Wednesday WOLF - Earmark

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.

Here's a quick and simple one, have you ever earmarked something to call attention to it or single it out? The word derives from an old custom for marking livestock (usually pigs) that involved nicking their ears in certain ways to indicate which pigs belong to who.

And hey, now you know.

Wednesday WOLF - Hacker

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.

I thought I'd share with you the origin of the term hacker.

The word itself has been around for awhile, most always with a negative connotation. It seems that at one time a hacker was someone who made furniture using only an axe as their tool, with the end result being that their furniture... well, kind of sucked. Later on the word hack was used as a noun to describe someone doing routine drudge work, and I hate to tell you this but it was most commonly applied to writers. In turn, this may have influenced the usage of the word when it came to writing computer software, and it looks like that's where it made the jump from the page to the keyboard - as early as the 1960's.

Wednesday WOLF - Luddite

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.

Here's one that I confess I didn't really understand until quite recently.

Have you ever heard someone referred to as a Luddite? I have, more than once (it happens when you work in the public school system), but I was always too embarrassed to ask what the hell that meant, because I'm the person who's already supposed to know that stuff.

A Luddite is someone who resists technology. So, for example, anybody who won't use a microwave or refuses to get online because the devil is in the url. But where does this come from?

With the industrial revolution came some great problems, and one of them was mechanized weaving looms. Textile workers were not allowed to unionize, but what they did do was organize protests, claiming that everything was being orchestrated by a mythical dude named General Ludd. During these protests mechanized looms were smashed as an expression of the worker's anger at a machine taking over their job. The followers of the non-existing Ludd were referred to as Luddites, and the term stuck.

Unfortunately for them so did technology.