do we call that suite of playing cards with the
cloverleaf symbol, “clubs?” 60
117. Why is there “snow” on the TV screen when a station goes
off the air? 60
118. Why do people who lose their temper “fly off the handle?” 61
119. Why do we call those grotesque figures on medieval
buildings gargoyles? 61
120. Why don’t we use Roman rather than Arabic numerals? 62
121. How can you tell a mushroom from a toadstool? 62
122. What is the continental shelf? 62
123. Why do we say that people who get hung up on minor
arguments are “quibbling?” 63
124. How much of a tree that’s been cut for timber actually
ends up as usable wood? 63
125. What are the northern lights? 64
126. Why do they turn off the cabin lights on planes before
takeoff? 64
127. Why do we call that children’s game hopscotch? 64
128. Why do we call a cheapskate a ‘piker?’ 65
129. Why do we associate Dalmatians with firemen? 65
130. How does one become a circus clown? 66
131. How did ‘Mister’ get to be a title of address? 66
132. Why don’t our palms get sunburned at the beach? 66
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133. Why do we sometimes call someone with below average
intelligence a moron? 67
134. Why can’t you buy cashew nuts in the shell? 67
135. Why does the president of the United States work in an
oval office? 68
136. Why do graduates wear those strange square caps with
their gowns? 68
137. Why do we say that something obscene appeals to prurient
interests? 68
138. Why might we say that someone who acts crazy has gone
‘berserk?’ 69
139. In testing new medicines, what’s the difference between a
blind and a double-blind test? 69
140. What’s the difference between an atoll and an island? 70
141. Why are those Congressional pleasure trips called
“junkets?” 70
142. Just how does a Venus flytrap eat dinner? 70
143. Why are certain four-letter words obscene while other
words that mean the same thing are not? 71
144. Do identical twins have identical fingerprints? 71
145. Who is buried on the moon? 72
146. Why do we chill white wine but serve red wine at room
temperature? 72
147. Exactly what is a calliope? 73
148. Are there any animals that never sleep? 73
149. Where did people first eat chocolate, and when? 73
150. What do hospitals mean when they say that someone’s
condition is “stable,” “serious,” “critical” or some other
melodramatic adjective? 74
151. Why do many newspapers have the word “gazette” in their
name? 74
152. Why do they play “Taps” at military funerals? 75
153. Who built the first bathrooms, and where? 75
154. Where was the U. S. state of Franklin, and whatever
happened to it? 76
155. Why do we say that someone held up from doing
something is “marking time?” 76
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156. Why do we describe as round robin a tournament in which
everyone plays everyone else? 76
157. How big does a watch have to be before it becomes a clock? 77
158. Why does the shower curtain get sucked in toward you
when you shower? 77
159. Was there really an Orient Express? 78
160. Why do we say that we’re bluffing when we try to mislead
someone? 78
161. Why do we say that an annoying person who won’t let up is
nagging? 79
162. Why do angels have halos? 79
163. Why do we describe nonsense as claptrap? 79
164. When did we start using decongestants? 80
165. Why do they refer to the hottest days of summer as the dog
days? 80
166. Has the Medal of Honor ever been won by a woman? 81
167. What road are middle-of-the-road moderates traveling? 81
168. How do they decide what to name new objects found in
outer space? 82
169. Just what is the Golden Gate that the San Francisco Bridge
is named for? 82
170. Why don’t fast food restaurants promote their desserts? 82
171. Why might we say that someone feeling out of sorts is
cranky? 83
172. Why does someone take the “minutes” at a meeting? 83
173. How come dinner knives have rounded edges? 84
174. Are there any dogs that don’t bark? 84
175. What’s the safest form of transportation? 85
176. Is there any way to fend off a shark without a weapon? 85
177. Why do we say that someone “testifies” in court? 85
178. How come a hot, humid day is more uncomfortable than a
foggy day? 86
179. Why do we say that we’re “parking” a car? 86
180. Why do we say that de-emphasizing something is soft
pedaling it? 87
181. Why is it a 10-foot pole with which we will not touch
something? 87
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182. Why are animals the featured characters in so many
children’s stories? 88
183. Why does hair turn gray? 88
184. Why does the devil have horns? 88
185. Why do we call something that achieves its end by trickery
a gimmick? 89
186. Why do we say that something boring, familiar or tiring
has left us jaded? 89
187. Just how heavy can a human being get? 90
188. What happens if a person dies after marking their
absentee ballot? 90
189. Why do footballs look so weird? 90
190. Why do we refer to something lascivious as lewd? 91
191. Why do we call a problem with a torn cuticle a “hangnail?” 91
192. Why is there more static electricity in winter than in
summer? 92
193. Why is the White House white? 92
194. Why do we say that a well-intentioned person has his or
her heart in the right place? 93
195. What’s so deadly about the Seven Deadly Sins? 93
196. Why do monkeys in the zoo spend so much time cleaning
each other? 93
197. What’s so “fulsome” about fulsome praise? 94
198. Why do we say of something we don’t believe, “tell it to the
Marines?” 94
199. What’s that lion doing roaring at the beginning of MGM
films? 95
200. Why did children’s book author Theodor Geisel change his
name to Dr. Seuss? 95
201. Why is the pipe under your kitchen sink S-shaped? 95
202. Why do we say we’re “out of touch” with someone, even if
they’re nowhere near enough to touch? 96
203. Who invented the refrigerator, and when did it first
become available to consumers? 96
204. When did terrorism first become a political weapon? 97
205. Did Julius Caesar ever eat Caesar’s Salad? 97
206. Who invented the toothbrush? 97
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207. Why do we call a man whose wife has committed adultery a
“cuckold?” 98
208. What’s the difference between a weasel and an ermine? 98
209. How does one become a saint? 99
210. What’s so “liberal” about the liberal arts? 99
211. When did they start making people who were getting
married take blood tests? 100
212. Is there any connection between “dopes” (stupid people)
and “dope” (drugs)? 100
213. Why is that stuff people smoke called “tobacco?” 100
214. Do cats always land on their feet if they fall from a high
place? 101
215. Why does yeast make dough rise? 101
216. Why do we say that a crazy person is “loco?” 102
217. Where do mosquitoes hang out and what do they do when
they’re not biting you? 102
218. How do seedless grapes reproduce? 103
219. Is there any difference between a lawyer and an attorney? 103
220. Why might we describe a burden as an albatross around
the neck? 103
221. What’s the difference between softwood and hardwood, as
in a “hardwood floor?” 104
222. What’s the doctor looking for when she taps your knee
with a rubber hammer? 104
223. Why do we call someone who provocatively criticizes, a
“gadfly?” 105
224. Who invented the microwave oven? 105
225. Which is more potent, a mixed drink or drinking liquor
straight? 106
226. What kind of a spider is a “daddy longlegs?” 106
227. Why do birds sing? 106
228. Why do we say that someone who has revealed secret
information has “spilled the beans?” 107
229. Why are people in conflict said to be at “loggerheads”? 107
230. What’s the difference between a homeopath and an
osteopath? 108
231. Why do we have wisdom teeth? 108
232. How did we come up with “$” as a dollar sign? 109
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233. Why do say that a politician talking a bill to death is
‘filibustering?’ 109
234. Is the real roadrunner anything like the creature in the
cartoon? 109
235. Why do soldiers wear their hair so short? 110
236. How come your heart muscle doesn’t get charley-horsed
from all that exertion? 110
237. Why do we say that you’re encroaching when you trespass
on someone’s space? 111
238. What English word do most people probably use more
often than any other, aside from “the,” “I,” etc.? 111
239. Have any married couples been launched into space? 112
240. Do turkeys really drown by looking up when it rains? 112
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1. Why do we say that the police “frisk” a suspect?
The cops also say they’re “patting” someone down when they check to see what they might
be carrying or concealing in or under their clothes.
Frisk entered English in the 1500s, probably from a German word that meant fresh and
lively. Over time, the meaning not only evolved, it picked up speed, as it became a verb that
meant to move lively, briskly. If you were frisky, you might even be dancing. By the 18th
century, the sense of quick and lively movement was extended in slang to the manual
dexterity exhibited by the pickpocket, whose quick hands danced deceitfully in and out of
his victim’s pockets. At the same time, the police, with different motives, were said to be
doing something similar when they nabbed and searched, or frisked a suspect.
Source: www.word-detective.com
2. Why do we call what a spider produces a cobweb?
Fancy the spider, whose rather obsessive web building has provided us with the metaphor
that describes the most powerful electronic communications network ever. Of course, we
surf while spiders spin, although like the spider we are also trying to catch something with
our web, whether it’s the news, stock prices, or just dirty pictures.
Yet although we find plenty of corny jokes on our web, we certainly don’t “cob”: why does
the spider? Cobweb was spun out from the Anglo-Saxon word, attercoppes, which means,
“poison head.” By the Middle Ages they were abbreviating that to “cop” and calling its
product a copweb. Finally it became easier to pronounce as cobweb.
Source: Who Put Butter in Butterfly... and Other Fearless Investigations into Our Illogial
Language by David Feldman
3. Why don’t figure skaters get nauseous when spinning?
The great figure skaters can make as many as six revolutions per second. Since that would
make most of us decorate the ice with our dinner, these folks must know something that we
don’t.
Indeed, they do. Skating instructors can teach even amateurs not to get dizzy in a spin, but
they must have apt pupils. Actually it’s the pupils who must have apt pupils because the
trick is in the eyes. Dizziness results from rapid eye movement as skaters focus on objects
flying by. The trick is to keep the eyes still by imagining a fixed blurred line and focusing on
it. I tried that once and imagined a buffet table. It didn’t work.
Source: Do Penguins Have Knees? By David Feldman
13
4. How do alcohol breath tests work?
There’s no way around it: drinking and driving don’t mix. But there has to be a way to
determine one’s level of sobriety, often fixed by law at a certain amount of alcohol in the
blood. That’s why anyone so childish as to ignore common sense will be pulled over by the
police and asked to play blow up the balloon.
The first breath tests, introduced in the late 1930s and in common use by the 60s, actually
used balloon-like bags containing chemicals that were turned into vinegar by breath
alcohol. If what was left in the bag after you breathed into it could go on a salad, you were in
trouble. More recently they have you breathe into an electronic device in which alcohol on
your breath fuels an electric current. If you are sufficiently lit up, the machine will be, too.
Source: How in the World? A Fascinating Journey through the World of Human Ingenuity
by Reader’s Digest
5. Why do we say that provoking someone is “getting a rise” out of them?
Sometimes there’s nothing quite so satisfying as provoking someone to get so angry, upset,
and beside themselves that they are all but sputtering. If you’re a control freak, it’s passive-
aggressive heaven. You are totally innocent and in command while they have gone for the
bait you casually tossed out and have gotten so furious they can’t think straight.
In fact, going for the bait is what getting a rise out of someone is all about. The expression
describes what happens when you go fishing and your baited hook hits the water. If you’re
lucky, a fish will spot it and come up from the depths to impale itself on your hook. You’ve
gotten a rise out of it. But poor fishy: he’s sunk.
Source: Why You Say It: The Fascinating Stories behind Over 600 Everyday Words and
Phrases by Webb Garrison
6. Exactly who was Nostradamus and is there anything to his predictions?
As the Millennium approached, almost everyone making predictions about the future
invoked the name of Nostradamus. Who was this guy?
A 16th century French doctor, Michel de Nostredame was also an astrologer. Some of his
predictions, written in a cryptic form, seemed to foretell the future. In that golden age of
astrology, Nostradamus (his Latin name) became a celebrity and was appointed a Court
physician and asked to cast the horoscopes of the King’s children. The Church condemned
his writings, but they have remained popular.
14
Nostradamus’ non-specific, poetic language probably accounts for his staying power. “The
young lion shall overcome the old,” for example, like a wild card, can mean whatever you
want it to mean. If you like Tarot cards, you’ll love Nostradamus. And who can resist anyone
whose name sounds like the first word of a medieval chant?
Source: Return of the Straight Dope by Cecil Adams
7. Why do we call a drunk a lush?
Ordinarily we apply this word to rich vegetation that luxuriously covers an area. What could
that possibly have in common with someone who never thinks of water when thirsty? Not
much, other than that plants and people who are potted may both sway in the breeze.
Lush in the alcoholic sense -- in Britain it means the drinks themselves -- most likely comes
from an English brewer whose name was Lushington. In the 19th century a number of actors
who frequented a particular London tavern even referred to themselves as “The City of
Lushington.”
Lush may also have some connection to the Old French expression, vin lousch, meaning
thick wine. Drunks sound like they have a mouthful of it when they speak.
Source: Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, 16e (Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and
Fable) edited by Adriam Room
8. Why do matadors wave a red cape at the bull?
Maybe it’s because they’re nuts. Isn’t life hard enough? Why go looking for trouble?
The conventional explanation, of course, is that they are trying to provoke the bull to
charge, to literally make him see red, the color that drives bulls bonkers. Then the matador
can do his thing, showing the bull who’s boss.
The only trouble with this is that bulls don’t know red from your Uncle Herman. Toro is
colorblind. It’s the movement of the cape that gets his attention. The color red is really
meant to provoke the audience -- a hot, blood-like color to work them into frenzy. It’s show
biz and it helps fill the arena seats. If the matador can’t do that, he’s really caught on the
horns of a dilemma, and that’s no bull.
Source: Ever Wonder Why? By Douglas B. Smith
15
9. What is a pixel and what can it do for you?
Pixels should not be confused with the imaginary, elf- or fairy-like creature in children’s
stories, such as Peter Pan. Pixies can only get you into trouble.
On the other hand, to paraphrase an old song, pixels can light up your life -- and in fact they
already do if you use a computer. The word is a combination of “picture” and “element.”
Pixels are the smallest picture elements on your computer screen. They are the thousands of
dots that, combined, bring you the image of a spreadsheet, the text of your report, or the
message that you have caused the machine to make a fatal error.
On laptop screens a defective pixel may cause a permanently off-color spot. If you
experience this, either return the computer or make that misbehaving pixel stand in the
corner. Dot’s all I have to say about dot.
Source: The Handy Science Answer Book by Science and Technology Department of the
Carnegie Library
10. Why do we say that someone who is sincere and trustworthy is on the level?
Many words we use to describe character are related to our sense of direction and position.
He’s a “straight-nosed, upright, stand-up kind of guy,” for example. Or, “she won’t mislead
you; she’s a straight talker and knows which end is up.” Clearly in this right-angle universe,
curves lead you astray and it’s not good to get bent out of shape.
Maybe that’s why they talk about people having a moral compass. On the level derives from
another instrument used to determine direction and position. It comes from the Masons,
the secretive fraternal order. They hold that the level, the tool that masons (the building
crafts people) use to make sure their work is level, represents integrity.
So if you’re on the level, we can trust you because your bricks are stacked straight. That’s
my slant on the matter.
Source: Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins by William Morris
11. In the expression “kith and kin,” what’s a kith?
From the context, which is relatedness, it obviously means something less than or at least
other than kin. So it’s certainly not about kithin’ cousins. That’s no great loss, since it’s not
terribly exciting to kith your cousin.
Actually, kith originated in Anglo-Saxon times, about 900 AD, as cyth, meaning knowledge
or information, as well as the place you came from or were most familiar with.
16
Just a century later, it began to take on a meaning similar to today. It was used to describe
those people most familiar to you. By the 14th century it had been yoked to kin in the
expression, kith and kin, which came to mean “friends and relatives.”
Kith, by the way, is related to the “couth” in uncouth, which means lacking knowledge,
crude, not kith, which I guess makes them kin - in my family, at least.
Sources: Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins by William Morris and Oxford
English Dictionary: Including Additions Series Volumes 1-3
12. What are “The 12 Days of Christmas,” and what about that song?
“Two turtle doves, three French hens,” what is this, some kind of exotic birdhouse? And
when the heck are they going to get that damned partridge out of that pear tree?
Well, “lords-a-leaping,” we sure do like to sing this nonsense. Some people even think that
it’s a secret code devised to teach English Catholic kids about their religion when Catholics
were persecuted there centuries ago. No external evidence has ever surfaced to prove this,
nor do the lyrics support the claim. We do know that the song first surfaced in an English
children’s book in the 18th century and may have originated in France.
As for the “12 Days” themselves, in the 6th Century A. D. The Second Council of Tours
proclaimed the sanctity of the period from Christmas to the Epiphany, the January 6th feast
day celebrating the visit of the Magi. That’s 12 days -- count ‘em.
Source: The Catholic Encyclopedia: Revised and Updated by Robert Broderick
13. How do they stage movie animal fights?
First, what you see is not what you get. Movie animal fights are to fighting what
“professional wrestling” is to wrestling: the fix is always in.
The closest you might see to an actual fight is when two animals that have gotten to know
each other are allowed to mix it up for a couple of seconds, not long enough to cause
damage. Several cameras shoot the scene from varying angles and the “fight” is produced in
the post-production editing room. The fight may also be simply the product of trick
photography. For example, the two animals fight with their trainers in separate scenes and
the trainers are later edited out when the scenes are combined.
Or one real animal might fight with a dummy. Come to think of it, I suppose they could have
an animal and a “professional” wrestler fight: the ultimate in fix’n and fake’n.
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14. Was there really a King Canute who tried to hold back the tides?
Don’t you just love this guy’s name? An advertising copywriter couldn’t have come up with a
better one. And trying to hold back the tides -- hey, what a stunt. It would have made the
evening news, for sure…
King Canute, who was real enough, ruled in England at the beginning of the last
millennium. The story about him and the tides is usually misinterpreted. He wasn’t trying to
defy nature. His underlings buttered him up to the point where they claimed he could hold
back the tides. He took them to the seashore to show them up. The story was recorded a
century after Canute lived by one Henry of Huntington, who either made it up or heard it
from others.
So, rooty toot, toot, there was a Canute; canow you know.
Source: Dictionary of Misinformation by Tom Burnam
15. When did anesthetics begin to be used in surgery?
Can you imagine what it might have been like to have surgery before anesthetics? “This is
going to hurt me more than it will hurt you,” the doc tells you. “Don’t put me on, doc,” you
plead, “put me out!”
The first anesthetic was whiskey, but I can’t imagine that dealing with more than, oh, maybe
a fifth of the pain. Modern surgery begins with a Connecticut dentist, Horace Wells, who in
1844 used -- don’t laugh -- nitrous oxide to dull the pain of a tooth extraction. Two years
later, after progress in developing a mechanism to deliver this painkiller evenly, surgeons
used it in removing a tumor from a patient at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
Within a year, this anesthetic technique became standard throughout the world.
Source: Facts at Your Fingertips by Reader’s Digest
16. Is there any kind of “lucre” besides “filthy lucre?”
What kind of a detergent do you suppose they use in money laundering? We can certainly
hope that it does not harm the environment, but one thing is for sure: it doesn’t work. It
never seems to get the stains out of filthy lucre.
Lucre evolved from the Latin word, lucrum. It just means money or profit. So why is it
always described as unclean? How else should we collect our pay -- in ears of corn? That’s
just the point. Filthy lucre dates back to an agricultural society when land, livestock and
crops were the measure of wealth. Money as a means of exchange was abstract, unnatural
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and evil. Maybe deep down we still believe that because the expression has stuck. Lucre is
never clean.
It’s a good thing I’m the down and dirty type. When payday comes, slip me the dough, Joe;
pay me with that bill, Phil!
Source: A Second Browser’s Dictionary (Common Reader Editions) by John Ciardi
17. Just how drastically can the weather change in half a day?
They say that everybody talks about the weather but nobody does anything about it. I do
something. On a bitter cold day I call in sick, pull the covers back over my head, and make
the world go away.
But even I might have been caught flat-footed in Fairfield, Montana on Christmas Eve, 1924.
At noon it was 63 degrees Fahrenheit, a balmy afternoon to get in that last minute shopping.
Well, I hope any shopper who was going to be out that evening spreading good cheer picked
up a pair of yak fur-lined mittens for themselves because by midnight the mercury had
plummeted to 21 degrees below zero. That’s a drop of 84 degrees in 12 hours!
Santa Claus didn’t check the forecast that Christmas, reindeered into town at night wearing
Bermuda shorts, and had to be treated for frostbite at the local hospital.
Source: Book of Answers: The New York Public Library Telephone Reference Service’s most
Unusual and Enter by Barbara Berliner
18. Who invented the modern lottery?
There are lots of references to lottery-like activities in the Bible, and the Romans used them
to sell property. In the United States today, lotteries finance education. I got an education
from my state’s lottery. Many losing tickets have taught me that I have a better chance of
winning at the track.
The people of Renaissance Florence are credited with developing the modern public lottery,
run by the state to finance its operations without raising taxes, and paying off the winners
in cash. With the formation of a united Italy in the mid-19th century, that new nation-state
also became the first country to run a national lottery.
My local diner holds a lottery with the prize of a free turkey dinner. In truth, you take a
chance whenever you eat there.
Source: The Browser’s Books of Beginnings: Origins of Everything Under and Including, the
Sun by Charles Panati
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19. Just what kind of a cat was the Cheshire cat in Alice in Wonderland?
Never trust a grinning cat like the one Alice encountered. He’s probably just trying to
distract you while he picks your pocket. And if he disappears, leaving only the grin, as he
did when Alice met him, he’s probably picking both pockets.
In reality -- a condition quite scarce in Alice in Wonderland -- there is no such feline as the
“Cheshire.” It has been suggested that Lewis Carroll, Alice’s creator, got the idea from
Cheshire cheese, once sold in England in the form of a cat that seemed to be grinning.
Another theory holds that the grin without the cat represents mathematics, Carroll’s
profession - abstract and otherworldly, at best a wispy outline of things corporeal.
I dunno. My cat not only grins, but also laughs hysterically, but only at his own jokes.
Source: Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology edited by C. T. Onions
20. Have brothers ever opposed each other for the nomination for President of
the United States?
Well, two pairs of brothers, both active in politics, with one brother in each holding the
office of President, come to mind: George and Jeb Bush and John and Robert Kennedy.
Fugedaboutit. It ain’t them.
While one could hardly call it active opposition, there were two brothers who each received
votes for the office at the Republican nominating convention in Boston in 1884. Senator
John Sherman, whose name later appeared on a famous anti- trust act, received 30 ballots
and his brother, Northern Civil War General William T. Sherman, garnered two votes. The
winner, though, was James G. Blaine. But he lost the election to Grover Cleveland and
hasn’t been heard from since.
General Sherman, by the way, was an experienced campaigner. In the 1860s he blazed quite
a trail in Georgia from Atlanta to the sea, kissing no babies but burning many barns and
bridges along the way.
Source: Political Parties edited by Gene Brown
21. What’s the difference between pathos and bathos?
It’s a trick question, right? I’m really trying to see if you know the name of the third of the
Three Musketeers. O. K., you didn’t fall for it. Clearly the first word is about how to get
somewhere and the second, how to be clean when you arrive.
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All right lexicographers, if you insist. Pathos was an ancient Greek word. It’s the arousal of
pity or sadness, typically in tragic drama.
Bathos also comes from the Greek and literally means “deep.” But it’s not deep as in “deep
thinker,” but rather deep as in the sub-basement of emotions. It’s the emotion a soap opera
might evoke. Aiming for pathos, it’s only pathetic, trite, insincere and overly sentimental.
What? Yeah, that’s it. Stop whining, you’re giving me a headache.
22. Was Bill Clinton the only U. S. president to be involved in a sex scandal
while in office?
What do you mean by ‘in’? Or ‘was’? How about ‘a’?
John F. Kennedy’s presidential hanky panky was not public knowledge till 12 years after he
died. Other presidents, such as Jefferson and Cleveland, went awry before they went to
Washington. So, the closest match would be Warren G. Harding, who played poker and
apparently, played around. At least that’s what many historians believe. Only three years
after he died in 1923, a woman named Nan Britton created quite a stink with a kiss and tell
tome, ‘The President’s Daughter.’ According to her, she and the married Harding weren’t
hanging clothes when they dallied in a White House closet. But her claims have never been
corroborated…
Harding also had a pre-presidential ‘friend’ named Carrie Phillips, whose letters to Warren
are sealed until 2014, at the behest of his heirs. Obviously, they suspect that the contents go
beyond gardening and stamp collecting.
Source: www.straightdope.com
23. Why do we call extortion “blackmail?”
Do you tip your mailman at Christmas? You don’t have to. But would you want your
neighbor to “mistakenly” receive your Frederick’s of Hollywood catalog? Accidents happen.
How about those “toys” you ordered from that torrid website?
Actually, blackmail has nothing to do with the Post Office, which screws up as a matter of
principle. It comes from “mal,” Old English for tribute or rent. Warlords in ancient Scotland
used to force farmers to pay mal as protection. Pay it and you plant your crops in peace;
don’t pay it and we plant you and you rest in peace. Blackmail took on its modern meaning
of general extortion for money in the 19th century.
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Why black? The color was often used to suggest evil, but it may also have been to
distinguish the payment, made in crops or livestock, from what was called “white” money --
coins and currency.
Source: www.wordorigins.org
24. Who was the original Grateful Dead?
No, not them. I don’t care if your hippie parents took you to their concerts when you were a
baby. Put away that long strange trip tee shirt and the Cherry Garcia ice cream. This is
about folklore, not free music.
Now don’t laugh, but the folktale goes that there was a corpse that needed burying. (You can
leave the room any time you wish.) But it was prohibited to put him under. One guy, though,
braved the ban and dug the grave to give him a decent burial. The dead person, out of
gratitude, secured a bride for his benefactor. Isn’t that romantic? I think I’ll take my
chances with the personals ads.
25. Why do we have earlobes?
Do yours hang low? Do they wobble to and fro? Can you tie them in a knot; can you tie them
in a bow? Can you wiggle them, jiggle them and make people giggle with ‘em? Or do you just
hang earrings from them, as one dangles a hanger from the rod in a closet?
Earlobes are pieces of fatty tissue, hanging like pendants from the outer ear. It’s hard to
imagine any function for them other than as an aid to accessorizing your head. But
scientists keep trying to come up with what might have been the original purpose for this
now vestigial structure. Maybe when we walked on all fours our earlobes were larger and
kept dust and dirt from our ear canals. One anthropologist even theorizes that they were
used for sexual attraction. Hey, baby, how about a little lobe? That’s so earotic.
26. Just what is a krill?
Sounds like something from a science-fiction film, doesn’t it? In fact, one could imagine
some good movie titles using the word, such as The Krill of It All and A View to a Krill.
The reality is more prosaic. This is a shrimp-like marine animal, a planktonic crustacean, of
which there are 85 species. Some are as small as one-quarter inch, although they often
22
swarm near the ocean surface in huge numbers. They tend to be bright red and when they
appear in bunches, sailors call the waters around them tomato soup.
Ironically, this itty-bitty thing constitutes the main part of the diet of the world’s biggest
animal, the blue whale. As much as four tons of these little critters have been found in the
stomach of one of the behemoths - but without the toast that the whale must have smeared
them on.
Carnegie Library
27. Exactly what do we mean by “the exception that proves the rule”?
We’ve all heard and probably repeated this expression many times. But can you explain it?
When I say it slowly, paying attention to what I’m saying, it sounds like nonsense. An
exception undercuts, it doesn’t prove a rule.
So why have we been duped into repeating this gibberish? Because it made sense at one time
when the word “proves” meant something other than what it usually means today. It used to
mean, “test,” from the Latin, probare, “prove.” The same root gives us the word “probe,”
also a test. And an exception does test a rule. If the exception is valid, the rule ain’t.
So why do we go on repeating an expression which at its heart is truly archaic? Because we

