Wednesday WOLF - Over the Top

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.

Let's face it, some people are just outlandish. They blog, they tweet, they have tumblrs & a an eponymous website, they make their own book trailers and make vlogs of themselves being idiots, they are brunettes and have the initials MM. God... these people.

In connection with such folks, today I want to talk about the expression over the top.

World War I was kind of awful for a lot of reasons - large scale mechanized warfare, the introduction of chemical weapons, and of course, trench warfare. Barbed wire that lined trenches has become iconic of WWI in a lot of ways, because despite the new technology involved in fighting, some of the most lethal and horrific moments came when soldiers crawled from their trench to fight hand-to-hand with the guys crawling out of the opposite trench.

Anyone who took the fight to this extreme was said to have gone... over the top.

Wednesday WOLF - Acronym

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.

You've probably realized by now that I'm a pretty big fan of acronyms. Yes, it's true. I kind of love them. You can make up a hilarious acronym out of nowhere once you've trained your brain to do it, and it's also a great party skill. Or it annoy the crap out of people... kind of depends on the crowd you hand with.

In any case, what does acronym even mean? It's Greek (like a lot of other things we stole from them) and it means "top name." We take the top letter of each word encompassed by the acronym to make the new name.

There are a lot of acronyms you use fairly often, which I'll rip off right here real quick:

• RSVP: Respondez S'il Vous Plait - French for "please answer"

• PS: Post Scriptum - something you tag on "after writing"

• i.e.: "id est" which translates from Latin "that is" 

• e.g: "exampli gratia" again from Latin "for example"

• etc: "et cetera" again, more Latin "and the rest of them"

• AM: Ante Meridiem

• PM: Post Meridiem

And of course there are about a ton of corporate examples, and if you wander into military territory we're talking about millions of acronyms.

My favorite acronym though is the early Christian usage of ICHTHUS, which is Greek for "fish." The acronym, (again in Greek) stands for "Iesous Christos Theou Huios Soter" meaning "Jesus Christ, Son of God, Savior." Christians used to identify each other by drawing a fish in the sand at their feet with their toe while talking to another person they suspected might be a Christian. If the other person answered with a fish, they knew the could speak openly.

We still use the fish today. You can see it on any number of cars if you look - and now you know why.

Wednesday WOLF - Jaywalk

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.

While jaywalking is a fairly laughable crime, it is in fact not legal to cross the street anywhere other than a crosswalk, or to cross against a traffic signal. Americans might have a laugh at it, but I actually did see a jaywalker get clocked when I was in Paris. Don't eff with the French.

Is it really that dangerous to jaywalk? While our speed limits and congested streets keep things pretty safe for footers, it hasn't always been this way. The first instance of the use of jaywalker was from the Chicago Tribune in 1909 (although it didn't make the dictionary until 1917). Back in 1909, people were adjusting to even having cars in the streets, and speed limits were a thing of the future. Horses and buggies kept a pretty calm pace, except when a horse flipped it's lid - and if it did, a sign saying, "Hey, not so fast, Mr. Horse," wasn't going to stop him.

So city streets in the early 1900's were actually pretty dangerous. Motorists pretty much did as they pleased - which made horses and buggy drivers mad - and pedestrians pretty much kept doing what they'd been doing... crossing the street wherever they felt. And while that might fly with Black Beauty, Mr. Model T didn't necessarily have the stop-on-a-dime that we do today - or a speed limit to tell him not to go so fast in the first place.

City dwellers caught on pretty fast - cross on the crosswalk or at your own peril. But newbies to the city and skyline gazers wandered into the road fairly often, earning the ire of those behind the wheel. At the time, rural folk and country dwellers were often called jays, thus anyone inexperienced in crossing a city street and foolish enough to walk in front of cars were... jaywalkers.