Wednesday WOLF - Haywire

I've got a collection of random information in my brain that makes me an awesome Trivial Pursuit partner, but is completely useless when it comes to real world application. Like say, job applications. I thought I'd share some of this random crap with you in the form of another acronym-ific series. I give you - Word Origins from Left Field - that's right, the WOLF. Er... ignore the fact that the "from" doesn't fit.

In keeping with last week's post about the life of a farm girl, I thought I'd share some wonderful farm origin terminology. Back in the day, bales of hay were secured with a type of wire that was of rather cheap quality, which only makes sense. Hay was baled with the assumption that soon somebody was going to cut it apart and use it, so quality wasn't a huge concern where baling wire came in.

A lot of farmers fastidiously kept their wire after slicing apart the bales, and used it for some quick-fixes around the property - like wiring up a broken gate, or fixing a bit of gutter. Even those of us with the best intentions don't always come back around to fixing something up properly if the slop-job is filling in nicely... and so we let it go.

Farmers with more than few pieces of rusty haywire holding everything together on the farm were said to have lost control of their outfit... they've gone haywire.

Wednesday WOLF - Alphabet

I've got a collection of random information in my brain that makes me an awesome Trivial Pursuit partner, but is completely useless when it comes to real world application. Like say, job applications. I thought I'd share some of this random crap with you in the form of another acronym-ific series. I give you - Word Origins from Left Field - that's right, the WOLF. Er... ignore the fact that the "from" doesn't fit.

Sure, word origins are fascinating when you're a big nerd (like me), but you can even dive down past the words into the letters themselves and get some interesting stories.

You guys probably know that the first writing forms we had were actually pictures like cuneiform and hieroglyphs. The first writing form used where the symbols actually represented spoken sounds was created by the Phoenicians. It had 22 symbols, all consonants. Tht's rght, n vwls.

The first two letters in the Phoenician writing system were called aleph and beth.

Yep - that's where we get alphabet.

Wednesday WOLF - Tenterhooks

I’m such a big nerd that I tend to look up word origins in my spare time because I'm fascinated by our language. The odder the origin, the better. I've got a collection of random information in my brain that makes me an awesome Trivial Pursuit partner, but is completely useless when it comes to real world application. Like say, job applications.

In any case, I thought I'd share some of this random crap with you in the form of the new acronym-ific series. I give you - Word Origins from Left Field - that's right, the WOLF. Er... ignore the fact that the "from" doesn't fit.

You have the indomitable RC Lewis to thank for today's WOLF. During the course of our daily and verbose e-conversations, she used the word tenterhooks. Me being the self-proclaimed nerd immediately said, "Hey, I know where that word comes from!" And, as I know her ACT score (ahem, higher than mine) I assumed she did too.

But she had fallen for the same trap I did, years ago when Mindy-That-Was thought that tenterhooks referred to a hook that you would hang a meat or carcass from. Alas! This is incorrect.

A tenter is a wooden frame, used in the stretching and drying of woolen cloth to remove the weave and reduce shrinkage once it became a garment. A tenterhook is one of the many hooks on the frame used to stretch the fabric.

Although this practice is very much a thing of the past, when you think about it, it makes quite a bit of sense. When you say you're "on tenterhooks," what you're conveying is that you are stressed and tense while waiting to discover something.

It does not mean, "Wow! I'm so excited to hear what happens next that it's like I'm a hollowed out carcass hanging from a hook!"