heard it from others when we were young and we imitate them, like monkeys. Here, have a
piece of my banana.
Source: Dictionary of Misinformation by Tom Burnam
28. Why do they put that ring of salt around the top of a Margarita?
I can’t confirm the rumor that this wonderful drink contains all the vitamins, minerals and
other essential nutrients a human being needs to stay healthy. But darn it, it certainly
satisfies on a warm and sunny -- or any other -- day.
As for the salt around the top of the Margarita, if you think it’s pretty, I don’t want to spoil
your aesthetic experience. If you like the way it tastes, salud! But in truth it’s there first of
all to keep you from disowning your tongue after you’ve downed your last chili pepper or
dipped the last chip into the salsa de muerta. Salt helps to dampen the fire of food that’s
hot, hot, hot. Even if you think you are a muchacho macho, Mexican food does push the
envelope when it comes to spices. The salt insures that your sense of taste survives the
experience.
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29. When things go awry, why will there “be the devil to pay?”
I always thought this was a damned rip off. Here you are having a hard time to begin with,
and then old horny-head butts in demanding some kind of compensation. What’s his fee?
They never tell you. Is it tax deductible? Ask your accountant.
Now here’s a surprise. The expression has nothing to do with Lucifer! Once again we return
to the days of sailing ships. The seams on these old wooden vessels were called devils.
Caulking or sealing the seams was known as “paying” them.
The only way you could get at the devil to pay it was to bring the ship in at high tide so that
the bottom rested on the sand. But if you didn’t work fast enough and the tide went out, you
still had the devil to pay but no way of doing it. Hell of a spot!
30. Who invented Groundhog Day, and when?
So this is what three millennia of philosophical, religious and scientific thought have
brought us to in the progression of Western Civilization. With super-computers running
complex weather-forecasting models in real time, we ask a two-foot-long member of the
squirrel family to consult its shadow on the length of winter.
In truth, the groundhog, or woodchuck, is a stand-in for the badger, which German farmers
in the 16th century first relied on for long-term forecasting. (The farmers had too much
gassy red cabbage for dinner on those long, cold winter nights, no doubt!).
The custom may have even more ancient origins in a similar pagan ritual called Imbolc that
occurred in the dead of winter. But the ancient pagans were decent enough not to bother
any hibernating animals in the process. Maybe they just relied on their super-computers.
Source: The World Book Encyclopedia by World Book Inc. and Just Curious About History,
Jeeves by Jack Mingo and Erin Barrett
31. What does your dentist do when he or she does a root canal?
You mean aside from inflicting mental and physical anguish? Do you really think there’s a
purpose beyond the good doctor’s expression of deep, dark sadistic impulses?
Sorry, I had a root canal recently. I’ll calm down and tell you what I know.
Root canals differ from filled cavities in how far down they go. If your tooth is infected right
through to its insides, or if it’s damaged, the only way to save it is to “fill” it down to the
24
bottom. The dentist has to drill through the enamel, and through the dentin - living tissue -
below it, into the crown’s pulp chamber where the nerve is located. He then removes the
nerve and completely fills the chamber or “canal,” to the root.
Heck, I lose my nerve EVERY time I go to the dentist!
Source: How Do They Do That? By Caroline Sutton
32. Why are social outcasts sometimes called pariahs?
Remember the kid in high school who thought his plaid pants and Hawaiian sports shirt
combination looked snazzy? Or the diligent kid in chemistry class who reported to the
teacher everyone he noticed sharing homework? Remember how they couldn’t find a table
that would take them in the lunchroom?
I know you had more colorful names for them, but in polite society they are pariahs, social
outcasts. We should probably spell outcastes, with an “e,” because it’s the caste system of
India that gives us the word. “Pariah” literally means a drummer, a lower caste man who
kept the beat during festivals -- someone with whom one didn’t socialize.
Why do you suppose rhythm was so low in the pecking order? It’s a pretty downbeat way of
looking at life.
33. Why do we sometimes call chopped meat Salisbury Steak?
Since a hamburger contains no ham -- and hopefully, no horse -- I suppose we could label
any other version of chopped meat in any way we wish. This particular nom de hash,
however, has a specific historical origin.
Hamburgers were named for the Germany city of Hamburg, where they supposedly
originated. Salisbury Steak also has a German connection. But it was named not after
anything German but rather to make it sound as un-German as possible.
Feelings against Germany ran so high during and after World War I that efforts were made
to rid English of German names. Sauerkraut, for example, became “victory cabbage.” And
hamburger steak was renamed Salisbury Steak, after Dr. James Salisbury, who had extolled
the health benefits from eating chopped meat. When feelings cooled off, victory cabbage
went kaput. But Salisbury Steak is still on the menu.
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34. What is there about light beer that makes it “light?”
Often on a Sunday, when I was young, after a big noontime meal, my father would get
moderately hungry in the early evening and would ask my mother to make him “something
light.” “How about feathers?” she would respond.
I wouldn’t want to bench-press a couple of cases of light, any more than regular, beer. The
only beer-hoisting I like is accomplished with the bent elbow, a glass or bottle at a time. But
the content, not the weight, is the issue. Simply put: Light - or “lite” -- beer has fewer
calories and is less filling than the straight kind because it has less alcohol.
Problem: If you need a little light-headedness after a heavy day, one light beer won’t do.
You need at least two. In fact it’s so easy to drink light beer -- you need more to lighten up --
that you may unwittingly turn out your lights.
35. If yellow is the easiest color to see, why are stop signs red?
Well there’s a possible psychological explanation. Car-bound cowboys might see a yellow
stop sign as a challenge to their manhood. If you give in to the traffic rules you don’t have
the guts to risk instant death. Stop and you’re as yellow as the sign.
Actually that’s not too far off. Psychology is what the color of the sign is all about. Red
causes excitement, heightened awareness, and possibly even suggests sex to some people. In
other words, drivers are likely to notice it and pay attention.
Then there’s the aversion factor: red also conjures up blood. Do you really want your face
and body rearranged to resemble an abstract expressionist painting? You can apply the
brakes, or suffer the breaks.
36. Why do we say that a team that loses big got a real “drubbing”?
Sportswriters seem to be prone to oral sadism. For example, when a strong team plays a
weak one the dominant club may eat the lesser team alive, chew them up and spit out the
leftovers.
Drubbing is a word that also echoes the spirit of the Marquis de Sade. But its origins are
Arabic. And anatomically it is as far from oral sadism as you can get, unless you tend to put
your foot in your mouth.
26
It originates with Sir Thomas Herbert, who in the 17th century coined it from “dararaba”
while traveling in Arabia. This charming custom, like that of the Spanish bastinado,
involved torture by beating a person on the soles of their feet until they confessed: if you
ever again want to walk the walk, you had to talk the talk.
Source: The Secret Lives of Words by Paul West
37. Have any presidents kept unusual pets while residing in the White House?
Bill Clinton and George W. Bush are middle-of-the-roaders when it comes to pets. Each has
had the conventional dogs and cats. But has anything ever slithered or waddled through the
Oval Office? (I heard that! Keep politics out of this.)
Let’s see, how about silkworms? Louisa Adams, wife of John Quincy Adams, raised them.
While some presidents have kept mistresses, in the early 20th century President William
Howard Taft kept a cow. Years ago there were even turkeys at the White House. (There you
go again! I didn’t say IN the White House.)
Teddy Roosevelt, who loved to look at animals when he wasn’t shooting them in large
numbers, had a guinea pig named Father O’ Grady and a snake named Emily Spinach. And
you thought the zoo was at the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue!
Source: Just Curious About History, Jeeves by Jack Mingo and Erin Barrett
38. How did “beating around the bush” get to mean evasiveness?
First let there be no misunderstanding. This phrase has nothing to do with the way some
critics of the recent U. S. presidential election have greeted the man who was judged to be
the winner. The expression goes back hundreds of years.
When was the last time you went boar hunting? I thought so. You should know, therefore,
that while shooting boars could be terribly satisfying to the noblemen who hunted them,
getting too close to these sharp-toothed pigs in their own habitat was not. So the bores, uh,
noblemen had young men beat the bushes to flush the boars into the open.
These young guys weren’t stupid. They often evaded danger by beating near or around the
bushes instead of in them, where they were supposed to be. Hence the phrase.
27
39. How did the bulldog get its name?
Did you know that Great Britain has a national dog, and that this one is it? It’s also the
Royal Navy’s official mascot. You can’t get much more British than that.
Fortunately the British game these days is cricket, and not the sport from which this dog
derives its name. In the Middle Ages this breed was used for bull baiting, a rather simple
activity: Tie up a bull, let a bunch of dogs loose on it, and watch the bull get ripped to
shreds. Not very cricket, at all, I’d say. (I, for one, don’t even like fish baiting.)
The bulldog, pretty tenacious to begin with, was bred for viciousness to make it excel at bull
baiting and at bearbaiting, which I suppose they held in reserve for times when they ran out
of bulls. Today the breed is gentler, although it retains its fierce appearance. About the only
thing it will rip to shreds now is a doggie biscuit.
Source: The World Book Encyclopedia by World Book Inc.
40. How can we tell what a dinosaur looked like from a few bones?
Maybe paleontologists are just making it up. Why do we believe their stories of huge
prehistoric reptiles? What’s the latest? Humongosaurus? The whole thing might be a
fraternity prank, and Jurassic Park, a good place for a Sunday picnic.
We believe them -- some of us do, at least -- because their reasoning is perfectly plausible.
Bones are like machine parts -- their shape, size and structure tells us what part of a body
they come from, and the kind of work that part could have accomplished. We know this
from studying the skeletons of creatures for which we do have living examples. By analogy,
the big bones that have been unearthed from creatures no longer with us suggest the size,
shape and strength of the critters from which they came. Think big!
Say, imagine that we had no living chickens and someone found a wishbone. What would
they surmise, that it came from a Wishosaurus?
41. Why do we pull the wool over someone’s eyes when we fool them?
Because we want them to feel sheepish about being fooled? Because it will make their eyes
itch and they won’t see us fooling them? Because if one minute they have no wool over their
eyes and the next minute they do, it will get them all wigged out?
The answer is “C,” sort of. The wool in question was originally part of the wigs worn by
judges to enhance their dignity. Unfortunately for the judges, the wigs often slipped around
28
and sometimes slid down over their faces. How dignified could you be, even in black robes,
if your face suddenly looked like a sheep’s… hindquarters?
The expression was generated by - who else? - lawyers, who used the image of wool over the
eyes to signal that they had outwitted the judge. Justice is blind, indeed!
42. Why are auctioneers sometimes hard to understand at live auctions?
Auctioneers often sound like they’ve been smoking wacky weed. Every once in a while a
word or number comes through, but the rest sounds like a chant by the high priest of some
very weird cult.
There are several reasons for the strange patter. If the auction is confined to a single type of
merchandise, such as tobacco, there may be references that only people in the business
would understand. In general, auctioneers also speak quickly because often there’s lots of
stuff to sell in a limited amount of time - it’s not a store where people shop at leisure over
an extended period.
But how about what sounds like gibberish? Those are the “filler” words, just a little excess
verbiage to give people time to decide if they want to raise their bid, while the rhythm of the
chant is psychologically designed to encourage them to do just that.
Source: How Do Astronauts Scratch an Itch? : An Imponderables Book (An Imponderables

Book) by David Feldman
43. Why would we say that someone is “happy as a clam?”
Do you ever get the feeling that whoever invented this expression was playing a little shell
game with us? How can you tell when a clam is happy? Can you see it smiling? Do you hear,
perhaps, a few giggles, a chortle or two, a sigh of satisfaction?
The key to understanding what’s going on here is that invariably you are hearing only half
the expression. The whole thing is, “Happy as a clam at high tide.” That’s when the mollusks
are safe from clam diggers, who at low tide can walk out into the clam’s habitat and
volunteer the little fellows for someone’s chowder.
In other words, if you’re a clam and the tide is out, you could end up in hot water. When the
tide is in, the world is your oyster.
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44. Why does anxiety make our palms sweat?
If your palms weren’t so exposed to the surrounding air you would probably have to rub
them with deodorant every morning. That’s because you have more sweat glands there than
anywhere else. (And a phrase such as “I’ve got to hand it to you” would take on a new and
less friendly meaning.)
Why did sweat glands proliferate on our palms? We can probably blame evolution. There
was a time, say tens of thousands of years ago, when our ancestors didn’t react to anxiety by
reaching for a pill. Instead, they grabbed the limb of the nearest tree and started climbing
for their lives. In those days stress meant a big, hungry animal, not car payments, corporate
mergers, or choosing between a Merlot or Cabernet to accompany a meat dish. Tree
climbing was a life-preserving skill enhanced by moist palms that helped one get a grip on
things.
45. Why do we describe money obtained corruptly, such as from bribes, as

graft?
Now pretty Standard English, “graft” evolved as an American slang word late in the 19th and
early 20th centuries. Urban politicians discovered that licenses, easements, contracts and
the like were worth money to those seeking them. In the tradition of the free market, buyer
and seller came together in an informal economy, the politician profiting in the form of the
big boodle (a slang term I like even more than graft).
Strangely enough graft, an unsavory, underhanded, under-the- table activity, appears to

have had a peculiarly positive, organic, life-affirming etymology. The comparison that
produced it involves the practice of taking part of one plant and adding it to, or grafting it
onto another. Similarly, politicians added extra, dishonest perks onto the privileges already
inherent in their position, producing graft.
The more appropriate comparison, of course, would have been to the manure that fertilizes
a plant.
46. How does one shoe size differ from the next bigger or smaller size?
Admit it: They never tell us what the difference is and we never ask, right? We’re just like
cattle. Well, OK, I suppose we’re really more like horses, which also wear shoes, but then
the expression doesn’t deliver the idea of being passively led.
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Originally measurements of all kinds were based on body parts. A foot, for example, was the
length of a person’s foot. But whose foot? Now you’ve stepped in it. For centuries such
measurements, including shoe sizes, were not standardized. The Romans took the first step
in setting things right. They discovered that barleycorns tended to be of uniform length and
decided that three of them in a row equaled an inch. Early shoemakers used one barleycorn,
or a third of an inch, for size increments. And that’s where it still stands today.
Now you want to know about widths? Give ‘em an inch and they take . . . .
Source: A World of Imponderables: The Answers to Life's Most Mystifying Questions

(Imponderables Series) By David Feldman
47. Do any species other than human beings go through a period of adolescence?
First let’s acknowledge that the application of such expressions as slothful and piggish to
teenagers in no way implies that these metaphorically abused animals have themselves
nothing better to do on a Saturday night than drive around aimlessly, dripping pizza sauce
on their jeans.
That doesn’t mean, though, that we are necessarily the only species designated by nature to
suffer adolescent antics. While we have no record of rhesus monkeys asking for the car keys
or maxing out their parents’ plastic at the mall, they do seem to experience a teenager-like
period. At least the males do. Upon attaining puberty, they leave their troop to hang with
other young males and, oh, do they party! Then, after sowing their wild oats, they rejoin a
troop and settle down, ready to engage in adult monkey business.
Sound familiar?
Source: Why Things Are & Why They Aren’t by Joel Achenbach
48. Why do we say that the person receiving the largest share of something has
gotten the lion’s share?
Do you think it’s always desirable to get the lion’s share? Suppose you are the one who
receives the lion’s share. How do you think the lion feels about it? Would you want him to
share his feelings with you?
Most people probably assume that the expression stems from the idea of the lion being king
of the beasts, the most ferocious and powerful individual in the jungle. Like the 800-pound
gorilla, he always sits where he wants and takes as much as he chooses.
That’s the right spirit, but the phrase’s origin is more specific. In an Aesop fable a lion, a
cow, a sheep and a goat form a hunting party. They kill a deer and the lion divides it into
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four equal parts. He takes three of the parts - the lion’s share -- and lets the others divide
one.
Would YOU question his arithmetic?
49. Why do sailors wear bell-bottomed trousers?
We know that the reason is not, “Because they’re caught up in 60s nostalgia.” Sailors got
there first, and with them it was never merely a matter of style.
It figures that any prominent feature of a military uniform is there for its usefulness, and
that’s the case here. For one thing, bell-bottoms make it easier to roll up one’s pants when
swabbing the deck is the order of the day. Sailors have been doing that since the beginning
of history.
This style of pants-leg also facilitates getting the pants off quickly. Wipe that grin off your
face, we’re talking here about what happens if a sailor suddenly finds himself overboard and
needs to swim, free of encumbrances. We’ll discuss how sailors behave on shore leave some
other time.
50. Is there really such a thing as being tone deaf?
It’s real. The aural equivalent of being color blind, tone deafness means that everything
sounds as if it’s in a monotone. You can’t tell one note from another. You can’t appreciate
your spouse singing in the shower, listen to Wayne Newton, or tell the difference between
TV commercial jingles. Well at least it has SOME compensations.
In fact, although people use this expression with some frequency, the condition is relatively
rare. Those who do have it have trouble not only distinguishing one note from another but
also even the inflection in someone’s voice. It makes communication difficult.
By the way, don’t confuse it with being phone deaf. That can result from having a cell phone
pressed to one ear all day while absorbing traffic sounds with the other ear. Finally you
can’t hear a beepin’ thing.
Source: Just Curious About Science, Jeeves (Ask Jeeves) By Jack Mingo and Erin Barrett
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51. How does a thermos bottle work?
When I was a kid my mother warned about dropping the thermos bottle she packed in my
lunch box. She feared broken glass, a nuclear chain reaction, who knows? One day I
smashed open my thermos to find out - in the interest of science, of course.
I lived to tell the tale: There is a double glass bottle inside the container. Glass conducts
heat poorly, as does the cork that seals the thermos. These materials help to keep what’s
inside at a constant temperature.
There is a near vacuum between the inner and outer bottles because heat can be transferred
through the movement of air molecules -- convection. With little or no air, there is little or
no change of temperature.
Heat also radiates between surfaces, even in a vacuum. That’s why the bottles are given a
silvery coat, to reflect, not absorb heat. Break open yours and see for yourself.
52. Why do they call that thing we hang onto while walking on stairs a banister?
Did you ever slide down a banister when you were a kid (I trust you haven’t done it lately)?
If you think you did, think again.
A banister is only one of the vertical posts that hold the rail that we hold onto, not the rail
itself. The word is a corruption of “baluster,” which in turn was derived from the Italian
word “balaustra.” And that is Italian for a wild pomegranate blossom.
I’m sure it’s obvious where we’re going, but I’ll fill in the blank for those of you who are
slow. Banisters carved in the Italian Renaissance resembled that plant part.
So what WAS it you slid down as a kid, almost giving your mother a heart attack? Posts and
rail together is technically a balustrade. And I hope you didn’t rip your pants.
Source: Fabulous Fallacies: More Than 300 Popular Beliefs That Are Not True by Tad Tuleja
53. Why are natives of Indiana called Hoosiers?
If this word had come from a local dialect in which some words are blended into others to
shorten them, then it would be the perfect word to describe natives of Brooklyn, New York.
That’s where school kids ask each other, “hoosier teacher?”
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Actually, the best theory of the origin of Hoosier is that it IS dialect - Cumberland dialect.
In the early 19th century “hoozer” meant “big” to the people who came over the Cumberland
Mountains and settled in Indiana.
And why big? Beats me. Indiana is not an especially big state, and the usage predates the
invention of basketball, the state passion, in which very big people run around in their
underwear. Maybe the whole thing was a mistake. Perhaps somebody just misheard
something someone said. Anyone knows the Cumberland dialect for “flat?”
Source: Americanisms: A Dictionary of Selected Americanisms on Historical Principles

edited by Mitford M. Mathews
54. Why do we call advertising and political hype, ballyhoo?
Ballyhoo is such a marvelous word and it sounds so appropriate that one might guess it was
made up because it sounds just like what it is. But that guess would be entirely wrong,
which is the sort of thing that makes word origins so intriguing.
Imagine that you are off in the village of Ballyhooly in County Cork, Ireland. Now cover your
ears. You see, the village was famous for its argumentative residents, who would debate
loud and long and with great passion about almost anything. So famous were they for this
cacophony - not to mention, hot air - that loud arguments and speeches anywhere were
compared to the goings on at Ballyhooly. In time, the last two letters were dropped, making
it a noun. Eventually it was applied to the high-decibel, low-content communication style
frequently found on Capitol Hill and Madison Avenue. At its worst, of course, that’s really
ballyhooey.
55. Is carob better for you than chocolate, for which it’s often substituted?
Please note: this is not about chocolate’s power to restore the soul, cleanse the spirit, bring
enlightenment and turn you on. Nothing else on this planet can do that.
No, this is more mundane - you know calories, sugar content, nutrition, etc. And on that
count the answer is clear: no, it isn’t inherently better for you than the original.
BUT, although carob, prepared from the ground and roasted pods of the carob tree, does not
differ enough in sugar and other content to make a difference, it does taste sweeter than
chocolate before both are processed. So you need to add less sugar to a recipe in which you
substitute carob for chocolate. Hence it’s presence in “health” food.
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Final thought: What, then, are you going to do to add life to the years you think you’ve
added to your life by eating carob?
56. Why are there no seat belts in buses?
These days there are seat belts on school buses in many areas of the United States,
mandated by law. But the vehicles used by the general public are still beltless. Given the way
many urban bus drivers maneuver in heavy traffic, you might think this is a subtle attempt
to winnow out the population, lowering its average age.
But the reasons are much more ordinary. The main one is that adults can’t be coerced into
using belts in the way that kids can. You can’t keep an adult after school or threaten to call
the parents in for a little talk. Some localities have tried to get adults to use belts on buses,
but they just won’t buckle up.
Another reason you hear is that installing belts would add to the cost of building a bus. But
you don’t think that lower profits or higher cost would be a factor, do you?

