Wednesday WOLF - Bucolic

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've always thought that bucolic sounds like a bad nasty disease, but it actually means something quite nice. For those of you who don't know, it means of, pertaining to, or suggesting an idyllic rural life. noun. 3. a pastoral poem. 4. Archaic. a farmer; shepherd; rustic.

So how did we get such a gross word for something awesome?

Bucolic is from the Greek boukolos, which means herdsman.

Wednesday WOLF - Lake Erie

I'm a nerd. In fact 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.

Recently a follower filled me in on an interesting tidbit. Lake Erie figures into my novel NOT A DROP TO DRINK, and the original name for Lake Erie was actually The Lake of the Cat, which I just love. Why was it the Lake of the Cat? The original inhabitants of the area were the Erielhonan Indian people, which means People of the Cat in their language. When the French showed up, they referred to the nearby lake (Lake Erie) as the Lake of the Cat.

And you know what else? "Cat"in Gaelic is... "cat." It hasn't changed, like ever. God bless you Irishfolk.

Wednesday WOLF - Battening Down the Hatches

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.

Last week I was racing around securing anything that could blow away outside and referred to it mentally as battening down the hatches. Because I'm a major dork, I immediately wanted to know where that came from, even though there was a chance I would freeze to death before learning the answer if I stood outside too long wondering.

I knew it was from sailing (and man do we get a LOT of stuff from them) but I didn't know specifically how it applied. A hatch I've got covered because I watched Swiss Family Robinson a lot as a kid. For those of you who aren't so blessed, a hatch is basically those little wood gratings that flip up, leading down into the underbelly of the ship where the men sleep. It's grated instead of having a solid cover because... well, because men smell bad.

The battening part comes in when a storm is expected. Everyone goes below deck and the grated hatches are covered with a tarp to prevent the water from coming in, and the edges of the tarp were weighted down with wooden strips called battens. 

After learning all that, my next question is... if everyone is below deck, who does the battening???