Wednesday WOLF - Flip Your Lid

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.

Flip your lid means to explode with anger. My understanding has always been that the saying has its origins with teakettles. A teakettle left boiling too long holds a tremendous amount of steam pressure and the lid can literally flip or blow off (some people say blow your lid).

But that seemed too simple so I dug a little deeper and a lot of people seem to think that flip your lid originates with the song "Little Deuce Coupe" from the Beach Boys:

She's got a competition clutch with the four on the floor
And she purrs like a kitten till the lake pipes roar
And if that aint enough to make you flip your lid
There's one more thing, I got the pink slip daddy

Well, it's definitely there, but I kind of doubt that the Beach Boys made it up, since teakettles were around a little before they were. I'm guessing they borrowed it, and perhaps cemented the usage as a common idiom?

I can't give you a totally solid answer on this one, but my money is on the teakettle.

Wednesday WOLF - The Living Room

I'm a nerd. I'm 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.

The living room... we like being in there, right? It's where the TV and microwave burritos get us through slow evenings, a spot to crash with friends, and (in my case) a gathering place for cat and dog hair.

You might think we call it the living room because we do a fair amount of our living there, but there's a... let's call it, a slightly more macabre reason why.

The beginning of the 20th century marked some great strides forward for modern medicine. Germ theory was widely accepted, and simple procedures such as washing hands and the introduction of public health measures drastically reduced death rates. So much so that many people felt that humans were on the verge of eradicating illness.

At that time, the room in the home where guests were received was called the parlor. Generally reserved for public gatherings, it was also used for the purpose of a laying out. At the time, it was still common practice for families to hold a wake in their home, with the deceased laid out in the parlor for family and friends to say their goodbyes before burial.

Due to the rise in public health, and new discoveries in medicine, the Ladies Home Journal boldly suggested renaming the parlor the living room, since we wouldn't be gathering there quite so often after a death.

Then the flu epidemic of 1918 hit...

Wednesday WOLF - The Cut of Your Jib

I'm a nerd. I'm 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.

Today, I want to talk to you about the cut of your jib.

Every heard someone say they don't like the cut of someone else's jib?

It means that a negative first impression has been made, and we know that because of context clues and the general delivery. But - what's a jib, anyway?

Interestingly, we get this little gem from sailing (we actually get a lot of phrases from the high seas - more to come). The jib is a triangular sail on the front of a ship, and most were shaped in accordance with the nationality of the ship. Therefore, other sailors could tell where this ship was hailing from, and subsequently whether this was someone they wanted to avoid or not.