57. How could a starfish possibly eat a clam?
Yes, “If it’s hungry, it could,” is an acceptable answer. But not with great ease, one would
conjecture, given what both sea creatures look like. So how do those spiny, five- armed
thingies do it?
The answer is that while starfish are very decorative when viewed from the top, they are all
business when seen from the bottom. There are tiny suction tubes on each arm. Clam up as
it may, the star-crossed mollusk doesn’t have a chance. The starfish latches on to both
halves of the clam’s shell and pulls each in the opposite direction. “Open wide, little clam,”
says the starfish, and open it does. Then slurp, slurp, and there’s one less clam on the
seabed.
Shucks, isn’t nature wonderful?
Source: How a Fly Walks Upside Down... and other curious facts by Martin M. Goldwyn
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58. Why do we say that something open to discussion is a “moot” point?
This is the kind of thing they deal with often in law school where, being apprentice lawyers,
they discuss and argue about everything, preparatory to billing clients $500 an hour. In law
school they even use moot as a verb, as in “to moot.” You know, I moot, you moot, she
moots. Whole lotta’ mootin’ goin’ on.
So why do they meet to moot? Because in the Middle Ages, when points were often made
with battle axes rather than briefs, the word “mod,” pronounced like moot, meant a
meeting. It came from a still older word, “metan,” meaning the same thing. Moot is really
just a modernizing of “mod.” At a meeting, of course, one discusses things, so points raised
there are moot.
And you probably thought that someone using this word was just being a snoot.
59. Why do we call unrealistic ideas pipe dreams?
Because only drips and plumbers have them? Hardly.
To understand the origins of the expression, imagine that in the 1960s a similar phrase
likened unrealistic ideas to the kind of distorted thinking engendered by using LSD. The
drug was often supplied on a sugar cube, so unrealistic ideas could have been called “sugar
cube fantasies.”
The 19th century equivalent of LSD was the hallucinogenic drug opium, imported into
Europe from Asia. It was widely used in certain literary circles in Britain. Opium was
smoked in a pipe and once under the influence, people had strange visions. But they were
only pipe dreams.
60. Why does it mean “yes” when we nod our head up and down, and “no” if we
shake it from side to side?
Imagine how many misunderstandings there have been throughout history because someone
happened to be trying to flex a stiff neck or perhaps shake a fly off his or her ear. How many
wars and multimillion-dollar contracts owe their genesis to some sleep-deprived negotiator
nodding off for a second?
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Nevertheless, a nod or a shake is the body language signal we use and they seem to be
universal. How can that be? What is there in our biology that would make this body
language “natural” for everyone? As best we can tell, it comes from breast-feeding. Babies
seeking a breast on which to suck make a nodding motion, which mother and child both
understand as a positive gesture. Infants shake their head away from the breast when
they’ve had enough or aren’t hungry.
I wonder if my behavior when I don’t get my way, throwing a tantrum, is also universal.
61. Why is a leading indicator of a trend called a bellwether, as in a bellwether

stock?
Do you remember that investment newsletter that only cost you $500 a week? The one once
told you that investing in Internet stocks would let you retire at age 28? You know, the one
that touted a security called No-profits- now-but-wait-for-the-next-life.com as an Internet
bellwether stock?
Feeling a little sheepish now that its former CEO is shining shoes for a living? How would
you feel if I told you that the “wether” in bellwether is a castrated sheep, the one the rest of
the pack follows? It’s a fact. The bell around it’s neck tells the shepherd where all the sheep
are headed. Hence our use of “bellwether” as a leading indicator.
By the way, please don’t fall prey to the common misspelling of this word, “bellweather,”
which could only mean “it’s a fine day for ding-dongs.”
62. Did barbershop quartets ever have anything to do with barbershops?
You’ve surely seen barbershop quartets on TV or in the movies. You know, four guys
wearing straw hats, harmonizing on such Stone Age favorites as “Sweet Adeline,” “Down by
the Old Mill Stream,” or “Sweet Genevieve.”
American as apple pie, right? Well, as British as shepherd’s pie is more like it. In
Shakespeare’s time a barbershop was a male hangout as well as a place to get one’s haircut.
Guys being guys, they indulged in a little Elizabethan doo-wop while awaiting the snip-snip,
with someone strumin’ and pluckin’ on a lute. That’s where it all started.
Flash forward to barbershops in the American West in the late 19th century. Substitute a
banjo for the lute. Add a little man-talk one wouldn’t use at home, a copy of “The Police
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Gazette” (Playboy with long underwear), and some good harmonizing. The haircut was
almost incidental. Next best thing to a bar, hummmmmm.
Source: The Oxford Companion to Popular Music by Peter Gammond
63. When did rap music begin?
Begin? Where you been? The latest, the greatest. Magnifyin.’ Non-stop signifyin.’ Truth
from art, playing its part. Now you want the start?
The roots of rap are in African-American culture’s powerful oral tradition. That means the
blues and gospel music, the black church and its minister’s cadenced sermon. It draws from
the “dozens,” the ghetto verbal duel of insults and retorts. You can even hear it in the civil
rights movement. (Danny Simmons, father of Russell Simmons of Run-DMC, motivated a
busload of demonstrators in the 1963 March on Washington with witty, biting, sometimes
rhyming patter -- I have it from a firsthand source.)
Disco DJ’s brought it into the commercial realm, rapping over recorded music. The Sugar
Hill Gang’s “Rapper’s Delight” (1979) is said to be the first rap recording.
64. What do those weird movie credits, “gaffer” and “best boy” mean?
At the movies I sit through the credits right through to the copyright notice, just before the
house lights go on. You, too? But until now all I knew about a gaffer was that the word
means an old man. Why, then, does every film employ one? To remind the rest of the cast
that they won’t be young forever?
Actually, the gaffer is the head electrician, who lights the sets for the director of
photography. Why do they call him a gaffer? Beats me, but I suppose its better than
“wirehead,” “bulbbunny,” or “filamentphil.”
As for the best boy, he hasn’t won any popularity contest. Far from it. He’s the gaffer’s
helper, a mere assistant, which makes him a not-quite-gaffer-grade kind of guy. If he’s a
she, she’s called - I dunno, “Ms. best boy?”
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65. What’s a papal bull?
Holy cow, you don’t suppose that the Pope raises livestock as a hobby! After all, with all his
heavy responsibilities, he has to relax somehow. Then again, if he did keep a bull, all those
cardinals walking around wearing red could create some problems.
In fact, that kind of bull has nothing to do with it. A papal bull is a document in which the
Pope presents his views on a significant subject. Catholics are supposed to give it serious
thought. Traditionally, this document became official once it received the papal seal --
which in Latin was called the “bulla.” Over time . . . you guessed it.
To repeat, the Pope keeps a seal, not a bull. And after all, is this not fitting for the man who
follows in the footsteps of St. Peter, “the fisherman?”
66. Why don’t cats like to get wet?
Not only do cats not like to get wet, they don’t like being asked about it either. Nor do they
invite your attention to any of their habits. They are totally independent creatures and will
pay you no heed whatsoever - except, of course, at mealtime.
But they do want you to know that rumors to the contrary, they are not afraid of water. In
fact, bigger cats, such as tigers, actually enjoy swimming. So why do Sylvester, Fluffy, [your
cat’s name here] and other house cats never go for a dip?
Simply because its inconvenient. Did you ever notice how obsessive cats are about cleaning
themselves in general, and cleaning off anything that gets on them in particular? If they go
for a swim, they would have to lick all that water off their fur. With their busy schedules,
they just can’t be bothered: So many mice, so little time!

67. Why are those strange subatomic particles called quarks?
Envy your grandparents. All they had to cope with were neutrons, protons and electrons -
the big, uh, tiny three. Now we’ve got bosons, gluons, mesons… Atomic particles are
beginning to sound like National Hockey League expansion franchises.
But when it comes to names, quarks, the building blocks of subatomic particles, really take
the cake (or would if they could find one small enough). A physicist, Dr. Murray Gell- Mann,
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who got the word from a passage in James Joyce’s Finnegan’s Wake, named them in the
mid-1960s. If you’re British, you may recognize Quark as a brand of cream cheese.
Cream cheese! Say, if we ever discover that quarks collide with another, unknown particle,
let’s call the new quark- smeared particle a “bagel.” Back to basics!
68. Why do we call trying to persuade someone with a pile of blarney a snow
job?
Because if they’re smart they’ll recognize that it came from a flake? It will leave them cold?
They’ll white it out?
Lest you think this meteorological meandering is drifting off-topic, I assure you that the
expression really is based on winter weather. The key concept is to overwhelm someone. A
heavy snowstorm does that by dumping enough snow around you so that you can’t shovel
your way out. It just keeps mounting up.
When you do a figurative snow job on someone, you’re dumping enough superfluous facts,
adjectives, nonsense and sheer verbiage on them that they can’t dig their way through it. An
effective snow job doesn’t give a person time to think, so busy are they trying to shovel out
from under the deluge.
69. Are there any Christians who do not celebrate Christmas?
Retailers who depend on Christmas gift sales for a major part of their annual profits
probably consider this a rather un- Christian way to behave. And indeed there is a group
that falls into this category, if one classifies Jehovah’s Witnesses as Christians.
The Witnesses do not believe in the divinity of Jesus. But they rank Him just under God and
do believe in the teachings of the Old and New Testaments. Founded in the United States in
the 1870s, they base their creed on a passage from Isaiah (43:12): “Ye are my witnesses,
saith Jehovah, and I am God.” They observe holidays only when the Bible literally says to do
it and it says nothing about celebrating Christmas.
So, it’s safe to say that Jehovah’s Witnesses may never help to jump-start the economy, at
least not where holiday shopping is concerned.
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Source: Just Curious About History, Jeeves by Jack Mingo and Erin Barrett, Encyclopedia
Britannica and The World Book Encyclopedia by World Book Inc.
70. Why do people in the military always salute each other when they meet?
They can’t be shielding their eyes from the sun, the better to see each other, because they
salute indoors and after dark, as well. Nor can it be some form of elbow aerobics, because a
mere one repetition would have little value.
In fact, it’s based on tradition. The handshake upon meeting came from the custom of
showing the other person that you carried no concealed weapon. The salute originated with
the medieval knight, who pulled up his visor to reveal his face and show he was a friend. It
evolved into a widespread custom of nodding or tipping one’s hat as a greeting, and in the
military became the more formal salute.
Servicemen and women learn to put snap into their salute. But don’t overdo it if you join up.
You lose face if you knock yourself unconscious in front of an officer.
71. How does a bill-changing machine determine that your bill isn’t counterfeit?
Do you, like me, take it personally when one of your bills is rejected? Only my therapist
knows just how badly this electro-magnetic authority figure makes me feel.
In passing judgment, the machine checks for several characteristics. For instance, by
passing a light through it, the changer examines your bill’s gross density (my Junior High
School gym teacher would have scored high). It also uses light rays to check the alignment
of thin lines embedded in your bill. A magnet generates a signal from the ink in your bill
and it had better match the one characteristic of the ink used in printing real bills. The
machine also measures the exact length of your bill.
It’s a good thing the bill changer doesn’t also measure the sweat on my palms while I await
it’s verdict. After 30 seconds I’ll sign any confession it prints out.
72. Why is a biting satire called a lampoon?
This is such a peculiar word. Had I not known its meaning and come upon it, I would guess
from its sound that it came from some slang expression, originating in New Orleans and
having a sexual connotation that would put it in very questionable taste.
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Placing it in the French Quarter wouldn’t be too far off because the source of the word is
French. It originates with the Old French, lampons, “let us drink,” from the verb lamper, to
guzzle. What’s the connection between tossing off a few pints and a parody? Simply that a
popular method of satirizing something or someone used to be to do it in a drinking song.
Such songs often began with the expression, “let us drink,” or in French, “lampons.”
Do you suppose we can call a lampoon containing word play a lampun?
73. Just what is “method” acting?
Acting is about the only activity where you don’t get locked up for pretending that you are
someone else. (In politics they do put you away if your illusion doesn’t account for what you
did with large sums of money.)
Onstage there is more than one way to play “let’s pretend.” You can work from the outside,
consciously modifying your speech, body language and mannerisms to turn yourself into
someone else. Or you can find something within yourself -- a memory of something in your
childhood, say -- that enables you to sympathize with your character’s motives, almost
becoming that character.
The latter approach, developed early in the 20th Century by Konstantin Stanislavsky of the
Moscow Art Theater, is called method acting and is today identified with the Actor’s Studio.
Marlon Brando is its most famous proponent.
Source: The Facts on File Dictionary of Film and Broadcast Terms by Edmund F. Penney
74. Why do we say that coming upon something by accident is “serendipitous?”
I love the sound of this word -- especially the “dip” part, which seems to launch it from
one’s mouth. Where could it have come from? Latin? Medieval German? Old French? Anglo-
Saxon? Groucho Marx?
Actually the last is the closest, since someone did make it up. Eighteenth century English
author Horace Walpole, most famous for the engaging letters he wrote to his fortunate
friends, coined the word serendipity. He got the idea from a book of fiction called The Three
Princes of Serendip, in which the protagonists were constantly discovering things by
tripping over them while looking for something else.
Serendip came from “Serendib,” once the name of Ceylon, which was once the name of the
country we now call Sri Lanka. And so, serendipitously, you’ve learned a little place-name
history in the bargain.
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75. What’s the longest place-name in America?
Oh boy! Put on your reading glasses, take a deep breath, and feed the cat because you may
be out of commission for a while. We are about to journey to Worcester County in the state
of Massachusetts, where there’s a lake that can literally take your breath away.
It’s Lake Chargoggagoggmanchauggauggagoggchaubunagungamaugg. The name, which has

17 g’s, is pronounced, naturally, as it’s spelled. There are two variant spellings, but I don’t
have the heart to subject you or my proofreader to them.
According to author Bill McLain, this Nipmuck Indian word (did you really think it was
Portuguese?) means, “You fish on your side, I fish on my side, nobody fishes in the middle.”
By the way, it’s also known as Lake Webster.
Source: Do Fish Drink Water? Puzzling and Improbable Questions and Answers by Bill
McLain
76. Did the ancient Egyptians speak hieroglyphics? If not, what did they speak?
In the museum’s Egyptian collection I marveled at the ancient stone carving showing a
group of men and women watching slaves roll several big rocks. A guy next to me nudged his
girlfriend and offered to translate. He said it means, “Ladies and gentlemen, The Rolling
Stones.”
Seriously, there is a popular notion that hieroglyphics, the famous picture writing of ancient
Egypt, was simply a written language. But -- surprise! -- it did phonetically “spell out” their
spoken language, combining alphabet-like symbols with the pictures. Unfortunately, the
symbols appear to have represented only consonants, not vowels - nbdy knws hw th lngge
snded.
The language itself was a mixture of Cushitic and Berber languages from northern Africa
and words taken from the Semitic tongues spoken in nearby Asia. But you can just call it
Ancient Egyptian.
77. Why is an easy mark a “sucker?”
Do you like fish tails… uh, tales? Bear with me. It begins with the bottom-scavenging fish
known as the sucker, from the way it purses its “lips” to draw in the garbage it eats (how low
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can you sink?). The early settlers of America saw lots of these fish and soon they were
indiscriminately using the name as well for other fish that made the same motion with their
mouths. Eventually so many kinds of fish bore this name that if you baited a hook you were
likely to haul in a sucker.
Suckers, being so easy to catch, became synonymous with an easy mark. Any person who
would figuratively go for the bait was also labeled a sucker.
By the way, while I’ve had your attention, did you notice what happened to your wallet . . .?
78. What’s the difference between an opera and an operetta?
In the typical opera, the heroine, whose lover has just been executed, her father run over by
a wagon, and her brother killed by mistake, sings a long and beautiful aria as she swallows
poison. What’s not to like? As for operettas, they always seem to be singing with a stein of
beer in one hand and a glass of wine in the other.
Operas are usually sung through, having little or no spoken dialogue. Operettas are less
serious, with frothy, sentimental plots that have happy endings. They have spoken dialogue
and simpler, easier to whistle music. They also tend to have more dancing than do operas.
It’s from operettas that the modern musical evolved.
You say you can only compare them by rating each on a scale from one yawn to ten? Well at
least cover your mouth, the curtain’s going up....”
Source: Harvard Brief Dictionary of Music Dictionary by Willi Appel and Ralph T. Daniel
79. Why do we call uproar “pandemonium?”
Some years ago, when China made a gift to the Washington D.C. zoo of a pair of pandas,
newspaper headline writers had a field day playing off this word to describe the hullabaloo
caused by the creatures. The sound of the word, for me, conjures up an image of people
banging on pots and other hard surfaces to make a racket. Maybe that occurred as well to
the 17th century poet John Milton when he invented the word.
Speaking of Washington, Milton needed a name for the devil’s capitol city in his epic poem,
Paradise Lost. So he played around with Latin and Greek and came up with
“pandemonium.” If you look at the middle of the word, beginning with the 4th letter, you’ll
see an appropriate word within the word.
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Hell of an idea, huh?
80. Can choreographers “write” down dance routines the way composers write
music?
Yes. There are two dance notation systems. Labanotation, the more famous, was invented in
1928 by Rudolph Von Laban and uses abstract symbols based on the rectangle, inscribed on
a vertical staff read from bottom to top. The symbols represent how and where the body
moves and how long it should take to get where it’s going.
Choreology, devised in 1956 by Rudolf and Joan Benesh, is just slightly more
representational. The lines on its five- line staff read from left to right and correspond to
the height of the human body, head to toe. Lines and dots are placed on the staff to show
which part is to be moved, when, and in what way.
Folks, I’ve made a good faith effort in the privacy of my own home to follow some of these
diagrams. All I could produce was a death spiral.
81. Why is caviar so expensive?
What makes a tin of this stuff possibly the most expensive six-letter answer in a crossword
puzzle (“champagne and _ _ _ _ _ _”)? It has to do with simple old economics. Caviar is
relatively scarce and difficult to process.
The sturgeon, from which true caviar comes, takes from 8 to 15 years to mature. This ain’t
no chicken that keeps on giving. Maturity is the only point at which the eggs can be
harvested. You catch the fish, cut it open and take the eggs. At every step, the eggs must be
slowly hand-processed by an expert, who can tell just how much salt to add. Bad eggs, with
an off-smell or color, must be thrown out, sometimes significantly diminishing the total
harvest.
So what will it be, Beluga on toast points or the down payment on a Lexus?
82. How did that silent “b” get into the word “debt?”
I always had my doubts about silent letters, especially when a teacher offered to help me
remember them with a mnemonic. Trying to get the spelling of “debt” right made me feel
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particularly dumb. In that I may have had something in common with the people of
thirteenth century England, who couldn’t leave well enough alone.
You see the word, which came into English with the Norman Conquest two centuries earlier,
was originally spelled “det.” It came from the French word, “dette,” meaning, well, you
know. In jolly Olde England they just loped off the last “e” and totaled one of the “t’s.” So
far, I like it.
But then the pedants got at it. They did a little research, discovered that the French word
came from the Latin, “debita,” and in the thirteenth century upgraded the English version.
For kids learning spelling, it’s been tough going ever since.
83. Why do tennis balls feel fuzzy?
Did it ever occur to you that tennis balls might be perfectly smooth and it’s your fingertips
that are fuzzy? Just a thought.
Tennis balls aren’t completely bald for two reasons. The fuzz is there, for one thing, to slow
it down. You might find that hard to believe had you ever had to receive a cannonball serve
from John McEnroe, but there you are. It facilitates rallies by increasing wind resistance
and preventing the ball from leaving the stadium on one bounce.
The fuzz also increases racket control by holding the ball against the strings for just a
fraction of a second longer than would happen with a smooth ball.
As for me, I visit the bar in the clubhouse before the match. After that it’s not just the balls
that are fuzzy.
84. If you’re mistaken about something, why would you be barking up the wrong
tree?
Maybe that mistake put you in the doghouse.
More likely it’s because you or one of your ancestors hunted raccoons. Hunters usually take
along a dog while hunting one of these clever little masked bandits. Raccoons will run
through the bush and dash through the bramble, but when cornered they will climb the
nearest tree. The dog’s function is to park under that tree and make doggy-like sounds to
keep your prey up there and show you where it is.
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Remember, I said the little fella was clever. Raccoons can sometimes fool the dog by
crossing the branches into adjoining trees, making their getaway while the dog mistakenly
continues to bark up the wrong tree.
85. Why is it easier to tear an article from a newspaper from top to bottom than
from side to side (try it!)?
Isn’t it better that your newspaper doesn’t give in so easily to the right or the left?
There are, naturally, reasons other than politics that make top-down newspaper clipping
easier. In order to print the news, you need newsprint, the wood pulp paper product on
which the opin… uh facts go. That pulp is broken down into many small fibers that tumble
onto a conveyor belt. This process naturally aligns them in the direction the belt is moving,
a direction they retain when formed into sheets and then large rolls of newsprint: straight
up and down.
Thus when you clip an article from top to bottom you go with the grain and achieve a
smooth cut; tear it out from the side and you are ripping against the grain and risk losing
part of the article. Of course, if that’s a quote from a politician, the loss is negligible.
86. Why do we say that if you’re annoying someone you’re “pestering” him or
her?
We’ve all experienced pests at one time or another. They can get pretty onerous. I worked
with a pest for years and at one time I thought he would be the death of me. In fact, the
word “pest” comes from the Latin “pestis,” or plague.
All of this is interesting but beside the point because pester doesn’t come from pest. Instead
it derives from another Latin word, “pastern,” which was a device meant to hobble, or
impede movement. The pastern was commonly placed on a horse’s foot, allowing him to
graze but also not get very far in the process.
The pastern was an annoyance for the animal, but it served its purpose. Someone who
pesters another person, in the modern sense, also annoys. But the only purpose I can see to
it is neurotic. Pester ME on the wrong day and it could get you worse than hobbled!
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87. Why is there no channel one on broadcast TV?
In “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” Lewis Carroll has a character say, “Begin at the
beginning… ” That’s the only way that American broadcast TV does not resemble Alice in
Wonderland.
You can count on broadcast TV to have little relationship to reality, but you can’t count on it
to count. It starts with the number two. That’s because there is only a limited amount of
broadcast bandwidth to go around. The part that would be used by channel one was long ago
allocated to mobile radios, as in Citizen’s Band, or CB.
And who can say that it isn’t more useful to have that part of the band used by truckers to
warn colleagues of a speed trap (“Smokey up ahead!”) than have it used to promote lemon
mousse-flavored dog biscuits?
88. What was so terrible about Ivan the Terrible?
They don’t make historical names like they used to. “Charles the Fat,” “Good Queen Bess,”
“Jack the Ripper” -- ah, those were the good old days. The closest we get to such colorful
names today would be in professional wrestling - you know, where a guy whose real name is
Stanley Smith becomes something like “Slimeball Harry.”
Ivan the Terrible, who lived from 1530 to 1584 and was Russia’s first czar, earned his
adjective. He was truly gosh awful. How about killing your own son during an argument -
hands on? I mean what did the kid do, bring the car back late on a Saturday night date? Ivan
was also paranoid. He suspected the nobility of plotting against him, so he had 1,000 of
them killed.
Too bad he didn’t survive into modern times. Had Ivan lived long enough he probably could
have become Ivan the Misunderstood.
Source: Big Book of Knowledge by Sarah Phillips
89. What was the first “panic button?”
That depends on how broadly we consider this query. For example, some early ancestor of
modern man might have had an excruciating stomach ache and discovered by accident that
if he pushed hard enough on his belly button, the discomfort at that spot would distract him
from the tummy ache.
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Less imaginative scholars trace the panic button’s origin to the considerably more recent
World War II. The pilot of a bomber flying a mission could push a button to set off an
alarm, alerting men in other sections of his aircraft that the plane had been damaged, was in
danger of crashing and that they might have to bail out.
The sense of pushing the panic button as an over- or premature reaction to a crisis came
from worrywart pilots who caused their men to parachute when it wasn’t necessary. You
might say they jumped too quickly to conclusions.
90. Is badminton played anywhere besides backyards?
First things first. If you’ve always assumed that it was named after a glove with a hole in it,
shame on you. There really are two “n’s,” and it was named for the Duke Of Beaufort’s
summerhouse in Gloucestershire. The Duke, as you well know, invented the game in the mid
nineteenth century.
Believe it or not, badminton is the national spot of Malaysia. I guess they don’t have much
wind down there. Furthermore, in the 1990s it became an Olympic sport. I kid you not. Can
you imagine walking into a waterfront bar and bragging that you had won the Olympic gold
medal in badminton?
I play badminton with my parakeet, by the way. He bats the shuttlecock back with his beak.
He scored a point on me the other day by confusing me. He hit it back and squawked,
“watch the birdie!”
91. What’s the point of daylight saving time?
Everything I learned in school I owe to nursery rhymes and stupid word tricks. How many
days in a month? “Thirty days hath September, …” Which way to move the clock when
daylight saving time starts? “Spring forward, fall back.”
But why “spring forward” and lose an hour of sleep when you would rather fall back and pull
the cover over your head? To make the days longer when the evenings are warmer? But the
days are naturally longer in summer without this time- tampering maneuver. The point is to
MOVE the extra daylight from the early morning, when it would only benefit dairy farmers,
to the evening, allowing all of us to clog our arteries with backyard barbecuing.
By the way, notice that there’s no “s” at the end of “saving.” You can bank on it. (Another
stupid word trick, courtesy of yours truly.)
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92. We have New York State and California “champagne,” so why isn’t there any
from Italy?
Do you like to play “let’s pretend?” Surely winegrowers in those two states revel in it.
Champagne is an area of France, not too far from Paris. It’s where the authentic bubbly
comes from. Labeling a beverage California or New York State Champagne is like selling
Mississippi Nova Scotia Salmon. It doesn’t make geographical sense.
So why doesn’t Italy and, for that matter Germany, to name another prominent wine-
producing nation, market their own Champagne-style sparkling wines (for that’s what the
New York and California products are) as if they were the same as the original? Because
they have signed a treaty that says they can’t use the “C” word.
The U. S. never signed it. The federal government does regulate the content of any wine
called “Champagne,” but doesn’t care if it was produced in Bordeaux, Brooklyn or on Mars.
You don’t like it? Go pop your cork.

