Archaic terms

Terms or idioms we still use but don't remember where they came from:

1. We still measure power in horses. "It has 65 horse power." Okay I understand the reference but honestly, I don't know how much power one horse is.... I'm just not around horses.

2. candlepower see above

3. beat around the bush (to talk about something indirectly) - what bush and why are you beating it?

4. bushed (tired) as in "I'm really bushed"

Mobi

I love etymology (the study of word origins)!

It sounds like bushed might be Australian in origin; when one has been out in the bush for a long time, he's exhausted. Scroll down here: http://dictionary.reference.com/search?q=bushed

Sounds right!
Mobi

Horsepower: http://auto.howstuffworks.com/horsepower1.htm

Candlepower: Scroll down on http://www.unc.edu/~rowlett/units/dictC.html

Regarding "beat around the bush", there's a little scrolling here, too: http://www.takeourword.com/TOW191/page2.html

That one makes the most sense of all. I never thought about its origin before.

Great links gw :) Here's one of my favorites:

http://www.word-detective.com/

Thanks for the links!
Mobi

Who's horse? Horsepower http://www.howstuffworks.com/horsepower1.htm

How big is the wick in the candle?
Candlepower (A.K.A. Candela) http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/candela.html

Beat around the bush: This phrase is from the ancient sport of batfowling – hunting roosting birds at night, with a light to distract them and a bat to bop them. Sometimes the bat was used to beat around the bush to scare the birds out. But people unfamiliar with batfowling sometimes assumed you were supposed to beat the bush itself – which completely missed the point!

Really bushed: Possibly from Australian slang, lost in the bush.

Now, why, you might ask, did I feel the urge to really find out what those where. Guess I am reall Curious George. http://www.houghtonmifflinbooks.com/features/cgsite/

Now how about foot (whose?), Murphy's Law (what did he do to deserve this?), Shank's Mare (musta been poor), and while we are at it why is it "little red wagon" instead of "red little wagon?"

I find "Rule of Thumb" a funny one - I think I would have looked for a man with slim and small fingers back then! LOL

Definitely, Carol!

Language is so fun, and so fluid.

This thread really makes you think.

Parkway. Do we park there? Or a way through the park? I wouldn't want to park on a parkway.LOL

Turnpike. Since we seem to always pay at the turnpike, is the turn, for turnstile?

Is a highway always built up above the landscape elevation?

And what happens when we bottom out? Do our bellies scrape the ground? Such as after the big Christmas meal?LOL

How about causeway? We go there 'cause it's the way?

Gardenwife--Love it! Causeway--cause we always find friends here?

We park on the driveway and drive on the parkway and according to the British we do it on the wrong side.

how long is a piece of string?

twice the distance from it's middle to the end

Probably English is the only language where you could pare a pair of pears.

"above the salt"??

Bear the burden of a bare bear!
Mobi

above the salt is a mid 19th Centuary phrase to mean of high rank or of great wealth.

from my 1316 page "Dictionary of Slang" published by Cassell

A friend of my daughters wanted to know how many minutes in a while, as in "we'll do it in awhile, honey."

How many of you "read up your house" and do you know what it means?

My grandmother used to always say "Outen the lights" which is a Pennsylvania Dutch saying. Don't know how she ever came to use it so much-- we're quite aways from Pennsylvania Dutch country.

This message was edited Dec 26, 2003 3:51 PM

Mark, I think "above the salt" goes back much earlier, back to the early feudal lords. Salt was quite expensive in those days, and where you were seated at a banquet depended on your social rank. Since salt was expensive, it only went a certain distance down the table. Hence, if you were seated "above the salt" you had some rank.

I remember hearing something about that, too, Darius. Fascinating!

Read up your house? I've not heard that one before...I've heard of reading up on something, in order to learn more about a subject. Is it a shortened form of ready, like saying "ready the house", as in get it ready for winter? Or is it read as in reading a book?

Read up the house, most likely is from W. Pa.LOL We talk like this every day. Read up the house before company gets here. It really needs a good reading up!

Oh,,, That must be what we say that sounds like "Red-up"... I just never saw it in print, LOL.

Ok, so it's saying "ready the house" for company. I've gotcha!

That is, read in the past tense!

"Reading up the house" (pronounced "red) means to clean it up. And yes, it seems to be exclusive to certain parts of Western PA.

My oldest daughter is a psych major at IUP in Indiana, PA and in one of her classes of about 100 students, the teacher asked "How many of you read up your rooms?" She said only a handful of students (including her) raised their hands, and the rest looked around in confusion because they did not know what it meant!

It's been part of our vernacular here forever and I never gave it a thought. Turns out other parts of the country have absolutely NO clue what we are talking about when we say it! LOL!

I've never heard it, but when you think about how close read is to ready, it makes perfect sense! It looks like Western Pennsylvanians just alter the words a little. Outen makes sense as "put out"...Like "darken a room" when we mean "make it dark".

I have to say you guys probably got it from us in the UK where it is widely used

hold on there - western NY gets in there, too.

Nobody, but nobody. Can slur their words together like (W Pa) we can. And we are darn proud of it too!:) No matter how much we are laughed at, in front of, and behind our backs.LOL

We always were told to "rid" (rhymes with bid) up the house,
as in straightening, or making presentable, or putting in order. Living at the end of a long lane gave us ample time to be ready when unexpected guests approached. Mom gave the word and 9 kids went into action. What memories.!!

IndaShade, we "red-up" the house, never connected it with "ready" but I've always wondered where it comes from. My husband's family says "red-up" too and we are all from Northeast Ohio. However, all of us have roots in Southern Oh-Hiya - which is a different world. My folks are from Shreve and Mineral city - mining communitities filled with Welsh folk... and drawing close to the Western PA border, in places... so perhaps it is from that general area...

to you have a bath towel or a "tALL" (rhymes with pal?)

I felt like I had found a good husband match when my hubby knew what "reda up the house" meant.

some people here call a towel a tarl

My part of the south has a TOW-WEL. Accent on the TOW
Pati

Continental. One definition in the dictionary says - of or relating to cuisine based on classical European cooking.

Now just a minute. We have been around the square a few times ourselves. Does this dictionary think we will fall for this definition?

Or is a continental breakfast really classical European cuisine? Is that doughnut at the Motel 6 really classical? The coffee at the Best Western fresh ground Columbian? The tang, oops, the orange juice at Budget Motel really fresh squeezed?

We must admit, continental does have that certain ring to it. Something over there. Something special. Something intriguing, to say the least.

But the word continental must be redefined when it comes to the breakfast end of it. How about mushy? Or cold? Or greasy? Or even undigestable?

I'm sorry. When a continental breakfast is mentioned, there is only one place it can fit. But then again, this IS a family forum.

Perhaps it's a shortened form of Lincoln Continental...As in, it sits like a heavy mass of metal in your stomach.