93. Why do we joke about fools believing the moon is made from green cheese?
Well it would be interplanetary imperialism to say it was composed of American cheese, and
the holes on the moon’s surface don’t go all the way through, so it can’t be made of Swiss
cheese. Even a fool wouldn’t believe Brie unless there’s wine on the moon to go with it (a
very dry Chardonnay would do).
But it’s not just green cheese by default. Did you ever stop to think, just what “green
cheese,” is after all? There’s no such thing, right? Literally, that’s true. The “green” in this
old proverb refers to the quality of “newness.” Specifically it described a hunk of cheese that
had not yet aged, the appearance of which reminded people of what the moon looked like
from afar. But only a fool thought it was really made from it.
Hey, I’m no fool. It’s made of pizza, with extra green cheese.
94. Why do they call that radioactive stuff “uranium?”
Uranium was all the thing in the 1950s. What with atom bombs tested in the atmosphere,
uranium mines promising untold riches and science-fiction pictures about giant spiders and
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ants accidentally created by radioactivity, uranium was really in its element. Contemplating
it now can give one a nostalgic, uh, glow.
The surprising thing is that even way back then uranium was nothing new. It was discovered
in 1789 by Martin Klaproth, a German chemist, who named it after the planet Uranus (how
do YOU pronounce that word?). Sir William Herschel discovered and named Uranus a few
years previously.
In fact, 150 years ago people were already practicing radioactive medicine, treating
everything from birthmarks to ringworm with uranium. No wonder they’re all dead!
95. Where in the world does it rain the most?
Anywhere I plan to have a picnic. Ok, rather than precipitate a crisis with my colleagues, I’ll
give you the conventional answer.
It’s on the island of Kauai in sunny (?) Hawaii. There, on the slippery slopes of Mt.
Waialeale, you never have to get a forecast to know if you should take an umbrella. You
should wear one all the time on your head because Waialeale gets an average 472 inches of
rain a year.
While we’re into liquid data, note that the most rainfall in a 24-hour period anywhere was
the 46 inches that fell on Bauio in the Philippines in 1911. The most in any place in a given
year was the 905 inches that went drippy-poo on Cherrapunki, India in 1861.
In other words, if it’s hard to spell or pronounce, plan to stay indoors.
McLain
96. Do bananas grow on trees?
Sure, like money. Did you ever see a money tree? Well you have as much chance of seeing a
banana tree, or a monkey reading the Wall Street Journal. (Scratch that: I actually did see a
simian speculating in Internet stocks two days ago.)
Bananas grow out of a trunkless plant - an herb, to be exact. The fruit comes out of the stem
of the plant, appearing first as flowers. They grow in bunches on the plant and are picked
when green so that they will be ripe by the time they reach your cereal bowl.
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Banana plants are transplanted by taking a piece of the plant’s underground stem and
replanting it. These pieces are called “suckers.” Which brings us back to those monkeys on
Wall Street…
97. Why do light bulbs come in odd-sized wattages, such as 40 and 60 watts?
“How many psychiatrists does it take to change a light bulb?” I yelled to my friend at the
other end of the bar. He didn’t have the faintest idea. “Just one,” I chortled, “but it has to
REALLY want to change.”
Well the bulbs may have changed, but those odd wattage numbers have remained pretty
steady since the commercial development of the tungsten filament in 1907. That’s when the
40-, 60- and 100-watt models came on the market. The best explanation for these seemingly
random numbers is that the light they emitted roughly corresponded to that produced by
the standard-sized gas lamps then in use. A little familiarity helped people accept the new
technology.
It’s like when PC’s were introduced. The keyboard suggested the typewriter, and Windows
crashing reminded users of how they would have to crumble up and discard the paper if they
made too many errors.

98. Why do we call a violent robbery a “mugging?”
The slang generated by the real world of cops and robbers is often colorful, but sometimes
misleading. A cat burglar, for example, deftly and daringly climbs great heights to get his
booty. He’s not a felon who filches felines. But a mugger is not only linguistically related to
mug, the slang word for one’s visage, he’s also very much physically in your face.
A mugging is a street crime in which the perpetrator forcefully removes your valuables. He
often grabs his victim from behind, putting his hand over the mouth to prevent an outcry,
which is how the act got to be a “mugging.”
Mug as a slang word for face originated with old drinking mugs, which were often decorated
with distorted caricatures of faces. You might even end up looking that way if you drank too
much of what was in the mug.
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99. Why do we call a test for authenticity or usefulness the “acid test?”
Because if the thing being tested fails it must be a lemon? Not really, although this does
remind me of my 10th grade geometry teacher. We called any test she gave the acid test
because she was a real pickle-puss.
But enough of my adolescent bitterness. The origins of this phrase were quite literal. More
than a century ago, when much of the population lived in rural areas, the itinerant peddler
was an important person. Not only did he sell all sorts of manufactured goods otherwise
unavailable, he also bought old objects made of gold. For this purpose he needed an easy
way to estimate the gold content of, say, an old spoon. He did it by nicking it slightly and
pouring nitric acid on the indentation. The color the liquid turned revealed the percentage
of gold present.
This acid test was as good as gold, to coin a phrase.
100. When do bears emerge from hibernation?
Some trivia books still try to pose this as a trick question, stating that bears don’t emerge
because they never hibernated in the first place. The bear’s body temperature doesn’t fall as
much as that of other hibernating animals, and this was once thought to disqualify them as
true hibernators. But now we know that their higher body temperature is simply a function
of their larger size.
Like other hibernators, bears don’t sleep through the winter, but rather wake up
periodically and eat what they’ve stored in their cave. They emerge for good when average
temperatures are above freezing.
How does the bear determine the average temperature? Damned if I know. I’m more
interested in how we knew about the bear’s hibernating temperature in the first place.
Would you enter the cave of a sleeping bear and stick a thermometer… well, wherever?
101. Why do so many major train stations have high, often vaulted ceilings?
You’ll encounter a lot of hot air if you research this question. And well you should, because
the custom of building the stations this way arose in the nineteenth century, when trains
produced a good deal of steam and smoke. Hot air rises, and the high ceilings allowed this
potentially noxious stuff to drift safely away from the passengers.
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When many of those stations were built - Grand Central, in New York, to name a famous one
- they also had a symbolic as well as practical value. The automobile symbolizes our age, in
which individuals are empowered with mobility previously unknown in world history.
Trains 150 years ago symbolized the age of power produced by machines driven by steam.
The cathedral-like ceilings in those stations express the faith that such power would elevate
life in general.
With the hindsight available to us, of course, we know that they were a bit off-track on that
one.
Source: What Are Hyenas Laughing At, Anyway? An Imponderables Book by David Feldman
102. Whatever happened to phone booths?
Phone booths once played an important cultural role in Western Civilization. Gang rubouts
in the movies were more dramatic when the victim was neatly enclosed in a glass booth that
shattered to hell when riddled with bullets. And college fraternities might have totally
disappeared in the 1950s without phone booths into which to squeeze the “brothers” in an
attempt to set a new campus record.
But now steel-plated, wall- or pole-mounted phones have replaced booths. One reason for
this is that people were starting to use the phone booths to answer the call of nature.
Imagine: They couldn’t tell a toilet from a telephone!
Phone booths also occupied valuable space. In our spreadsheet world, everything has to
justify its existence in the bottom line.
By the way, rumor has it that the old booths are now renting as studio apartments in New
York City and San Francisco.
103. Why is the female side of something referred to as the “distaff side?”
They’ve been sticking it to women since the Garden of Eden, and this expression is just
another verbal confirmation that women get the short end.
The “staff” in distaff is the stick on which women wound the material used to make yarn on
the spinning wheel. The expression, which arose in the 16th century, thus equates women
with an implement they used to use in a domestic chore.
Now you might say, “What’s the equivalent expression for a man?” I don’t know of any
exact, mirror-opposite. But going back to the same period, one would think it would have
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something to do with a spear. It would perhaps be an expression indicating that back then
giving people the shaft was a guy kind of thing.
104. Why do we say that someone who is really wrong or out of line is “off
base?”
I bet I know what you’re thinking. This comes from baseball, and it describes a runner who
is on base, has taken too big a lead away from the base, and is about to be picked off because
he’s too far off base. Guess what? You’re out.
The “base” in this sense is your foundation, mooring, and anchor. You need it to function. It
could be your common sense, sense of values, family, or just familiar surroundings. If you’re
detached from it you go wrong, drift, and lose you’re bearings -- are off base.
If you still don’t get it, imagine a head that’s grown tired of being attached to it’s neck and
has decided to go off on its own (imagine also that it’s not dripping blood all over the
carpet!). It’s likely to be wrong about most things (go ahead, ask it a question). And it’s
certainly out of line.
Source: Heavens to Betsy! & Other Curious Sayings by Charles E. Funk
105. What’s the purpose of that snap-box contraption they clack in front of a
movie camera just before filming a take?
I don’t know how many times I’ve seen one of these things in some TV documentary about
the movies and never asked myself why the heck they needed it. But sure as shootin,’ just
before the camera roles, some fool sticks this box that has the title and take number printed
on it in front of the camera and clacks it.
The key, it turns out, is in the clack. The purpose of this mysterious ritual is to synchronize
the soundtrack with the picture. In the editing room during post-production, the editor can
align the soundtrack for the entire scene by synchronizing the clack sound with the frame in
which the box -- it’s called a clapboard -- is snapped closed.
Then again, sometimes it’s more fun if King Kong opens his mouth to roar and you hear
instead someone ordering a coffee with milk and a piece of Danish.
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106. Why is that square space in which boxers fight called a “ring?”
I can understand why boxers might be a little punchy and not always know a square from a
circle, but how about the rest of us? What’s our excuse? You flunked plane geometry, too?
Let’s go back in time. There’s no HBO, no million-dollar purses, and no promoters like Don
King with French-fried hair. A fighter comes to town and challenges anyone to knock him
out. A couple of guys form the fighting area by standing in a circle, holding a rope. All the
action will be confined to this “ring.”
That was OK for a small town, but not so good when several thousand people came to see
the fighters. Then they squared the circle, attaching ropes to four poles. But they still called
it a ring. And the boxers still tried to beat each other to a bloody pulp and the spectators
still called it a sport.
107. Why do we say that someone who is kept in isolation is in “quarantine?”
Short of making someone wear a dunce cap and stand in the corner, there are few things
more isolating than being placed in quarantine. Even your breathing is a threat to everyone.
The word quarantine originated in the Middle Ages with the most famous epidemic in
Western history, the black plague. Forty days appeared to be the incubation period for this
dread disease and in Italy; they simply called this period, in which you were kept away from
everyone, the “quarantina,” Italian for the number forty.
By the way, I’m for extending the reasons for which people are quarantined. For example,
the king of early television, comedian Milton Berle, resorted to some of the worst jokes ever
to get a laugh. Perhaps his worst was when he opened his show with the greeting, “Good
evening ladies and germs.” What could be sicker than that?
108. Is there any animal that has four horns?
A few weeks ago there was a truck driver just behind me on the New Jersey Turnpike who
might have qualified. But other than that nerve-jangling encounter I don’t believe I have
ever come across such a beast until now.
Yes, there is such an animal, an antelope, in India. Whoever named the four-horned
antelope was not terribly imaginative, but the creature itself seems to have been put
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together with a good deal of inventiveness. He has the usual two horns between his ears and
a smaller pair just over his eyes.
Notice I wrote “he.” It’s the male who has the four horns, while the female is hornless. Now
I ask you, with the male extraordinarily horny but the female not horny at all, isn’t it
amazing that they ever bring forth new little four horns?
Carnegie Library
109. How do antihistamines stop sneezing and a runny nose?
Spring really turns me on -- like a faucet. I tear and sneeze. To heck with balmy days: I wish
it would freeze.
Pollen and other irritants in the spring air set off this debilitating cycle of activity in the
eyes, nose and breathing passage of millions. The invaders provoke a counteraction by the
body’s “mast” cells, which fight back with various substances, one of which are histamines.
Unfortunately, these hista-meanies, while defending us, also run amok, irritating nerve cells
and blood vessels, attaching to them and causing the collateral damage of sneezing and
tearing.
Antihistamines prevent this attachment by blocking the “receptors” on the nerve and blood
vessel cells. The histamines can no longer connect to them.
Imagine histamines in a singles bar trying all of their pick- up lines on these sensitive cells.
No dice. Antihistamines have protected them with blindfolds, earplugs and bags over their
heads.
Source: The New York Times – National Ed
110. Why do we call a computer problem a glitch?
My favorite reference book on such matters, “Small Bytes: An Irreverent Computer

Dictionary,” succinctly describes a glitch as “a hitch in the glutch between input and
output.” I couldn’t have put it better myself.
Every other word I’ve heard in conjunction with this unfortunate occurrence has four
letters. But they can’t match this one’s ability to sound just like what it is: a mishap that
may well ruin your day but won’t spoil your life.
The word glitch is relatively new, a product of the space age and the era of advanced
electronics. It comes from the German “glitschen,” and via the Yiddish, “glitshen.” Both
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mean, “to slip.” We have ingeniously miniaturized electronic circuits, but it looks like the
old banana peel has shrunk in proportion to them. No matter how carefully we design
electronic products, such as computers, we never get out all the weirdness. They still trip us
up.
111. Is there any difference between a porpoise and a dolphin?
With the international economy fragile, global hotspots threatening to explode and global
warming heating up, you’re concerned with the difference between a porpoise and a
dolphin? Well I must admit this has been on my mind, too. Now maybe we can all achieve
some closure on it.
Both are actually small whales. You have met a porpoise if he or she has a round snout and
flat teeth. When it comes to associating with people, this mammal is something of a cold
fish.
You are dealing with a dolphin if you see more of a beak, nose-wise, and cone-shaped teeth.
Dolphins tend to be longer than their more aloof porpoise kin. They are more playful as well
as more social than the porpoise, which given its druthers would rather go off by itself and
read a good book.
Carnegie Library
112. What happens if you go several nights without sleep?
You would be tired, short-tempered and dead if you kept it up long enough. You would also
yawn a lot.
Sleep is just about as basic as food to human beings. Your brain needs it to function. People
who haven’t slept for several days cannot reason very well or concentrate. They may even
hallucinate, become schizophrenic and lose touch with reality. (Drinking a pitcher of
Margaritas is a quicker and far more pleasant way to accomplish the same thing.) Sleep
deprivation also impairs the brain’s ability to connect to the nervous system. Without sleep,
you can’t walk, see or hear very well.
Dream deprivation, scientists conjecture, may also impair our ability to think straight. Fish,
spiders and snakes do not dream. Did you ever meet one with a Ph.D.?
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113. Why do we call that stand that holds an artist’s canvass an easel?
What could be more basic to civilization than the beast of burden? (Trust me, I do not
digress!) The ox, the donkey and the packhorse expanded our ancestors’ ability to do all
kinds of work. So basic were these animals that their service was embodied in words and
expressions.
The French, for example, called a clothing rack a “chevalet,” likening it to a small horse.
Similarly, what we call an easel, they call a “chevalet de peintre,” or a rack to hold a
painting.
The Dutch actually gave us the word “easel.” In Holland in the 16th century, when painting
hit a peak, they likened the stand that held the canvass to an ass, using their word for that
animal, “ezel,” to describe it.
Think of it: Rembrandt painted his Self Portrait while supporting it on his ezel. Now that’s
talent!
114. Why do we call something that’s sloppy or muddled a “mess?”
The word “mess” reminds me of the word “doctor.” I thought Ph.D.s had borrowed that title
from medical practitioners. But I had it backwards: “doctor” comes from a Latin word for
teacher.
It’s like that with mess. My mother used to say, “Your room’s a mess. Straighten it up or you
don’t go out to play!” When I discovered “mess” in the food sense, as in the Army mess hall,
I figured it had migrated over from my mother’s usage.
Whaddayaknow, food came first! Mess is from the Latin, “missus.” That’s not a married
woman, but rather means part of a meal.
Shades of my high school cafeteria, the meaning of mess evolved from a bunch of food
tossed together, to just a plane mess: from slop to sloppy.
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115. What’s the difference between an ophthalmologist, an optometrist and an
optician?
First, I’ll give you two quick tests to winnow out the ophthalmologist. Cover one eye. Which
is the only one with an “l” in his title? You got it. Now compare bills from each (uncover that
eye). The biggest one also comes from the ophthalmologist, who is an M.D., an eye doctor.
Now let’s shop for glasses and we’ll separate optometrist from optician. The optometrist is
one step down in the medical pecking order from the ophthalmologist. She can also examine
your eyes, and in addition make glasses for you if you need them or give you an eyeglass or
contact lens prescription that someone else can fill. But she’s not an M.D. and can’t operate
or prescribe medicine.
An optician can make and fit your glasses, but that’s all. He’s a technician, and can look
down only on the receptionist.
Carnegie Library
116. Why do we call that suite of playing cards with the cloverleaf symbol,
“clubs?”
Ok, here’s the real deal: The English adopted the symbol for this suite from French playing
cards. On French cards, the symbol was clearly a cloverleaf, the French word for which was
“trefles,” meaning “cloverleaf.” So, what did the English call it? “Clubs,” naturally. In the
great tradition of English eccentricity, the people of that green and pleasant land took the
translation of the Spanish word for the same suite, “basto,” which in English is “clubs,” and
applied it to the cards that clearly depicted a cloverleaf.
Don’t blame the Spanish, whose cards of that suite DID use a drawing of clubs to represent
it. Why combine a symbol from one country’s cards and the word from another language
that describes a different symbol? Need I remind you which country gave us “Alice in
Wonderland?” Maybe the Queen of Hearts simply decreed that cloverleaves be clubs.
117. Why is there “snow” on the TV screen when a station goes off the air?
Because a station leaving the air lowers the temperature of the picture tube - Just kidding -
I’m not that flaky.
Ordinarily a circuit in your TV’s amplifier either boosts or diminishes broadcast signals,
depending on the strength of the signal. But if there’s no signal -- as when a station goes off
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the air -- this amplifier circuit, called an automatic gain control, boosts to the maximum
whatever it picks up. In the absence of a broadcast signal, it’s picking up and amplifying
random static emissions that could come from your pc, vacuum cleaner or other circuits in
the TV itself -- maybe even from a belch, or the dirty joke your Uncle Harry told at dinner.
Without any signal at all you would see a white screen. The electronic static shows up as
moving dark dots which, blended with the white, appear to be snow.
Source: How Do Astronauts Scratch an Itch? : An Imponderables Book (An Imponderables

Book) by David Feldman
118. Why do people who lose their temper “fly off the handle?”
Right off the bat I should identify the geographical origin of this phrase: 19th century rural
America, where the handle in question was likely to be attached to a hammer, hatchet, ax or
similarly sharp or heavy-headed instrument.
Tool handles were made from wood, which shrinks over long periods. The shrinking wood
loosened the head of the instrument. The first good swing could send that head flying, with
serious consequences for anyone standing nearby. Similarly, someone metaphorically flying
off the handle is momentarily irrational and perhaps even dangerous to those near them.
It is also said that such people “lose their head,” which is the same thing as saying that they
fly off the handle. Of course, when that used to happen literally, anyone standing close
enough could lose his head, too.
119. Why do we call those grotesque figures on medieval buildings gargoyles?
Please don’t misunderstand: At one time in the movies, on Broadway and in the stories of
Damon Runyon, it was thought that all average Joe’s pronounced girls, “goyles.” But there’s
no gender reference here - the word applies to garboys as well as gargoyles.
Gargoyles served a mundane purpose. Water ran off buildings into a gutter and from there
flowed out through the gargoyles mouth, which was actually a spout. In Latin, “gutter” is a
word for throat. “Garg” is a Latin prefix that also means throat (think of the word “gargle”).
Old French for throat was “gargouille,” from which we get gargoyle.
So, the most grotesque thing about gargoyles is that they expectorate in public all day. Just
like my old Uncle Harry, who was the spitting image of a gargoyle.
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120. Why don’t we use Roman rather than Arabic numerals?
Who said we use “Arabic” numerals? (I know, I just did, but bear with me while I make a
point.) Our numbering system is actually Hindu. It passed down to us through the great
Arab culture of the Middle Ages.
We use the Hindu-Arabic numbers because they’re easier to manipulate. Roman numerals
are cumbersome. (Try multiplying XCLXVI by VXLI.). BUT - Sorry, But believe it or not,
adding and subtracting can sometimes be easier the Roman way. Say you want to subtract
16 from 77. LXXVII is 77 and XVI, 16. Just erase a X, a V, and an I (16) from the bigger
number, leaving LXI, or 61, the correct answer.
The real genius of the Hindu-Arabic number system is the concept of zero. If you look at
Western achievements in science and technology over the past century alone, we have really
made something out of that nothing.
121. How can you tell a mushroom from a toadstool?
If you eat it and don’t have to go to the hospital afterward, it was a mushroom. Toadstools,
as I’m sure you know, are quite poisonous.
Toadstools have been so demonized that you might be surprised to learn that they are not
some separate kind of plant. If either a toadstool or mushroom is present, there is a fungus
among us. They’re both wild fungi; mushrooms are simply the edible kind.
But this was supposed to be “how to ...,” wasn’t it? Well in fact, no matter what your
counselor told you in camp, you almost surely can’t tell them apart -- and shouldn’t try --
unless you are an expert on the 38,000 species of mushrooms. You know what? Go pick
blueberries.
122. What is the continental shelf?
As big as it sounds, I doubt it would hold the spillover from what used to be my walk-in
closet. Maybe I need the continental shelves.
In the geographical sense, the continental shelf is the underwater ledge that juts out from
land at the ocean’s edge. Don’t confuse this ledge with the shallow end of a swimming pool.
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It goes down as much as 600 feet. But it goes no deeper than that for quite a distance out
from shore, where the real slope starts and the bottom quickly drops to a depth of several
miles. The width of this shelf varies from next to nothing to hundreds of miles and
represents about 7 percent of all the world’s oceans. Fisheries and underwater oil deposits
are located on this shelf.
123. Why do we say that people who get hung up on minor arguments are
“quibbling?”
You’ll never guess what profession is the source of this word. Let’s see, its members
certainly quibble over minor arguments. They often scribble on large leg… uh, yellow pads.
And they positively dribble at the mouth over the potential for many billable hours.
Yes, it’s our friends the lawyers. So, how do we get from them to the word “quibble?” It’s
from the Latin, “quibis,” a form of the word “qui,” or “who.” Quibis is the equivalent of
“party of the first part.” So to quibble, in other words, is to talk like, and therefore to act
like he or she whom you should usually try to avoid at all costs. And “all” is what it will
probably cost you if you don’t.
124. How much of a tree that’s been cut for timber actually ends up as usable
wood?
The timber industry goes against the grain of cost efficiency. Between the tree and your
dining table, most of what was originally standing ends up as waste.
Picture yourself dismembering a carrot for a salad. You begin by lopping off the top, right?
Lumberjacks do the same to a tree, removing its top and its branches before they even
yell…… you know what. By the time what’s left is on its way to a mill, as much as half of its
original volume is gone.
Another twenty-five percent is left in sawmill, much of it as sawdust. Hey, they have to have
something to put on the barroom floor, don’t they? Another eighth is wasted in machining
the lumber for the final product. That leaves as little as an eighth of the original tree, a mere
chip off the old block.
Carnegie Library
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125. What are the northern lights?
“Aurora Borealis.” Roll that around your mouth a few times. That’s another name for this
phenomenon, the faint glow in the sky seen in the far north and south of our planet. (To be
fair about it, they are called “Aurora Australis” Down Under but, mates; there are more of
us up here than there are of you down there.)
These lights, which at their most dramatic can cover the whole sky, usually vary in intensity
and location. They are probably the result of electronic particles thrown off by the sun that
bang into our atmosphere. This phenomenon generally coincides with periods of sunspot
activity.
Now tell the truth: Did you really think northern lights were a brand of low-tar cigarettes
made in one of the Scandinavian countries?
126. Why do they turn off the cabin lights on planes before takeoff?
I could understand it if they did that whenever they served food, airline cuisine being what
it is. Or if this was just another way they were cutting service, saving a few pennies on
electric power. It would even make sense to dim the lights when someone is airsick. Who
wants to look at THAT?
But for takeoffs? Why? All the better for you to see the sights outside, folks. There’s nothing
technical about it, and it’s that simple. At night, especially, the lights are quite pretty,
particularly once you’re airborne and you can see them sparkle all over the city. You say
you’re sitting in an aisle seat? Crane your neck.
So why don’t they do blackouts for landings? Because people then are more concerned with
getting their stuff together for departure. And how else would you see the attendants’
insincere smiles when they thank you for flying with them?
Source: What Are Hyenas Laughing At, Anyway? An Imponderables Book by David Feldman
127. Why do we call that children’s game hopscotch?
Well if the kids played it on a tartan-design playing area, the name might be self -evident.
But not only is that not the etymology, the origin of the name has nothing to do with any
part of the British Isles.
The game - called scotch hoppers in the seventeenth century - - is played on squares cut into
the ground or marked on pavement. The name was derived from the Old French word
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“escocher,” which meant to cut or mark. It was anglicized to “scotch.” From the same
source, we get the expression, to “scotch a rumor.” And butterscotch - didn’t you ever
wonder about that? - is simply butter-colored candy cut into squares.
Adults sometimes hop after drinking enough Scotch. They also giggle, guffaw, spin around
and fall down. Great game!
128. Why do we call a cheapskate a ‘piker?’
Because such a person would rather go out of their way and, figuratively, climb Pikes Peak
rather than pay their fair share of anything. How does that sound? I made it up, but the real
origin of the word is somewhat similar.
‘Piker’ comes not from climbing but from walking. In the early nineteenth century,
especially in the United States, turnpikes were being built everywhere as part of a revolution
in transportation. Since it was not yet common for government to build such improvements,
private companies often constructed them. Naturally, they did it for a profit, which they got
by charging tolls on vehicles using their road. But if you were on foot, you didn’t have to
pay. People who walked from town to town to save the toll money were called ‘pikers,’ from
the word “turnpike.”
A pedestrian explanation, to be sure, but it’s the truth.
129. Why do we associate Dalmatians with firemen?
I could imagine 101 different reasons. But lest anyone accuse me of dogging it, I’ve pawed
through some reference sources to bring you a credible answer.
The answer is simple. The key facts are that there is a natural affinity between Dalmatians
and horses, and Dalmatians make good watchdogs. People who owned valuable horses often
kept Dalmatians around to guard them against horse thieves. Fire engines used to be drawn
by fast and powerful horses, a tempting target for thieves. So, Dalmatians were kept in the
firehouse as deterrence to theft. The horses have long since gone, but the Dalmatians, by
tradition, have stayed.
Would you like an even simpler explanation? Firemen are often on the spot, while the spots
are always on the Dalmatians.
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Carnegie Library
130. How does one become a circus clown?
The easiest way to become a clown is to come from a family of them. (Never mind the
smartass remarks; you know I’m referring to professionals.) Barring that, you have to go to
school to learn the basics. The Ringling Brothers Circus, biggest of the “big tops,” runs a
clown college, where you learn everything from juggling to how to paint your face to how to
stand on your head. After graduating, you start at the bottom, with low pay.
Are you ready to do it? Not so fast. Competition to get in is fierce, and only 10 percent of the
graduates are offered jobs. You have to have many kinds of physical skills and have a real
knack for entertaining. It’s not enough just to score high on the S. A. T. (Silly Attitude Test).
Source: Just Curious About Animals and Nature, Jeeves (Ask Jeeves) By Jack Mingo and
Erin Barrett
131. How did ‘Mister’ get to be a title of address?
Well let’s see, Mister is shorter than “hey, you,” and Mr. is shorter still. And I don’t know
about you, but there are very few guys I feel like addressing as “your lordship.”
While Mr. is common these days, it began as a term of respect, coming to us from two
sources. “Master” as a title evolved into mister to match the female title, “Mistress.” Mister
also developed as a title to set apart skilled workers, or artisans, from the peasantry and
common laborers. Here it descends from the Latin, “ministerium,” which meant craft or
trade. Over the centuries, as it passed through the lips of enough mumblers and fast talkers,
ministerium became mister.
By the way, the French Revolution sought to eliminate all special terms of address,
replacing them with “Citizen.” That really went too far. No sense losing your head over it.
132. Why don’t our palms get sunburned at the beach?
Well I know why bellhops, cab drivers and other workers who depend on tips are protected:
their palms are always being greased. But how about the rest of us?
Think about how you hold your palms. When you walk down the street on a sunny day your
arms are usually at your side, palms facing your body. The sun can’t get at them. Even if
you’re lying on the beach unprotected, daring skin cancers to take its best shot, your palms
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are safe. If you’re on your back, your arms are at your side, palms face down. Lying on your
stomach, you probably keep your arms folded in front of you, palms down.
For double protection, the skin on your palms is thicker than everywhere else but on the
soles of your feet, with more dead cells at the surface to keep out ultraviolet rays.
133. Why do we sometimes call someone with below average intelligence a

moron?
As a kid, I thought it was because morons, too, had foolishly eaten my Aunt Emily’s
vegetable soup. The soup was so bland that I had to pour salt into it. She would just shake
her head and mutter repeatedly, “pouring more on, more on?”
Then I discovered that moron was a word coined in 1910, before Emily was born. It seems
that psychologists, never happy unless they can stick a label on someone, felt they needed a
new word to describe people who were quite slow on the uptake. So, in that year, at the
convention of The American Association for the Study of the Feeble Minded (“moron” did
symbolize progress), the delegates went to work. Someone remembered that the French
dramatist, Moliere, had written a play in which a stupid character was named Moron
(ancient Greek for stupid was “moros”). Voila! Everyone went home happy. (Just remember
what some folks say about ignorance being bliss…)
134. Why can’t you buy cashew nuts in the shell?
Whatsamatter? Are you unhappy that someone has already done the work for you, shelling
the little things and sparing your fingers? If you really need to burn excess energy, c’mon
over to my house, where there are weeds that need pulling.
Ok, ok: here’s the truth in a nutshell. Cashews have no shells. What’s more, they’re not nuts.
The cashew is a seed, just like sunflower and pumpkin seeds. They grow on shrubs and hang
from cashew apples, which also taste pretty good. Anyone who tells you otherwise IS a nut.
By the way, don’t believe the story about the elephant and the origins of the word, “cashew.”
You know, the elephant sneezed, “cashew,” blowing the shells off the nuts. It’s apocryphal.

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135. Why does the president of the United States work in an oval office?
Given the odd behavior of some presidents, maybe it’s to keep from being cornered. But I
have another angle on the matter.
When the White House was built, in the late 1790s, it contained several oval rooms, one of
which, on the second floor, was used by early presidents as an office. But before there could
be a TV program called “The West Wing,” the executive mansion had to have same. Teddy
Roosevelt added it in 1902, and the proponent of the “Square Deal’ went to work in a
similarly shaped office in the new wing. It was the next president, William Howard Taft,
who turned it into an oval when he renovated, because people had come to associate oval
rooms with the White House. (For the rotund Taft, the oval shape may also have been a
matter of self-expression.)
136. Why do graduates wear those strange square caps with their gowns?
Those mortarboards are modeled after the biretta, a similar cap worn by church officials in
the Middle Ages to symbolize their knowledge, experience and high place. With an optimism
that borders on religious faith, the mortarboard states that the graduate has reached a
similar point in life. The square cardboard was added to the top to keep the biretta’s high
crown from flopping on the grad’s face (and extinguishing the joint he’s smoking to get
through the day).
Now here’s what I really think: Like the beanies sported by fraternity pledges, those silly-
looking mortarboards are worn by people pledging adulthood. Of course, once you get in,
the parties aren’t as good, eventually you’re supposed to be monogamous, you can only
watch your kids have food fights and work is worse than cramming for finals. Go out into
the world? Not me!
137. Why do we say that something obscene appeals to prurient interests?
“Obscene,” like “lascivious,” has a certain amount of animal energy in it, while the sound of
“prurient,” for me, invokes “prune.” The etymology of prurient takes us back to Latin, to the
word “prurire,” which has several modern translations. It means to be wonton (which, of
course, has nothing to do with any ethnic cuisine you may know of). But it also means to
itch. Now there’s an interesting idea. Something obscene that appeals to prurient interests,
like a mosquito’s bite, makes us itch. And you know what THAT makes you want to do. As
your mother worried about your mosquito bites, so the community is concerned that you
may be incited to “scratch.”
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President Teddy Roosevelt’s daughter, Alice Longworth Roosevelt, had a refreshing antidote
to this attitude: “I have a simple philosophy. Fill what’s empty. Empty what’s full. Scratch
where it itches.”
138. Why might we say that someone who acts crazy has gone ‘berserk?’
Obviously, because they remind us of Norway and its history, of Old Norse warriors, and
especially of Old Norse itself, the ancient language of Norway.
In Old Norse, “berserk” meant “bear shirt” - a shirt made from bear skin, not a shirt
typically worn by bears. It’s what Norse warriors wore when they went into battle, earning
them the name, “berserkers.” These guys really went nuts when they took up the sword --
hence our modern meaning of berserk -- in no small measure because they first got stoned
out of their minds by munching on hallucinogenic mushrooms.
Why, you ask, did they wear those bear shirts in the first place? Because their fathers did
before them, and everyone knows you can’t teach an Old Norse new tricks.
139. In testing new medicines, what’s the difference between a blind and a
double-blind test?
What both have in common is a group of patients, some of whom get the new medication
while others receive a placebo. The question is who knows what was given to whom? (For
purposes of this explanation, we ignore drug companies that stand to profit from these
medicines, which approach the tests with eyes wide open and focused on their
spreadsheets.)
In a blind test, the patients do not know if they got the placebo or the real thing. But the
doctor administering the medication does know which went to whom. This keeps the
patients from having a subjective reaction and skewing the results. But it’s always possible
the doctor could unconsciously signal to patients what they were getting.
In a double-blind test, patient and doctor are each in the dark. The doctor doesn’t know to
whom she gave the experimental whosamajiggie, and who swallowed peppermint candy.
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140. What’s the difference between an atoll and an island?
With summer coming on, many Americans probably think atoll is simply what they pay to
cross the bridge to their favorite island. But it’s worth knowing the difference between these
two geological formations.
An island is a chunk of land surrounded by water. Think of it as resembling the piece of

Danish you might drink with your coffee. An atoll is more like a bagel. It began as a volcano
in mid-ocean. But then the volcano sinks below sea level, leaving just the coral that forms
on the rim of the crater. Soil forms on top of the coral, producing an island- like circular
formation with a lagoon in the middle. The formation, or atoll, found most often in the
Pacific, is also referred to as a coral reef.
As I said, the distinction is worth knowing - unless you’re a fish, to whom, I imagine, it
doesn’t matter atoll.
Source: Big Book of Knowledge by Sarah Phillips
141. Why are those Congressional pleasure trips called “junkets?”
Some Americans object to their representatives using their tax dollars to go abroad,
spending $250 on dinner with a companion hired from an escort service. Hey, spoilsports,
how else do you think members of Congress can come up with ideas for new legislation?
Such Puritans could care less why these investigative forays are called junkets. But for the
rest of us: The etymology begins with the Latin word for baskets woven from rushes:
“juncus.” Junket, the custard-like desert older readers may recall from their childhood, got
its name because containers of it were transported in such baskets. Picnics, as well, come in
these baskets. Do you see where this is going? Eating sweet deserts, feasting and having a
good time - everything that’s not work.
Well, maybe we should bring these guys home where the worst they can do is feed from the
pork barrel.
142. Just how does a Venus flytrap eat dinner?
Here is the vegetarian’s nightmare: a carnivorous plant. That is not to say that you will ever
see one of these cuties devouring a cheeseburger. As their name implies, they would rather
feast on what your sandwich attracts if you eat it outside in warm weather.
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A native of the Carolinas, the Venus flytrap grows in soil that lacks the nitrogen it needs.
Enter the nitrogen-rich fly. And enter he does at the top of the foot-high plant where there
are leaves that resemble two hinged lobes, usually open in a mouth-like array. On their
surface are sensitive hairs. The fly lands on a hair, triggering the leaves to close, holding
him prisoner. The plant digests the fly with fluids it secretes through the leaves. Yechhh!
And what if no fly comes along? Oh, I dunno, maybe the plant takes out a personals ad.
143. Why are certain four-letter words obscene while other words that mean the
same thing are not?
Gosh darn it; people do talk dirty these days. But what makes for a “dirty” word in the first
place, when synonyms for the same thing are respectable?
Well, they say that it’s the victors in battle who write the history of the war, and it seems
that they write the dictionaries and etiquette books, as well. Those four letter words for
body parts and functions are Old English, Germanic in origin and were spoken by the Anglo-
Saxons. But after the Norman Conquest - 1066 and all that - the invaders from France made
it clear that French, Latin-derived words for these things were refined, while the native
Saxons spoke a gutter language. And in the gutter, it’s stayed.
I can’t, of course, cite examples. But some sports terms are four-letter words with only a
single letter changed -- shot, puck, punt, pass, dart, pick and bunt, for example. Shoot, ain’t
that somethin’?
144. Do identical twins have identical fingerprints?
Identical twins must be sick of questions and jokes about their resemblance. After a while it
just isn’t cute to be referred to as “your doubleship,” or to be asked if you and your sibling
still play with “two-two-twains.”
But at the risk of a four-fisted knuckle sandwich from some pissed-off pair, I’ll take this one
on. Identical twins are born virtually indistinguishable, mirror images from the same egg.
But that’s only the half of it. As they age, life leaves separate tracks on each in the forms of
scars and more subtle markings.
It’s the same with their fingerprints, which are very similar but also different on close
examination. In addition to the influence of their environment after birth, they are even
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born with very slightly different prints due to chance occurrences in the womb, such as
position, etc. - what scientists cryptically call “random events.”
Source: National Science & Technology Week
145. Who is buried on the moon?
What little bit of cleverness is this going to involve, you might be thinking. What have they
been smoking?
Well, there’s actually a straightforward answer. People have played golf on the moon,
haven’t they? If you can bury a putt on earth’s satellite, why not a person? It’s been done.
His name was Dr. Eugene Shoemaker, an astro-geologist who, with his astronomer wife,
discovered Shoemaker-Levy 9 Comet in 1994.
In 1999, NASA sent up a spacecraft to map the moon. It also carried Shoemaker’s ashes (he
had died, naturally). After the craft had plotted its last lunar coordinates, it was sent
crashing into the moon.
In death as in life, Dr. Shoemaker had made an impact.
146. Why do we chill white wine but serve red wine at room temperature?
One of the most gut-wrenching sights I have ever seen is a person I love dearly dropping
several ice cubes into a stein of beer. Appalling! But then part of being an adult is coming to
terms with the fact that those you love are not perfect.
There are also people who get a little cold-crazy with wine, making a slurpy-slush ice drink
out of the best vino. Cease and desist, please! Allowing for a little variation in taste -
careful, we’re watching you - the whites go in the fridge and the reds are served at room
temperature, or slightly below.
Here’s why: Reds are fermented with the grape skin. This leaves them with tannins and
other acidic components, the bitter taste of which is magnified by chilling, overwhelming
the grape flavor. The skinless, tannin-less whites simply taste better cold. But remember,
you’re not going to skate on it.
Source: Why Do Dogs Have Wet Noses? And Other Imponderables of Everyday Life By
David Feldman
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147. Exactly what is a calliope?
You probably know it when you hear it, but could you describe a calliope to someone and
explain how it works? Of course, it’s the watcha-ma-call-it that goes clackety-clack, toot-
toot, boombah, gong-plunk at circuses and in the middle of merry-go-rounds.
The calliope, a mid-nineteenth century American invention, resembles a phantasmagoric

organ, adorned by wooden figurines and caricatures of musical instruments. It makes its
sound through pipes. But compressed steam, not air, blows through those pipes. The
calliope was often pulled on a wagon at the end of a circus parade for safety’s sake, in case
the final sound was the KABOOM of an exploding boiler.
Named for a Greek goddess of poetry, the calliope used to be played from a keyboard. But
today an automatic rotating cylinder is more likely to open and close the valves that govern
the flow of steam.
148. Are there any animals that never sleep?
My cat, who may or may not honestly mistake my prone figure for a trampoline during the
night, will never let me see him with his eyes closed. He thinks it’s a sign of weakness that
might allow me to permanently assert MY dominance in the house I paid for. But cats aside,
it’s the dolphin that comes to mind.
Dolphins can’t go to sleep. They are mammals, need to surface to breathe and will drown if
they doze off. And underwater is the only place you won’t find a Starbucks.
Not to worry. For eight hours a day dolphins are fully awake, but the rest of the time they’re
on cruise control. In those 16 hours, half of their brain is asleep for one eight-hour stretch,
while the other half snoozes during the next eight-hour shift. Moral: to beat a dolphin at
chess, first check his schedule.
McLain
149. Where did people first eat chocolate, and when?
Notwithstanding what you read in the supermarket tabloids while waiting to pay for the
groceries, there is no proof that chocolate was brought to earth by aliens. However, it IS
plausible that the smell of chocolate attracted them TO our galaxy.
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Sticking to established fact, civilization as we know it began about the year 1000 AD in
South America when several cultures started to use a bitter concoction made from the cocoa
bean in important rituals. Columbus, who also discovered America, made a significant
contribution to European culture when he brought this liquid back from the New World.
Sweetened, it became “cocoa.” By the 17th century, cocoa was the cat’s meow among the
nobility and was spreading to the lower classes.
Chocolate remained a drink exclusively until the middle of the 19th century, when chocolate
candy was developed in Europe. Now if we can just figure out how to smoke it.
150. What do hospitals mean when they say that someone’s condition is
“stable,” “serious,” “critical” or some other melodramatic adjective?
I’ve often suspected that HMO’s reimburse the hospitals on a schedule that takes into
account the weight of these adjectives. But conjecture aside, there are general, although not
rigidly explicit rules for the use of these words to frighten patients’ friends and relatives.
On the low end of the scare scale are “good,” “fair,” “stable” and “satisfactory” (to whom,
their creditors?). Put away the Valium, the greatest threat to these patients is hospital food.
“Serious” is a question mark. It means pretty darn sick, possibly not stable, but in no
immediate threat of falling into a coma or dying.
“Critical” is the flashing red light. This patient is unstable, may not even be conscious, and
his or her life is in danger. But at least they don’t have to eat the Jell-O.
David Feldman
151. Why do many newspapers have the word “gazette” in their name?
Well, the German word for “shrill” is Gezeter, and if you saw the headlines in one of the
tabloids in my town, you would know why it comes to mind. But that ain’t it. Nor does
gazette have any relationship to gesundheit, although the power of the press is nothing to
sneeze at.
Gazette comes from 16th century Venice, where reading was not a common skill. Upon
payment of a gazeta, the penny of its day, you could have the newspaper read to you. (How
do you say “Tom Brokaw” in Italian?) As “gazette,” the word soon spread to English as a
synonym for the newspaper itself.
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Journalists were even called gazetteers. Then, as now, many of them didn’t know where it
was at, so a reference book of geographical information, The Gazetteer’s Interpreter, was
compiled for them. That’s the source of the modern word, gazetteer.
152. Why do they play “Taps” at military funerals?
Well, it’s a lot more appropriate than reveille.
Taps was originally used in the military only to end the day. If you’ve ever been to summer
camp you may recall singing to it’s melody, “Day is done, gone the sun… yada, yada, yada.”
It took on its additional, more solemn function during the American Civil War.
Traditionally, a soldier’s funeral included the firing of a three-shot salute. The Civil War
produced fatalities wholesale, and the military usually lacked the means to ship the bodies
home. This led to funerals on or near the battlefield after the shooting stopped. Firing a
salute might have been misinterpreted by the foe as a resumption of hostilities, so Taps,
with its evocation of day’s end, was substituted. The custom has survived along with the
rifle salute.
153. Who built the first bathrooms, and where?
Between the discovery of sex and the invention of television, you won’t find anything more
important on the timeline of indoor human history. So who, and where?
No, it wasn’t King John. And they didn’t originate in Flushing, New York. Bathrooms
actually come from a place famous for its pipes, but of another kind: Scotland, known more
for bagpipes than plumbing.
The place was the Orkney Islands, off the Scottish coast, ten millennia ago, where some
nameless individuals finally took a stand for comfort. (Actually, I assume they took a seat.)
They left their mark in the annals of latrinery by throwing together a primitive drain system
that carried wastes directly from their huts to the local stream - the first in- house outhouse.
It would take another 10,000 years for folks to notice that this created as many problems as
it solved, waste-wise.
Source: Extraordinary Origins of Everyday Things by Charles Panati
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154. Where was the U. S. state of Franklin, and whatever happened to it?
Throughout history, many important things have been lost, including the Ark of the
Covenant and my Christmas bonus one year in Las Vegas. But it takes a peculiar level of
historical absent-mindedness to misplace an entire state.
However, that’s if you think Franklin was a state, as most trivia books are only too glad to
do. In 1784, this territory, controlled by North Carolina, was left unprotected when a series
of complicated real estate negotiations between that state and the federal government went
awry. The territory’s settlers, in limbo, declared themselves the state of Franklin and elected
a governor. But no one recognized them and four years later North Carolina reestablished
control. Territory shifted a great deal in the early Republic, and in 1796, the former “state”
of Franklin ended up in Tennessee.
Conclusion: people who take the “statehood” of Franklin seriously are living in a state of
confusion.
155. Why do we say that someone held up from doing something is “marking
time?”
I suppose the ultimate in marking time is the guy in the dungeon who only knows how many
days have passed by the mark he makes on the wall with each sunrise. That’s even more
frustrating than sitting through a high school English class, discussing “Return of the
Native” while glancing at your watch every 45 seconds.
In fact, the phrase “marking time” has nothing to do with clocks, watches or sundials,
although impatiently tapping your foot to the tick-tock of a mechanical clock comes close.
This “marking” is done by marching - in place. It’s the drill sergeant’s command to his
soldiers, MARK TIME, to keep their feet going up and down without moving forward. And it
nicely captures the idea of exerting energy with nothing to show for it. “Spinning your
wheels,” and “placed in a holding pattern” are later incarnations of the same thing.
156. Why do we describe as round robin a tournament in which everyone plays

everyone else?
When Soviet Communist Party leader Nikita Khrushchev spoke to the Party elite about the
terrible crimes of his predecessor, Joseph Stalin, someone called out: “Where were you?”
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Khrushchev looked up from his speech, demanding, “Who said that?” There was silence.
“That’s where I was,” said Khrushchev.
Similarly, on British warships centuries ago, complaining to the captain might get you
hanged as mutineer if your name was at the top of a petition. The solution: arrange the
signatures in a circle so nobody could be singled out. This was called “round robin,” for the
circle and the ribbon (modified in the expression to robin) that tied the document.
When diagrammed, a tournament with everyone playing everyone else, as opposed to an

elimination tournament, looks like that circle of signatures. And you thought round robin
was a portly bird that had overindulged on worms.
157. How big does a watch have to be before it becomes a clock?
My great-grandfather carried a ponderous pocket watch in his pants pocket. No wonder he

was always hitching up his trousers. Time weighed heavily on him.
Could that timepiece have achieved clockhood? Not by growing larger. Mechanics, not size,
was the determining factor. Most clocks in his day still ran on a system of weights. Watches
used the coiled mainspring that you had to wind. But then the clock/watch gap narrowed as
the mainspring spread to clocks, especially smaller ones such as alarm clocks. Later, until
about 30 years ago, the difference was primarily that most clocks were driven by an electric
motor, while watches still needed to be wound.
Now that watches and clocks are both digital, based on crystals, the pendulum has finally
swung toward size as the distinguishing factor. If you can wear it, it’s a watch. But did you
really need to hear that from me, second-hand?
Source: Why Do Dogs Have Wet Noses? And Other Imponderables of Everyday Life by
David Feldman
158. Why does the shower curtain get sucked in toward you when you shower?
If you’ve ever seen Alfred Hitchcock’s film Psycho, you know that a lot worse can happen to
you in the shower.
Still, the curtain getting clammy with your body is an unasked for intimacy. Who gave this
inanimate object permission to get fresh? Until recently, we didn’t understand the process,
but now we do. David Schmidt, professor of mechanical engineering at the University of
Massachusetts, took a $28,000 computer software model of spraying liquids and applied it
to his mother-in-law’s bathtub. Two weeks and 1.5 million calculations later, he discovered
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that: The water from the shower spray slowed down as it fell, the result of hitting the air.
This process caused the air to become turbulent, actually forming a miniature storm system
with low pressure at its center. The air pressure outside the shower, now higher than inside
it, pushed the curtain in.
I knew the computer would come clean.
Source: The New York Times – National Ed
159. Was there really an Orient Express?
Agatha Christie didn’t invent this fabled train in Murder on the Orient Express. It was
mysterious, colorful, exciting and real!
Imagine traveling from Paris to Istanbul, 1,700 miles, in luxury, on one train. From 1889 to
1977, except during the two world wars, it was possible for those who could afford it. Never
mind about all those borders. A multilingual concierge on board handled your passport.
That fellow in the plush armchair in the smoking car might very well be the spy he appeared
to be. And occasionally King Boris of Bulgaria actually came aboard to take the throttle for a
spell.
No wonder it was easy to imagine anything happening on the Orient Express. Any train that
could pass through the Turkish Sultan’s Empire while skirting Count Dracula’s lair as well
was the perfect setting for harum scarum adventure.
160. Why do we say that we’re bluffing when we try to mislead someone?
I’m putting on my best “poker face” as I tell you that there are two theories for the origin of
bluffing. Do you believe me?
One sees the word rooted in the blinder, or bluff that was developed for horses in the 16th
century. Etymologically it gave birth to the present sense of the word via the notion of
pulling the wool over someone’s eyes, of fooling him or her because they can’t see what
you’re doing. The other explanation, which dispenses with metaphor, says that the source is
the Dutch word, bluffen, which means to brag. In a card game, you would bet on your hand
as if it were a full house, when in fact it’s not even an empty bungalow.
So, did I steer you right? Never mind my poker face, look at my red-hot hand. That’s not a
stalk of celery I’m holding, ducky, it’s four aces.
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Source: Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology edited by C. T. Onions and Why You Say It:
The Fascinating Stories behind Over 600 Everyday Words and Phrases by Webb Garrison
161. Why do we say that an annoying person who won’t let up is nagging?
If you’re trying to figure out if there’s some connection between horses and being annoyed,
or if you think you’re being set up for a pun involving some nag, fuhgedaboutit. I wouldn’t
saddle you with such a thing.
The only way a horse gets into this is if he or she has sharp teeth. Nag comes from a
Scandinavian or Low German word, nagga or gnaggen, to gnaw or chew. You may pick up
the connection if you think of a nag as someone characterized by oral aggression, someone
who has his or her teeth sunk into you and won’t let go. Nag, nag, and nag.
Or think of it this way. You answer, “He/she is nagging me” to the question, “What’s eating
you?”
162. Why do angels have halos?
To keep them from having a bad hair day? So they don’t need one of those small lamps for
reading in bed late at night?
The answer is actually odder. Becoming an angel would be quite a feather in anyone’s cap,
wouldn’t it? Well, that’s something like what the artists who originally depicted angels had
in mind. Many of the customs and much of the iconography of our great religions were
adapted from paganism. In the case of angelic halos, the source was sun worship. People
who worshipped the sun emulated its rays by wearing rings of feathers on their heads. That
would be too tacky for angels, so they were painted with actual rays of light.
Then, conversely, why not paint the devil with his head in a cloud? Because it’s more
important to hold his feet to the fire.
163. Why do we describe nonsense as claptrap?
This is one of those words that just sound right for what it means, no matter what its
source. That’s as long as you don’t confuse it with something designed to prevent a social
disease.
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The source of claptrap is the 19th century equivalent of television’s “canned applause.”
Theater owners were always looking for ways to stir their audiences’ enthusiasm, and
sometimes they resorted to hiring people to initiate the applause or laughter that, they
hoped, would spread to the rest of the crowd. These facilitators of felicity were called
claquers, from the French word for clapping. The practice generated the English word
“claptrap,” which fastened on the phoniness of this practice of milking applause. Something
is claptrap if it has no substance, if it’s being conjured up out of nothing, if it’s like the
applause that people have been tricked or “trapped” into offering.
164. When did we start using decongestants?
More to the point, what in the world did people do for sinus headaches and nasal stuffiness
before decongestants? Perhaps they ate really spicy Indian or Mexican food, which at its
hottest can all but blow a hole through the back of your head and open breathing passages
all over the place.
But decongestants ARE more specifically targeted and we’ve had them in our medicinal
arsenal since the early 1930s, when a product called Benzedrex came on the market. It
contained Benzedrine, an amphetamine that dilated breathing passages. These days the
active ingredient in a decongestant is likely to be pseudoephedrine hydrochloride, found in
brands such as Sudafed.
Opening breathing passages isn’t the only thing decongestants do. They’re uppers. Swallow
too many and you could go bonkers, take an axe to your neighbor, whatever. Do you really
want to chance it? Say, I know a good Indian restaurant . . .
165. Why do they refer to the hottest days of summer as the dog days?
First, let’s express our appreciation to canines everywhere for being so good-natured about
our negative characterization of these days in their name. Finicky felines would have long
since filed a class action libel suit.
Rover can blame the ancient Romans for the dog days. To turn a line from Shakespeare’s
Julius Caesar on its head, the fault was in their stars. Specifically, it had to do with Sirius,
the Dog Star, which during July and early August appeared to rise with the sun. The
Romans may have been pretty good engineers and soldiers, but they hadn’t yet bothered to
invent computers and the like, and so they just connected the dots. Sirius rose with the sun,
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therefore it must have worked with it to make the weather icky - a pretty Sirius allegation,
based on faulty science, doggone it.
166. Has the Medal of Honor ever been won by a woman?
One woman, Mary Walker, has won the Congressional Medal of Honor. She earned it for her
work as an assistant surgeon with the US army during the Civil War, when the medal was
first awarded. The citation that came with the medal, in something of a backhanded
compliment, declared that Walker was receiving it because “by reason of her not being a
commissioned officer in the military service a brevet or honorary rank can not, under
existing laws, be conferred upon her…”
In 1917 the government rescinded Walker’s medal, along with medals awarded to several
hundred others, because too many had been given out, reducing its value and prestige;
henceforth it would be awarded only for valor under fire. Walker refused to return her
medal and was vindicated in 1977 when President Carter restored it.
167. What road are middle-of-the-road moderates traveling?
Middle-of-the-road could mean a place of political safety, where one can avoid the
extremes. But as more than one political figure has observed, standing in the middle of any
road can also get you run over.
The expression originated in 19th century America, when roads were an adventure. They
were unpaved, often paths that graduated to road hood simply from frequent use. The
constant play of wagon wheels on them ground ruts into the sides, making the middle the
highest point. After it rained, water collected in the ruts and walking in the middle was how
you kept your feet dry. In the 1890s, by analogy, middle-of- the-road became a metaphor for
avoiding the extremes.
Say, if they ever have a political rodeo, how about an event in which contestants throw their
hat in the ring from the middle-of-the-road while toeing the party line. That’s in addition to
bull throwing, of course.
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168. How do they decide what to name new objects found in outer space?
Personally, I would prefer informal, comfortable names, such as Mabel’s Galaxy or Bob’s Big
Nebula. These would be names suggesting that wherever you went in the universe, you
might find a way to kick back in your seat and enjoy a cheeseburger and a brewski.
But it’s formal as well as infinite out there, and they’ve got rules. “They” are the
International Astronomical Union. The rules: Stars named by Greek, Roman and Arab
astronomers in ancient times retain their names. Newly discovered stars receive not names
but numbers, based on their coordinates. Theme names used for geographical features of
various heavenly bodies are more imaginative. On Venus, for example, such features are
appropriately named for women. If you discover a comet, it’s your baby and bears your
name. Find a new asteroid and you can call it just about anything. Well I guess you could
call it Al’s Old Asteroid.
Carnegie Library
169. Just what is the Golden Gate that the San Francisco bridge is named for?
A year or two ago I would have suggested that “Digital Doorway” would be a more
appropriate name. But then nearby Silicon Valley’s bytes bit the dust. So Golden Gate it is,
but why?
Any “obvious” answer is the wrong answer. It has nothing to do with the mid-19th century
California gold rush, for example. The sun is definitely more golden in southern California.
And when the fog lifts - you may have to wait until after lunch - it becomes clear that the
name doesn’t come from the color of the famous bridge, which is red.
Well now, the suspense is over: In 1846, three years before gold was discovered, explorer
John C. Fremont named it for another narrow passage, the Golden Horn of the Bosphorus.
The ancient Greeks named the Golden Horn because this passage at the end of the
Mediterranean led to Byzantium’s gold.
170. Why don’t fast food restaurants promote their desserts?
Fast food restaurants chains are single-minded about their double whazits. The only things
that tend to share the hamburger’s spotlight are the fries, which accessorize the burgers,
and the chicken and fish concoctions eaten by the burger-impaired part of the population.
Soft drinks, the most profitable item, round out the narrow spread of products.
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The proof of the pudding for the success of this business model is that they usually don’t
have to waste too much space or too many advertising dollars on desserts. Their thinking on
the matter: As impulse purchases with small profit margins, desserts require too much
expensive display space. The bulk of fast food business is at breakfast and lunch, when
people are less likely to want dessert. Customers associate fast food places with their
specialty, usually burgers, so they don’t go there for dessert.
You don’t like it? Put some whipped cream on the onion rings.

171. Why might we say that someone feeling out of sorts is cranky?
Because they feel that the world is jerking them around? Well that’s not too far off. The
word is related to that right-angled tool used to start an engine. In the positive sense, you
might get cranked up for something. But you could also be cranked in the sense of spun
around.
It gets more interesting as we look at the origin of the word “crank.” In the Middle Ages,
weavers used a bent tool called a crancstaef. It appears that the “cranc” part was related to
the word “cringan,” which described the bent, contorted, curled and shrunk look of a person
severely injured in battle. It may sound as if we’re getting further away from the modern
sense of being cranky, but it’s just the opposite. What’s another way of saying a person is
cranky? They’re bent out of shape.
172. Why does someone take the “minutes” at a meeting?
The way most meetings drone on, the minutes seem more like hours. Calling the record of
the proceedings “minutes” appears to be nothing more than putting a polite spin on the
thing.
At least that would be the case if the word in question really were the one we’re thinking of.
But it’s minute, as in “minoot,” something very small. The idea is that the recording
secretary summarizes in some kind of shorthand what’s happening as he or she hears it, and
then writes up a larger, expanded account later. The original is comparatively small, or
minute.
So why don’t we say that someone is taking the “minoots?” What? Do YOU want to sound
like a goofus? I wave the reading of the minoots. This meeting is adjourned.
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173. How come dinner knives have rounded edges?
I don’t know about you, but I find this much more interesting than queries such as, “What is
the sound of one hand clapping?” At least here there’s a point. Uh, actually, there isn’t, and
that is the point.
So, why round off an implement that’s made for cutting? To make sure that you cut with
couth. Four hundred years ago, in the home of France’s Cardinal Richelieu, a dinner guest
was uncouth. This guy mistook his dinner knife for a toothpick. The Cardinal was horrified!
The fellow who did this dastardly deed might as well have been picking his toes in
Poughkeepsie. In response, the Cardinal had all of his dinner knives rounded off, and the
custom caught on.
When he wasn’t obsessing about the silverware, by the way, Richelieu also helped to create
the modern French state.

174. Are there any dogs that don’t bark?
That’s almost like asking if there are any dogs that think that a fire hydrant’s main purpose
is to help put out fires. With most any pooch, barking is a basic civil liberty - unless the cat’s
got its tongue.
But there really is a canine that doesn’t carp, a pup that doesn’t prattle on for all the world
to hear. Well, in truth, he’s not totally silent, but this small dog doesn’t bark. The basenji, a
good, if silent hunter, originated in Central Africa, and was valued as a pet by the Egyptian
Pharaoh’s. In a mellow mood, the basenji makes a sound that some have described as
yodeling.
Well that’s just ducky, a dog that yodels. Next thing you know they’ll say it can mimic
Madonna or the drumbeat in Queen’s “We Will Rock You.”
Carnegie Library
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175. What’s the safest form of transportation?
Well let’s see, they say that great music can transport you, figuratively speaking. And even
then, the roof of the concert hall might collapse, someone could yell “fire” and you’ll be
trampled, or you’ll die of boredom.
Getting from here to there isn’t much safer. There are daily derailments, near-collisions at
20,000 feet and SUV’s turning other vehicles into road kill. And you really think you’re safe
on two wheels in the bicycle lane?
Actually, there’s a little trickery afoot (walking is dangerous, too). We didn’t say which way
we were traveling. How about up and down? The answer is: elevators -- only one death for
every 100 million miles traveled. I suspect that the unlucky traveler at the 100 million mark
tired of gazing at his shoes or staring straight ahead, and while tilting his head back to look
up at the ceiling, broke his neck.
176. Is there any way to fend off a shark without a weapon?
Radiate good will if you wish, speak out for fair play and appreciate the wonders of nature.
But not around one of these killing machines, which could leave you tooth-totaled.
Have no pity for the poor fishy, but never mind what you’ve heard about punching the shark
in the nose. A sock in the snoot may give the shark a bloody nose, but it could be your blood.
This nautical nightmare is most vulnerable around the eyes and gills. The advice they give to
boxers holds here: jab, jab, jab -- short, hard punches. Sharks are bullies, and fighting back
puts a damper on their aggressiveness.
If this works, don’t go to a neutral corner expecting a referee to count to ten. Depart, with
measured haste.
Source: The Worst-Case Scenario Survival Handbook by Joshua Piven and David Borgenicht
177. Why do we say that someone “testifies” in court?
Anyone who has ever placed their hand on a Bible and sworn that they were telling the
whole truth may not believe what I’m about to tell you. But it’s true. I swear it.
If we were holding to the history and spirit of this word, only males would be allowed to
testify, which was the case in the ancient world. Instead of placing a hand on a book, the
witness would be grabbing his crotch. “Testify” is rooted in the Latin, testiculus, or testicles.
These orbs bore witness to a man’s virility -- the word for witness was testis -- and it is on
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them that he would swear. The King James Bible even hints at this meaning, referring to
oaths taken with a hand on the thigh.
Under these circumstances, imagine what the penalty might have been for giving false
testimony.
178. How come a hot, humid day is more uncomfortable than a foggy day?
People are often in a fog about high humidity. On a hot, humid day, there’s actually more
total water vapor in the air than on a cool, foggy day. The reason: hot air can hold more
moisture than cold air. High humidity -- but less than 100 percent -- tells us that at a
certain temperature the air can still take more water before it condenses, even though it
already holds plenty.
In a fog, the humidity is 100 percent because the cool air is saturated and the water vapor is
already condensing. But the total amount of water in the air is less than on a sultry summer
afternoon.
If fog bothers you, you can put on a jacket. But if its hot and humid, even stripping naked
may not help because you can’t sweat enough to cool your body. The only solution -- no pun
intended -- is air conditioning
179. Why do we say that we’re “parking” a car?
George Carlin, existential philosopher, raconteur, and dean of dirty words, has remarked on
how curious it is that we drive on a parkway and park in a driveway. If there were any logic
to English, you might think that the only time you truly park a car is if you wrap it around a
tree.
Ok, let’s take an etymological trip. We start in Normandy in the early Middle Ages, where
they’ve adapted a Germanic word close to “park” to describe an enclosure holding game
animals. The Normans invade England and establish deer parks. Eventually, English
soldiers, after a day’s march, circle their wagons and put their horses in the middle, calling
that a park. Over time, any military vehicle moved to a set position is said to be parked.
Then the act of doing this for any vehicle comes to be known as parking.
Are we there yet? We’re there.
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180. Why do we say that de-emphasizing something is soft pedaling it?
When I was a young child, I heard this as “soft-petaling,” and assumed it had something to
do with flowers. In adolescence, I finally got the words right but still had the source wrong.
It never had anything to do with bicycles. Finally, I reached adulthood and realized it must
refer to the gas pedal on my car.
All wrong. When you soft-pedal something, you’re making an analogy to playing a piano.
When that instrument first came into wide use what distinguished it from other keyboard
instruments, the harpsichord, for example, was its wider dynamics. The pedals enabled the
musician to soften a note. Similarly, you soft-pedal something when you soften its intent or
affect.
Of course, if you soft pedal too often you lose credibility, strike the wrong chord, and may
have to change your tune.
181. Why is it a 10-foot pole with which we will not touch something?
First, let’s clear up a common misunderstanding. This ubiquitous measure of avoidance has
nothing whatsoever to do with especially tall citizens of a prominent Eastern European
country.
Now, what’s this 10-foot fetish all about? Why not seven feet? That would keep you far
enough away and bring good luck, to boot. Simple: In early 19th century America, farm
produce was often taken to market on flat bottom boats. Most rivers weren’t that deep, and
a 10-foot pole was ideal for pushing away from shore and propelling the craft by pushing the
pole against the river bottom. The 10-foot pole was so common that it became an informal,
figurative standard of measurement, like going the whole 9 yards and not giving an inch.
(Knew a guy once who went only 7 yards, gave 2 inches and wouldn’t touch anything with a
5-foot pole. Ended up 6 feet under.)
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182. Why are animals the featured characters in so many children’s stories?
There’s just something about four-legged furries that grabs kids, right? Or is it paid
propaganda from zoological societies to create adult animal lovers? Are children’s book
authors so flaky that they actually think that animals can talk? Perhaps these books are
really written by animals looking for a fair shake.
None of the above. It’s all about emotional distance. Kid’s stories often deal with scary
themes, such as separation, violence and the consequences of misbehaving. Animals can be
portrayed as just human enough, and childlike, where appropriate, to make them surrogates
for people. But in the end kids know that they are not people. So, the stories may make them
a little uncomfortable, but will usually not terrify them.
All except the guy in the next cubicle from me. He never got over Bambi. He hangs deer
pinups on his corkboard and quotes Thumper at sales meetings. Obnoxious!
183. Why does hair turn gray?
Because people continue to insist on having and raising children? Because the hair coloring
companies are putting something in our drinking water? It’s a publicity stunt somehow
involving Madonna and Michael Jackson?
All of these are plausible, but there’s an easier explanation. You get older. Your body
produces less melanin, the substance that gives hair its color. Without that color, your hair
becomes transparent. Each hair is hollow, a shaft enclosing a column of air. Without the
protective coloring, light can penetrate your hair and be refracted by that air column,
producing the white/gray color we associate with aging.
Should you color it? What will you do when you lose that hue?
Erin Barrett
184. Why does the devil have horns?
You think, maybe, he should just wear earmuffs instead? Actually, a more interesting
problem might be what kind of a hat can you wear if you have horns? The devil has to
accessorize, too, after all. But we’re stuck with the current query.
To get to the point, Christian iconography of the Middle Ages, which is our source for
pictorial characterizations of Satan, was influenced by Roman and Greek mythology. When
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artists had to depict the devil, they took as their model the satyrs (Mick Jagger wasn’t
available), attendants of Bacchus, the Greek god of wine.
The satyrs were soused and besotted, horned and hooved hellions of sloth, who could find
nothing better to do than chase nymphs all day. They were just no damned good and thus
perfect models for the ultimate horny fellow.
185. Why do we call something that achieves its end by trickery a gimmick?
Step right up and see the hootchie cootchie girl, take a walk down the midway, eat some
cotton candy and take a spin at a game of chance. We’re going to an old-fashioned carnival.
Virtually everything at the carnival was hyped beyond reason. And in games of chance, you
usually didn’t have a chance. Typical was the spinning wheel at which you could win a cheap
prize -- a “gimcrack” in carney talk -- if it stopped at the right spot. That spot, in reality, was
wherever the wheel’s operator wanted it to stop. He used a hidden device called a gimmick
to control the wheel’s spin. Eventually gimmick entered the language to describe any bit of
trickery to achieve a goal.
What? You say you didn’t see the hootchie cootchie girl? Just a gimmick to get you to read
on.
186. Why do we say that something boring, familiar or tiring has left us jaded?
Well, I could understand it if “jaded” was shorthand for being green with envy. I could
accept it easily, as well, if a gem of a person left me with a jaded feeling. How about if it
meant the same thing as getting stoned? I would buy that.
But jaded meaning tired? That appears to be a horse of a different color. Well never mind
the color, let’s just focus on the nag. Jade is another word for a broken down old horse -- a
tired horse. The word entered English in the 14th century. Where did it come from? We just
don’t know.
Ok, so it’s not crystal clear. Maybe the idea of jaded as tired comes from the notion that
we’ve been down this trail once too often. Whatever. Anyway, I hope it spurs you to further
thought.
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187. Just how heavy can a human being get?
Well, Albert Einstein probably could have lightened up a bit. He couldn’t have been the life
of any party, talking all the time about the speed of light and the nature of the universe. Hey
Al, this Bud’s for you.
Oh, I beg your pardon, you meant how much, literally, could a person weigh? Well we don’t
know absolutely for sure, but how does just under 1,400 pounds sound to you? HEAVY!
John B. Minnoch, who lived in the state of Washington, tipped the scales -- probably
crushed them into submission -- at that figure in 1978, mainly because of fluid retention.
Now that’s not quite fair, since he was admitted to the hospital when his weight shot up to
that amount. Usually he weighed in at 976 pounds.
He must have been turned away from more than one buffet restaurant.
Carnegie Library
188. What happens if a person dies after marking their absentee ballot?
Well, unless the person lived in Chicago, where cemeteries are considered precincts and the
dead vote is all but reported in the pre-election polls, it’s probably the last absentee ballot
he or she will ever cast. Ah, but how about this particular ballot? Does it count?
First, did the person mail it? If not, it’s not good for anything more than lining the
pussycat’s litter box. If anyone else mails it in -- except possibly in America’s Windy City --
it still won’t count. (And never mind the jokes about election post-mortems.) But if the
voter did mail it before his or her demise, it’s a genuine, acceptable ballot; it’s “v” for vote
as well as “d” for dead.
Of course, in the year 2000 presidential election, “absentee ballot” could have described the
contention of some commentators that one couldn’t find a live candidate from either party
ON the ballot.
189. Why do footballs look so weird?
American footballs look like something designed by someone tackled too often after one
drink too many. They were a long time coming to this shape. The first balls anyone kicked in
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a game were human skulls. “Heads up” they could have yelled in the 11th century, if they
had field goals then. Skulls eventually gave way to cow bladders and then to round balls, as
the modern game of soccer evolved. With the development of Rugby in the 19th century, in
which carrying the ball was as important as kicking it, an elongated ball, more spheroid
than sphere and easier to grasp, was favored. In American football, the importance of
handling the ball in the run, and even more, throwing it as a forward pass, led to an even
more elongated ball. And that’s how footballs came to be shaped like something a near-
sighted elephant might mistake for a suppository.
David Feldman
190. Why do we refer to something lascivious as lewd?
It’s only a coincidence that this word rhymes with nude. It’s also just a coincidence that it
rhymes with crude. And it’s still a coincidence that it rhymes with scr? oops, can’t print
that. One more coincidence and I’m going to assume that someone is toying with us.
First used in the 13th century, lewd derived from the Old English word laewede, which is
how I probably spelled lewd on my last spelling test in grade school. It meant laic, as in
layperson, one who was not of the clergy. At the time, members of the clergy were just about
the only people who could read. Everyone else was illiterate. In other words, lasciviousness
was linked to ignorance or lack of an education.
What a relief! I’d hate to think that college men and women might have dirty thoughts, use
dirty words or (gasp!) do dirty things.
191. Why do we call a problem with a torn cuticle a “hangnail?”
Well, “torn cuticle” sounds disgusting, so we’re already ahead if we call it just about
anything else. How about a notsocuticle?
Seriously, a hangnail has nothing to do with capital punishment for nails. The cuticle is the
hardened skin at the base of a nail and it’s that, not the nail itself, that’s torn.
In Anglo-Saxon England, a corn on the toe was called an “agnail.” They derived that word
from “ang,” meaning “ouch, it hurts,” and naegl, the head of a nail, because a corn looked
like the head of that which you drive into wood. The toe and finger problems seemed
similar, and the two kinds of “nails” at least sounded identical. Shift the anatomy, make a
pun and add an “h” and you have the hangnail. Ouch, it hurts.
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192. Why is there more static electricity in winter than in summer?
This has nothing to do with the economic law of supply and demand. Who needs this stuff,
cold weather or hot? All it produces is more bad hair days and dogs and cats who suddenly
find your proclivity to pet them, well, shocking.
To get static electricity, you need two objects with a substantial difference in electrical
charge between them. That difference in charge occurs when it’s difficult for the charge
from one to be conducted to the other. That happens when the air between them is
characterized by low conductivity. Dry air, found in a heated room on a cold day, has that
low conductivity.
Until the difference in charge builds up enough, the two objects might as well be, shall we
say, poles apart. But when the difference is sufficiently large to overcome the low
conductivity, the result can make your hair stand on end.
David Feldman
193. Why is the White House white?
You would have to have slept longer than Rip Van Winkle to think that it’s because the
White House is associated with purity. And if we were looking just at the past decade,
perhaps scarlet red would have been a more appropriate shade.
In fact, contrary to what many people think the place where the President hangs his hat
wasn’t always white and was not originally called the White House. The original building,
put up at the end of the 18th century, was called the Presidential Palace and was made of
brownstone. And it might still be somber looking had not the British set fire to it during the
War of 1812.
Restoring the place involved, among other things, covering the burn marks. White paint was
just fine for this purpose, leading people to refer to it thereafter as the White House, a
designation that became official under Teddy Roosevelt.
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194. Why do we say that a well-intentioned person has his or her heart in the
right place?
Having your heart in the right place has its roots in genuine anatomical ignorance. In
Europe’s “Dark Ages,” among the uneducated, which meant most people, the classical
world’s knowledge of anatomy was largely lost. Oh, they knew where one’s heart should be.
But they also thought the organ could wander around, a notion promoted by the behavior of
various body parts when influenced by strong emotion. For example, if you were under
stress and you swallowed hard, “your heart was in your mouth.”
Therefore a heart in the right place meant there was no unusual body activity betraying
wayward thoughts or nervousness. You were together, and your intentions could be trusted.
Boy, were they ignorant. I would never be so silly. My head is screwed on right.
195. What’s so deadly about the Seven Deadly Sins?
Expressions involving sin often pose problems. Take, for example, “the wages of sin.” Do
you need to join a union to earn them? Are they indexed to the cost of living? Are they
taxable? Do you get credit for them in your Social Security account?
Then there are the Seven Deadly Sins. (Why seven? Who knows? A roll of the dice?) While
not grouped together in the Bible, these no-nos -- if you use an organizer, put them on your
Not To Do list -- have been unofficially associated with each other since about the 6th
century. They are pride, envy, anger, sloth, covetousness, gluttony, and lust. They are not
deadly themselves -- as in get angry, drop dead -- but are mortally dangerous because they
lead to other sins, greasing the slippery slope to damnation. For example, take lust… Ok,
forget that, take gluttony. If you eat too much chocolate ice cream… Say, maybe I’m not the
best person to advise you on matters spiritual.
Source: Encyclopedia Britannica
196. Why do monkeys in the zoo spend so much time cleaning each other?
They do pick at each other plenty, don’t they? Well, I would imagine there’s not a lot do in a
zoo. You can’t eat and have sex all the time, even if you’re a monkey. You took a bath this
morning? That was then, this is now. Gotta kill time; take another one.
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Out in the wild -- “it’s a jungle out there,” as Indiana Jones would say -- monkeys pick with
a purpose. They are trying to prevent an infestation of body parasites. Lice ain’t nice,
sagacious simians realize, so they clean each other off constantly for the good of all.
But most zoos are kept clean these days and lice are not a problem. Yet still it’s pick, pick,
pick. Why? Because monkeys sweat, sort of, a process that leaves a salt residue on their
skin. Wouldn’t pretzels be easier?...
197. What’s so “fulsome” about fulsome praise?
You can fulsome of the people some of the time ... whoops, wrong question. Ok, I’m back.
This is a sneaky word. It sounds like a word we might easily use to praise. And it also
sounds like it goes well with praise. And one might guess that it means that the praise is, is,
is -- full of it?
In a word, “yes.” It IS full of it; that is the correct answer. Not only is fulsome sneaky, it’s
also deceitful. People get tricked by its sound into misusing it in a positive sense, but it
doesn’t have any. Fulsome comes from the Middle English word fulsum, which meant full of
fat. Think of it as padded praise. Fulsome praise is stuffed, overdone, insincere, out of
proportion to what it’s praising. If someone heaps it on you, heap it back.
198. Why do we say of something we don’t believe, “tell it to the Marines?”
A tough leatherneck librarian smiles sweetly while cataloging a new cock and bull story
before adding it to the archives. “Gosh darn it,” the Marine swears, dropping his pencil.
Taken literally, this expression makes the Marines a tall- tale repository. I don’t think so.
An often-cited origin has the original phrase as “tell it to the horse marines.” Since marines
are usually soldiers that embark from a ship, they’re not likely to be “horse” marines and by
extension, the story that should be told to them also does not jibe with the facts.
It’s also thought that marines, who used ships but only to get to where they were going,
were held in contempt by sailors, who lived on the vessels fulltime. They considered
marines to be green and gullible, ready to believe any fanciful story. To have some fun, they
would tell one to the marines.
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199. What’s that lion doing roaring at the beginning of MGM films?
Well, it’s certainly more impressive than a hyena laughing or a house cat coughing up a
hairball. Hey, maybe the lion is hungry or just looking for a little kitty-catting from his lady
lion.
Ok, I’ll tell you the truth. MGM inherited the big pussycat when it acquired Goldwyn
Pictures (which became the “G” in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer). Howard Dietz, an advertising
executive, who had attended Columbia University, had created the trademarked feline,
named Leo, for producer Samuel Goldwyn. Columbia’s mascot was a lion and their football
fight song was “Roar, Lion, Roar.” Leo was thus an Ivy League lion, a gentleman and a
scholar, and always roared properly.
As far as I know, Leo never joined the Screen Actors Guild, owned a house in Malibu or
broke up with Julia Roberts.
200. Why did children’s book author Theodor Geisel change his name to Dr.
Seuss?
Well he couldn’t call himself Dr. Spock, for obvious reasons. Nobody would believe he was
Dr. Louis Pasteur. Nurse Seuss didn’t quite do it. And Dr. Zeus sounded a bit presumptuous.
Believe it or not, the widely beloved children’s book author needed a quick name change
because of some illicit booze he was caught with doing Prohibition. He was at Dartmouth
and editor of the school’s humor magazine when a room check turned up a bottle of gin in
his quarters. The Grinch in charge of the place decreed that he be booted from the magazine
as punishment for imbibing.
Outwitting the authorities, the young man took his middle name, Seuss, as his last name
and stayed on the publication. In later life he promoted himself to “Dr.,” a title that
Dartmouth confirmed on him officially with an honorary doctorate in 1957. I hope they
returned his gin.
Erin Barrett
201. Why is the pipe under your kitchen sink S-shaped?
Didn’t know I had been looking under your kitchen sink, did you? I’ve also been going
through your dresser draws and… Well, I won’t embarrass you.
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While we commonly refer to that curve in the pipe as “S,’ the proper name for it is a “P”
trap. You insist it looks like an “S,” not a “P?” Complain to City Hall. Anyway, this bend in
the pipe, or P trap, is there to create a water seal. It insures that only water, not air fills the
pipe below that point.
The reason for the water seal is so that you don’t get a whiff of what’s further down the pipe
-- get my drift? Somewhere at the end of all such pipes is a sewer, the odors from which
would not boost your appetite one iota.
David Feldman
202. Why do we say we’re “out of touch” with someone, even if they’re nowhere
near enough to touch?
Is English your native tongue? Be grateful. It’s logically contradictory phrases such as this
that make English as a second language a first-rate pain in the derriere.
The phrase “out of touch” originates with the military, a not exactly touchy-feely institution.
Armies in the eighteenth century marched in increasingly tighter formations. I’m not saying
it was a great idea -- the famed British Redcoats did it fighting the colonists in the American
Revolution and look what it got them. But they did it. In order to stay in formation, soldiers
made sure that they could touch the man nearest to them by swinging their elbows. If you
couldn’t make contact, you were “out of touch.”
Now call your aunt Mabel, who hasn’t heard from you in ages, before she brings up the
heavy artillery.
203. Who invented the refrigerator, and when did it first become available to
consumers?
You didn’t think it was the rap singer, Ice Cube, did you? It wasn’t Phoebe Snow, either. In
fact, this marvelous invention, which believe it or not predates the six-pack of brewskies,
began its life in Scotland.
Scottish scientist William Cullen, in 1748, discovered that the liquid ethyl ether, allowed to
evaporate in a partial vacuum, cooled its surroundings. Americans in the early 19th century
substituted the rapid expansion of a gas for the evaporation of a liquid as the coolant. With
the widespread availability of electricity at the beginning of the 20th century, the time was
ripe for the debut of the household appliance that we know. It arrived in 1913.
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Now grab me a cool one, will you, Bud?
204. When did terrorism first become a political weapon?
The word terrorism dates from the French Revolution, when Robespierre used the guillotine
in a calculated attempt -- called “The Terror” -- to demoralize his enemies, rendering them
helpless. Anarchists in Russia in the 1880s tried to change the political world by
assassinating political leaders. They, too, were called terrorists.
But over the past 75 years terrorism has become more than political violence used outside of
a formal military context. It is also killing or kidnapping innocent civilians to intimidate
secure demands or make a point. Modern terrorists play to the media and leverage
technology to make it possible for a few to hold sway over the many. Examples are as widely
varied as the Ku Klux Klan, the Irish Republican Army, the police and rogue military units
in some countries, the contending forces in the Middle East and the 19 men who took 6,000
lives on September 11.
205. Did Julius Caesar ever eat Caesar’s Salad?
Not even at a toga party. We might as well ask if he ever ate Waldorf salad, Baked Alaska or
Southern Fried Chicken. In the days of the Romaine, uh, Roman Empire, this dish was
unknown.
And contrary to what many people think, Caesar’s Salad was not invented in Prince Mike
Romanoff’s Hollywood restaurant, either. But Romanoff, who by the way was also not a
prince, is credited with popularizing it and adding the anchovies
Caesar’s Salad was first tossed in Tijuana, where tourists wearing Roman sandals have
passed through in legions, but never in Roman chariots, other than Alfa Romeos. Its creator
was Caesar Gardini, the other Caesar, who put it together at his restaurant, Caesar’s Place,
from romaine lettuce, egg and dressing.
206. Who invented the toothbrush?
Surely a better person than he or she who invented the dentist. Those folks really give me a
pain.
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Now don’t bristle, but that “who” will have to be collective. The toothbrush is an
anonymous, evolving cultural artifact, not an invention. We begin with a twig, frayed at one
end, which was a kind of ancient brush used at least as far back as the Egypt of the
Pharaohs. They are still used in some rural areas of the United States.
The modern toothbrush originated in China about the time that Columbus discovered
America. They used bristles taken from the back of a hog’s neck and attached them to
bamboo or bone to brush their teeth. (I guess you could say it was a kind of piggyback
contraption.) Europeans adopted the device, but used horsehair for bristles. Nylon
toothbrushes, considerably more sanitary, finally appeared, in the U.S. in 1938.
207. Why do we call a man whose wife has committed adultery a “cuckold?”
When I was a kid, this whole thing fascinated me. The word adultery was intriguing because
clearly, whatever it really was, you had to be an adult to do it -- like smoking, for example.
And the word “cuckold” was but one letter away from being an out-and-out obscenity and
thus inherently interesting.
Well it turns out that aside from being interesting; it’s also more than a bit cuckoo. In fact,
that’s where cuckold comes from: the cuckoo bird. The cuckoo lays its eggs where they don’t
belong, in other birds’ nests. What about the little birdies already there? They don’t become
bothers and sisters with the newcomers. The filial phonies who have feathered the nest
displace the original occupants. So a cuckold, the victim of adultery, has really been
cuckooed. The word evolved from the Old French, cucualt.
208. What’s the difference between a weasel and an ermine?
You mean in current dollars and cents, or in status? Imagine showing up for that big deal
society wedding in weasel! Or picture a playboy giving his playgirl a weasel stole for her
birthday. Boy would the fur fly.
Of course, nobody ever thinks of posing this question to a weasel and an ermine. And that’s
a good thing, too, because an ermine is nothing more than a weasel in winter. Not all
weasels, but those populating northern habitats are a mousy brown in summer. But in
winter, ah, they turn a very lush white, except for the black tip of their tail. Their pelts are
relatively rare and beginning with the Middle Ages in England, ermine was a sign of royalty.
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The short-tailed weasel, from which royal robes were made, was eventually named the
Bonaparte weasel, perhaps because they were worn while the wearer dined on Beef
Wellington.
209. How does one become a saint?
If you have to ask, it’s probably already too late for you. Nevertheless, the process of
canonization is a basic part of one of the world’s great religions -- we’ll stick to Roman
Catholicism here -- and everyone ought to know something about it.
Sainthood was a local affair, strictly regulated by bishops, until a thousand years ago, when
the Pope began to formalize the process and concentrate the power to create new saints in
Rome. Eventually the Church settled on a two-step process. Beatification is the preliminary
phase, involving limited veneration. To reach that point a candidate is proposed and then
investigated, with a “postulator” assigned to making the case for sainthood and a “devil’s
advocate” looking for any negative factors. Once beatified, there must be proof of two
miracles associated with the candidate. The Pope makes the final decision.
Still want to try for it? Be good, be very good.
210. What’s so “liberal” about the liberal arts?
No, this doesn’t represent the Democratic Party’s program to promote culture in America.
“Liberal” in this context means free as opposed to the servile, or practical arts. The latter
are “servile” because they deal with necessity, work and the everyday, rather than the finer
things.
The concept of the seven liberal arts – maybe they rolled the dice to see how many there
would be – goes back to ancient times. By the Middle Ages, they had become codified:
arithmetic, astronomy, geometry, grammar, logic, music and rhetoric.(Who said “Driver’s
Ed.?”) Although the early Church Fathers held them suspect because they could lead people
to secular pursuits, they eventually became part of the curriculum in church schools. Their
function was to develop a whole person, more “human” than just someone who works like a
beast of burden.
The liberal arts – they make weekends!
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211. When did they start making people who were getting married take blood
tests?
Getting married can be a draining experience. There’s the ring, the caterer, the guest list...
and other tasks in that vein. You may even have to bleed for your nuptials. Why?
First, you should know that if you would rather not bleed for the sake of the government –
paying taxes is bleeding enough – you can move to another state. The tests are no longer
required everywhere. They originated in the 1930s as an effort to discover cases of venereal
disease, then widespread but curable, before infected marital partners could pass it on to
their spouse and perhaps a child. Connecticut drew first blood, in 1935, and eventually
many, although not all, states required the tests.
Now that the VD crisis has receded, how about a screening to see if either prospective
spouse squeezes the toothpaste from the top, followed by preventive counseling for those
who test positive?
Source: Triumph of the Straight Dope by Ed Zotti and Cecil Adams
212. Is there any connection between “dopes” (stupid people) and “dope”
(drugs)?
I guess this comes under the heading of dumbing down the language. Yes, there is a
connection, but it does not originate in English. So let us head for the land of windmills and
tulips – and the wide-open city of Amsterdam, where they used to say you could buy
anything – to get the dope on it.
The Dutch word “doop” meant a thick sauce. In underworld slang, it was also applied to the
substance of similar consistency that resulted from heating opium. By extension, doop also
came to mean narcotics in general and specifically the kind used to drug thoroughbreds to
fix a race. Extended even further, doop was used to describe the dope that would bet on
such a race.
Are you following this? It leaves me feeling a little doopy. Let’s cut it short: then it got
Anglicized.
213. Why is that stuff people smoke called “tobacco?”
See that guy in the corner smoking that sweet-smelling stuff?
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The guy with the silly grin. The one muttering, “oh, wow, far out!” That stuff is not called
tobacco.
We’re talking about the substance that American Indians originally inhaled through the
nose. Yes, they whiffed it up the old proboscis. There are two theories how the word was
engendered, and the first is directly connected to this Indian habit. The two-stemmed pipe
they used was called the tubac, from which we get . . . you got it.
The other theory is that in the Caribbean, the rolled up leaves, smoked cigar-wise, was
called a tabac. My theory is that some etiquette book of the time cautioned that if you were
at a party and wanted to light up, you should step out in tabac to do it.
214. Do cats always land on their feet if they fall from a high place?
If they can bring it off, they would rather land on you. It’s a heck of a wake-up call if you’re
not paying attention to them.
Barring that, cats do seem to land paws down most of the time and can survive falls from
considerable heights. One study, published in a respectable veterinary publication about 15
years ago, showed that 90 percent of cats that fell out of apartment house windows an
average of 5.5 stories up survived, although not unscathed. Tabby accomplishes this by
righting herself during the fall and spreading out to turn into her own parachute.
Yes, this sample excludes cats killed on contact. So, the percentage may be a tad high. And if
truth be told, we have heard from more than one cat hater that felines survive such falls on
just pure spite.
215. Why does yeast make dough rise?
Not so long ago, it was a good bet that the stock market would make your dough rise. But
the air has gone out of that bubble.
Speaking of bubbles, would you like to make some real bread? Without yeast, you will end
up with matzo, the “unleavened” bread of the Jewish holiday of Passover. Yeast consists of
one-celled plants that constantly split to form other plants. During this process they make
two enzymes that, when mixed into flour and water, cause the resulting dough to ferment,
or leaven. During fermentation, the starch in the dough is changed into sugar and then
alcohol and carbon dioxide. The latter, a gas, forms bubbles throughout the dough, puffing
it up. The alcohol and yeast disappear during baking, leaving you with bread.
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Next time your stockbroker advises putting your dough to work in the market, tell him you
would rather let it loaf.
216. Why do we say that a crazy person is “loco?”
First, let’s clear up some confusion. This is not related to the old railroad slang word, which
was simply short for locomotive. If you think they’re the same, you don’t know one end from
another. Crazy railroad people aren’t loco, they have a loose caboose.
But I digress. The word “loco” comes from a weed found in the Southwest. No, not THAT
weed – and stop grinning. This plant, a narcotic, is actually called the locoweed and it drove
cattle nuts when they ate it. It became a synonym for craziness in the West in the 1840s and
came into widespread use about four decades later.
Did you ever see a bull run amok? Crazy, man.
Source: I Hear America Talking: An Illustrated History of American Words and Phrases (A
Touchstone book) By Stuart Berg Flexner
217. Where do mosquitoes hang out and what do they do when they’re not biting
you?
They’re on my arm, biting me. Sorry, just indulging in a little self-pity. Who knows where
the bloody things hang out? Maybe at the Type O Bar, where old proofreaders also go to
drink.
Ok, I did the research. Typically, mosquitoes put the bite on you at night or, if they’re
crepuscular (sounds like someone who doesn’t blow his nose, doesn’t it?), at twilight. They
hate sunlight, but you probably already guessed that. During the day, they’re likely to be in
the grass, on a tree, under a bridge or in a house on a wall away from light.
And what are they doing when not drinking your blood or mating? Not much of anything.
Well are they just hanging out or asleep? We’re not sure. If you have an itch to know, put
your ear next to one and tell me if it’s snoring.
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218. How do seedless grapes reproduce?
I can’t exactly draw you a picture, if you get my drift. But if you’ll usher any minors in the
house out of the room in which you keep your computer, I’ll do my best to inform, with
discretion.
And I promise there will be no childish jokes about how before there were seedless grapes, it
was the pits.
Actually, I was overreacting because seedless grapes reproduce without sex. (Borrring!) Did
someone ever give you a cutting from a plant so that you could start your own? The process
involved is regeneration, in which you can grow the whole plant by transplanting only a part
of it. The original seedless grapes were mutations that were perpetuated via cuttings. It’s
still done that way.
But now that the kids are gone, have you heard the one about...
219. Is there any difference between a lawyer and an attorney?
Sure, one sends you an invoice, while the other bills you; one talks a lot, but the other’s
trademark is lots of talk.
Six of one and half a dozen of the other – and the meter is always running.
We tend to use the words interchangeably, but technically, there is a difference. Did you or
anyone you know ever have the power of attorney for someone, without being a lawyer?
An attorney is anyone – not necessarily a lawyer -- who represents someone else. Such a
person is known as an attorney in fact. An attorney at law is what we commonly know as a
lawyer, one who has studied the law and has passed a bar examination in order to obtain a
license to practice before the courts.
Say, if lay people are attorneys in fact, what do lawyers use instead of facts? Hmmm.
Source: Law Dictionary (Barron’s Legal Guides) By Steven H. Gifis
220. Why might we describe a burden as an albatross around the neck?
Disturbed by body piercing? What if a young person expressed him or herself by wearing a
dead bird as a necklace? Could be the next thing -- complemented by live spider bracelets.
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In the expression, the bird is more noose than necklace. It comes from “The Rime of the
Ancient Mariner,” the poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge. Sailors considered the albatross a
lucky omen, probably a sign that they were approaching land.
In the poem, when a sailor kills an albatross, his shipmates punish him by making him wear
it around his neck. Bad decision. Nothing but ill fortune befalls the ship and eventually all
die except the guy wearing the bird. He prays for deliverance and is saved, but has to tell his
story for the rest of his life. I’d call that a birden... uh, a burden.
Moral: if somebody gives you the bird, politely decline it.
Erin Barrett
221. What’s the difference between softwood and hardwood, as in a “hardwood

floor?”
Is softwood what they use to make discount furniture – where you get a full living room’s
worth for $5 down and $10 a week and it turns to sawdust the day after you make the last
payment? And hardwoods are the kind in which you can get easily lost?
Of course not. But the real difference is tricky because, common sense notwithstanding, it
does not relate to their relative densities: one is not “harder” than the other. The distinction
is based on whether or not the seeds from which new trees grow are covered. Hardwood
seeds have a covering, such as a husk. An example would be the walnut tree.
Softwood seeds are uncovered and the trees that bear them are, like the pine, evergreens.
That just shows you: Every time etymology starts to seem logical, you get words that go
against the grain.
222. What’s the doctor looking for when she taps your knee with a rubber
hammer?
Not a “thank you,” I hope. There are other things I would rather have people do to me --
scratch my back, for example.
Ok, the doctor wants a knee-jerk reaction. You knew that was coming, right? That reaction
tells her a lot more than whether or not you’re alive or, if she taps hard enough, your
threshold of pain. Believe it or not, there are a number of diseases and conditions for which
your response to this seemingly hostile behavior is an indicator. For example, if your knee
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jerks too much it suggests that further tests are indicated for a possible brain tumor,
tetanus, or several other charming possibilities. If your knee is too blasé, it could be that
you have -- are you ready? -- Botulism.
At least this test hasn’t gone high-tech. Next thing you know they’ll be administering an
MRI to test your gut instincts.
223. Why do we call someone who provocatively criticizes, a “gadfly?”
Well, they can criticize indoors or out, so they can’t be houseflies. Except for Mr. Ed., horses
don’t speak, so they can’t be horseflies. But, by gad, there’s nothing to stop us from calling
this person a. . .
The Old English word, gadde, meant to sting or goad. The flies that hung around livestock,
annoying and biting them, were called gadflies. Eventually the word stuck to individuals
whose constant criticism, well meant though it might be, was equally appreciated.
Do you suppose this implies that the objects of a gadfly’s criticism should be considered
cattle? That’s a moot point.
224. Who invented the microwave oven?
Someone who didn’t have the patience to wait three minutes while water boiled on the
stovetop? Someone who loved gray hamburgers? Actually, none of the above.
In 1946 Dr. Percy Spencer, an engineer with the Raytheon Corporation, was working with a
magnetron tube, the emitter of microwave energy invented six years earlier in Britain by Sir
John Randall and Dr. A. H. Boot. Spencer got too close to the tube and a chocolate bar in his
pocket melted. This chocolate-loving -- and therefore, right-thinking -- engineer drew the
proper conclusion: microwaves could cook food.
Raytheon used his discovery to produce a “Radar Range” for restaurants, which by 1952
became available as a home microwave oven. Consumers were finally able to melt chocolate
in their own pockets.
105
225. Which is more potent, a mixed drink or drinking liquor straight?
There’s something really neat-looking about a sassy little shot glass filled with liquid
dynamite. It’s a mighty powerful thing in a small but potent package. Here’s lookin’ at you!
Bottoms up! Bombs away!
Well relax your longshoreman’s grip on that thumbful of instant oblivion long enough to
hear this. Those effete, goat-cheese chomping mixed drink aficionados are going to
disappear a little further into alcoholic lal-la land than you will. Drink for drink, mixed
drinks can get you closer, quicker to the big drunk than imbibing straight up – unless, of
course, you’re a chain drinker and are chugalugging those shots.
The sugar in the mixer speeds absorption of alcohol.
Simultaneously, that sugar, combined with the alcohol, interacts with the pancreas to make
one’s blood sugar level drop. The result: the room spins, your inhibitions disappear, you’re
flying! Whoops. Didn’t you see the coffee table in front of you?
Source: Facts at Your Fingertips by Reader’s Digest
226. What kind of a spider is a “daddy longlegs?”
With a name like that, it’s obviously a cute one, not ugly and disgusting like other spiders.
Had it been this creature who sat down besides Little Miss Muffet, she would have let him
buy her a drink and then who knows where it might have led.
In truth, the daddy longlegs is no kind of spider. Like spiders, it’s an arachnid, an eight-
legged invertebrate. But scorpions and ticks also come under this heading without being
spiders, creepy though they may be. The big difference between the daddy longlegs and the
spider is the latter’s segmented body. I guess you could say that the daddy longlegs is a
more together kind of creature. Unlike spiders, daddy longlegs do not spin webs. However,
their exceptionally long legs do enable them to double park over other insects.
Carnegie Library
227. Why do birds sing?
Why is the sky blue? Why does the sun rise? Why do fools fall in love? We’re really getting
down to bedrock with this question, which is only two degrees of separation from, “What is
life?”
106
Have you noticed that there are few sopranos among the birdies? Singing is generally a guy
thing in the feathered set. One reason for it is to stake out territory, which is lot neater than
how many other animals accomplish the same thing – peeing all over the place instead of
putting up a fence.
And, hey, you can’t nest alone. Mr. Bird breaks into song when he’s on the make. Birds who
sing the most usually have marked out territory rich in food. That’s what the female birds
are looking for: a guy with the goods. They don’t care if he can’t carry a tune, as long as he
can put worms on the table.
228. Why do we say that someone who has revealed secret information has
“spilled the beans?”
This expression would be obvious if it referred to giving away the location of a great little
Mexican restaurant, ruining it with overcrowding. But that’s not it, and I have to admit that
before I looked it up, it was Greek to me.
In fact, the ancient Greeks were some of history’s first bean counters, especially when it
came to selecting members for their many secret societies. They voted on new candidates by
putting a bean in a jar. A white bean meant “yes,” and a black one meant you were, well,
black-balling (black-beaning?) the unlucky aspirant. Occasionally, some klutz reached over
to drop his bean but managed to knock over the jar instead, spilling the beans and exposing
how the secret vote was going.
But how did the expression get into English? We don’t know: that’s still Greek to us.
229. Why are people in conflict said to be at “loggerheads”?
Do not confuse these people with the thick-muscled, ax- wielding men of the North Woods
who get paid to yell “timber” all day. Nor should we mistake the disputants for
ventriloquist’s dummies – well, that depends on the disputants.
Loggerheads were weapons on medieval ships. They were sticks with iron at the end that
was heated and then dipped in tar.
The stick became a hand-held catapult with which one launched the molten tar at an enemy
ship at close quarters. If you ran out of tar, you still had a long stick with a weighted end.
107
When applied to an enemy’s head with sufficient force, you were at loggerheads with a
vengeance.
We had a variant in college. After enough beer, a few of the guys in the frat house would
start butting skulls. We used to say they were at lagerheads.
230. What’s the difference between a homeopath and an osteopath?
College students with a yen to heal the sick used to come to a fork in the road when
choosing a career path. They could choose traditional medicine or alternative medicine,
such as homeopathy and osteopathic medicine. But if they choose the latter path they got
forked: insurance companies wouldn’t pay for it.
Things are changing. Now you can often co-payment your way to a homeopath, who seeks to
cure by inducing in patients via some natural substance the same symptoms – on a much
smaller scale – that brought them to the doctor in the first place.
The theory is that “like cures like.” HMOs also pay for osteopaths, who base their cures, at
least in part, on the manipulation of the musculoskeleton system.
Personally, I prefer to see a primrose-path. He’s the doc that knows that prescribing two
weeks in Cancun or Aruba will cure most anything.
Carnegie Library
231. Why do we have wisdom teeth?
Because the American Dental Association lobbied for them, I concluded after reviewing the
bill from my latest brush with dentistry. There are so many dentists with the skills of a coal
miner and the heart of an accountant, and so few wisdom teeth.
Before microwaves and frozen dinners, people had to really chomp their uncooked food with
what are also called “third molars.” But today wisdom teeth are vestigial. You don’t need
them for a guacamole burger. And they get infected and have to come out. Which is where
your dentist and credit card come in.
They’re called wisdom teeth because they’re the last teeth you get. You’re older and smarter
than you were when you got your first teeth. So why not call gray hair, wisdom hair; middle
108
age paunch, wisdom fat; and the forgetfulness that begins in your 40s, wisdom whiteout?
Chew on that for a while.
232. How did we come up with “$” as a dollar sign?
First notice that computer programmers, looking to save bits and bytes, represent the dollar
sign by an “S” over one, rather than the standard two vertical lines: $ (Saves money, too: if a
quarter is two bits, that would make the eight-bit byte worth a dollar.)
Now, where it came from: Thomas Jefferson, who stole it from Spain. After the American
Revolution, the new nation wanted to free itself from British influence and was not about to
adopt the pound and its sign as its currency. Instead, the United States, at the behest of
Jefferson, turned to the Spanish dollar. On the back of that large coin was the Two Pillars of
Hercules at Gibraltar. An “S” was imposed on them simply to show they were plural. “I’ll
buy that,” said the US Congress.
233. Why do say that a politician talking a bill to death is ‘filibustering?’
Filibustering’s etymology is rooted in the nature of politicians: it has to do with piracy.

Pirates were also called freebooters, from the Dutch “vrij,” or free, and “buit,” or boot.
“Filibuster” derived from that word, came into English via French (filibustier) and then
Spanish (filibustero).
In the 19th century, Americans applied the word to the extralegal behavior of their
countrymen who incited revolutions in Latin America. This filibustering by private citizens
independent of the U. S. government was accomplished by stirring up trouble through
incendiary speeches. Since Congress does many things backwards, it shouldn’t surprise us
that the word came to mean almost the opposite in legislative terms. It described the
process of preventing action on a bill – pouring cold water on it -- through endless talk that
couldn’t be stopped as long as the talker kept talking. It was legislative death by lethal
interjection.
234. Is the real roadrunner anything like the creature in the cartoon?
The roadrunner’s real-life behavior is every bit as eccentric as its animated counterpart in
reel life. No wonder that the roadrunner also goes by the name of the “ground cuckoo.”
109
The roadrunner builds its nest in a cactus and will dine on a snake by first banging it
against a rock and then wolfing it down whole. The two foot-long roadrunner, half of which
is tail, actually plays chicken on the roads of its southwestern habitat, running ahead of
speeding cars and then veering off at the last minute. It flies when it has to, but much
prefers to run at up to 15 miles an hour, usually without Nikes.
But don’t expect to hear it go “meep, meep,” as the celluloid version does. More appropriate
for a member of the cuckoo family, it goes, “coo, coo.”
235. Why do soldiers wear their hair so short?
It’s bad enough to get shot at without having a bad hair day on top of everything else. But
mostly soldiers wear their hair short because they’re ordered to.
Ok, there’s a historic reason. Look at pictures of U. S. soldiers in the Civil War. They look
like hippies. Now look at our men in uniform after the Spanish-American War at the
beginning of the 20th century. Crew cuts! What happened?
Fighting in the tropics, that’s what. It went beyond comfort.
Dare I be blunt? Cooties. It’s easier to avoid such distractions with short hair, which
facilitates keeping the scalp clean. It also turned out to be easier to treat scalp wounds
without long hair to complicate matters.
Why not, then, specify complete baldness? Bald soldiers could send signals by reflecting
sunlight off their skulls.
They would certainly be using their heads.
236. How come your heart muscle doesn’t get charley-horsed from all that
exertion?
If you’re pumping iron, your heart is pumping blood, big time. Even walking fast stresses
the old ticker. Likewise a little romantic activity. So why don’t you wake up the next
morning with aches and pains where it would really scare you?
For one thing, your heart muscle is not like your other muscles. The part that turns food
into energy is a greater percentage of cardiac muscle than of the rest of your muscles. Your
110
heart also contracts more slowly than other muscles, with a smoother, less taxing motion.
Each of these factors decreases the amount of stress on heart muscle, lessening fatigue.
Nevertheless, our hearts ache, break, burn, get stolen, are given away, end up in our mouths
and often skip a beat. But just try to get your HMO to approve a referral to a specialist for
any of these conditions.
237. Why do we say that you’re encroaching when you trespass on someone’s
space?
“Posted: No hunting or fishing.” On privately owned country property, this is a common

sign. Likewise, we all have our own private space, with psychic as well as physical
boundaries. We warn off encroachers, if not with a sign then with body language, or a look.
Why “encroachers?” Because they want to get their hooks in us. What? Croc or croche was
French for “hook.” Beginning that word with “en” gave it the meaning of taking or hooking
something not belonging to you. Over time the meaning shaded to that of trespassing.
The same root gives us crochet, meaning a small hook. But if anyone tells you that the word
“hooker” also comes from this root, tell ‘em that’s a big croc.
238. What English word do most people probably use more often than any
other, aside from “the,” “I,” etc.?
No, not THAT word. We’re in the parlor, not out on the street. I mean nice, refined, genteel
English-speaking people. You can’t guess? Helllllo!
That’s it – unless you’re one of those people who picks up the phone and says “yeah,” or
greets others merely with a nod. Hello is ubiquitous. It started in Chaucer’s time as
“hallow,” also a word for saint so perhaps it had some religious connotation, as in “bless
you.” It eventually evolved into “hallo.” Nineteenth century Americans were saying “hullo”
until it all fell into place as “hello” about the time that the telephone came into use.
But when the first telephone exchange was set up in 1878 in New Haven, Connecticut,
people actually answered the phone with, “ahoy.” While that happens to be the eccentric
way that Alexander Graham Bell greeted people, I think the new invention simply left those
folks feeling at sea.
111
239. Have any married couples been launched into space?
On the 1950s TV show, “The Honeymooners,” bus driver Ralph Kramden often promised his
wife, “Alice, you’re gonna go to the moon!” Neal Armstrong beat her to it.
In 1992, a real married couple did go into space -- together.
Astronauts Jan Davis and Mark Lee were preparing for an 8-day mission aboard the Space
Shuttle Endeavor. During their training they secretly married and by the time they revealed
it the flight was drawing near. They were permitted to go but NASA scheduled them on
opposite 12-hour shifts. Since astronauts are above it all, so to speak, it’s hard to say who
worked days and who, nights.
By the way, if you and your sweetie are thinking you, too, would like to really get away from
it all, fuhgedaboutit.
NASA now nixes space spouses.
Carnegie Library
240. Do turkeys really drown by looking up when it rains?
A species synonymous with stupidity, that communicate by going “gobble, gobble,” certainly
has a problem with public perception.
Typical is the barnyard canard that when it rains, turkeys look upward, open their mouths
to gape and drown. What do you think they are, a, uh, bunch of turkeys? They don’t do it.
The probable source for this legend is the few young turkeys that sometimes do die in a
heavy downpour. They’re covered with down but are not yet protected by the adult turkey’s
protective outer feathers. Their down gets wet, becomes ineffective and they die from the
cold.
Criticizing this bird is like engaging in a, uh, turkey shoot. For instance, the birds today are
bred to have plump breasts, which have been likened to footballs. It keeps them from
“mounting,” and they can’t reproduce. See, first we call them stupid, now we complain that
they can’t score.
Erin Barrett, and The New York Times – National Ed
112

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001. Why do we say that the police “frisk” a suspect? 13

2. Why do we call what a spider produces a cobweb?

3. Why don’t figure skaters get nauseous when spinning?

Source: Do Penguins Have Knees? By David Feldman

5. Why do we say that provoking someone is “getting a rise” out of them?

6. Exactly who was Nostradamus and is there anything to his predictions?

Source: Return of the Straight Dope by Cecil Adams

7. Why do we call a drunk a lush?

8. Why do matadors wave a red cape at the bull?

Source: Ever Wonder Why? By Douglas B. Smith

Source: Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins by William Morris

11. In the expression “kith and kin,” what’s a kith?

Source: The Catholic Encyclopedia: Revised and Updated by Robert Broderick

13. How do they stage movie animal fights?

Source: Return of the Straight Dope by Cecil Adams

Source: Dictionary of Misinformation by Tom Burnam

15. When did anesthetics begin to be used in surgery?

Source: Facts at Your Fingertips by Reader’s Digest

16. Is there any kind of “lucre” besides “filthy lucre?”

Source: A Second Browser’s Dictionary (Common Reader Editions) by John Ciardi

18. Who invented the modern lottery?

Source: Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology edited by C. T. Onions

Source: Political Parties edited by Gene Brown

21. What’s the difference between pathos and bathos?

Source: Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology edited by C. T. Onions

What do you mean by ‘in’? Or ‘was’? How about ‘a’?

23. Why do we call extortion “blackmail?”

24. Who was the original Grateful Dead?

25. Why do we have earlobes?

Source: Do Penguins Have Knees? By David Feldman

26. Just what is a krill?

So why do we go on repeating an expression which at its heart is truly archaic? Because we

Source: Dictionary of Misinformation by Tom Burnam

Source: Return of the Straight Dope by Cecil Adams

Source: Ever Wonder Why? By Douglas B. Smith

30. Who invented Groundhog Day, and when?

Heck, I lose my nerve EVERY time I go to the dentist!

Source: How Do They Do That? By Caroline Sutton

32. Why are social outcasts sometimes called pariahs?

Source: Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology edited by C. T. Onions

33. Why do we sometimes call chopped meat Salisbury Steak?

Source: Ever Wonder Why? By Douglas B. Smith

Source: Return of the Straight Dope by Cecil Adams

Source: Ever Wonder Why? By Douglas B. Smith

Source: The Secret Lives of Words by Paul West

Source: The World Book Encyclopedia by World Book Inc.

Source: How Do They Do That? By Caroline Sutton

42. Why are auctioneers sometimes hard to understand at live auctions?

Source: How Do Astronauts Scratch an Itch? : An Imponderables Book (An Imponderables

43. Why would we say that someone is “happy as a clam?”

Source: Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins by William Morris

Source: Ever Wonder Why? By Douglas B. Smith

45. Why do we describe money obtained corruptly, such as from bribes, as

Strangely enough graft, an unsavory, underhanded, under-the- table activity, appears to

Source: Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins by William Morris

Source: A World of Imponderables: The Answers to Life's Most Mystifying Questions

Would YOU question his arithmetic?

49. Why do sailors wear bell-bottomed trousers?

Source: Ever Wonder Why? By Douglas B. Smith

50. Is there really such a thing as being tone deaf?