LIFE IN THE 1500’S

[jamesintheworld]

LIFE IN THE 1500’S

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water
temperature isn’t just how you like it, think about how things used to be.

Here are some facts about the 1500s:

Most people got married in June because they took their yearly bath in
May and still smelled pretty good by June. However, they were starting
to smell, so brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor.
Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house
had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the sons and men,
then the women and finally the children, last of all the babies. By then
the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the
saying,
“Don’t throw the baby out with the Bath water.”

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood
underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the
cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it
rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall
off the roof.
Hence the saying “It’s raining cats and dogs.”

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed
a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and droppings could mess up
your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over
the top afforded some protection. That’s how canopy beds came into
existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt.
Hence the saying, Dirt poor. The wealthy had slate floors that would get
slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor
to help keep their footing. As the winter wore on, they added more
thresh until when you opened the door, it would all start slipping
outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entranceway. Hence the saying
“a thresh hold.”

(Getting quite an education, aren’t you?)

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle always
hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the
pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would
eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold
overnight and then start over the next d ay. Sometimes stew had food in
it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme, “Peas
porridge hot, peas porridge cold,
peas porridge in the pot nine days old.”

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special
When visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show off. It
was a sign of wealth that a man could, bring home the bacon. They would
cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around and chew
the fat.

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content
caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning
death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years
or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of
the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or the
upper crust.

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination
would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone
along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial.
They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the
family would gatheraround and eat and drink and wait and see if they
would wake up. Hence the
custom of holding a wake.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of
places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and would take the
bones to a bone-house, and reuse the grave. When reopening coffins, 1
out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and
they realized they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a
string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the coffin and up
through the ground and tie
it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night
(the graveyard shift) to listen for the bell; thus, someone could be,
saved by the bell or was considered a …dead ringer.

And that’s the truth…Now, whoever said History was boring ! ! !

[RiverRat]

Here’s a little etymological history for you as per wikipedia:

Folk etymology
Main article: Folk etymology
“Folk etymology” or “popular etymology” is an established term for a false etymology which grows up anonymously in popular lore. A modern folk etymology may be thought of as a linguistic urban legend, but folk etymologies can be very old and even establish themselves as accepted fact among scholars.

Folk etymology becomes interesting when it feeds back into the development of the word and thus becomes a part of the true etymology. Because a population wrongly believes a word to have a certain origin, they begin to pronounce or use the word in a manner appropriate to that perceived origin, in a kind of misplaced pedantry. Thus a new standard form of the word appears which has been influenced by the misconception. In such cases it is often said that the form of the word has been “altered by folk etymology”. (Less commonly, but found in the etymological sections of the OED, one might read that the word was altered by pseudo-etymology, or false etymology.) It should be noted, however, that strictly the term “folk etymology” refers to the misconception which triggered the change, not to the process of change itself, which is best thought of as an example of linguistic analogy. Most examples can be classified as acronyms, anecdotes, or auditory.

Examples

F.U.C.K. (for fuck). There is an urban legend which states that the term “fuck” originated as an acronym, standing for “For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge”. According to this etymology, adulterers in medieval England would be charged with the crime of unlawful carnal knowledge. After a while the charge was shortened on the charge sheet to “F.U.C.K.”, and so the term came to mean the act of adultery. There are a number of variations on this theme – the same acronym, it is claimed, was posted on stocks where adulterers were publicly humiliated. Another variation suggests that F.U.C.K stands for “Fornication Under Consent of the King”, a phrase supposedly posted on the doors of those persons permitted to reproduce at a time of medieval population control or to indicate that a brothel had paid its tax and was licensed to operate. These etymologies are false for a number of reasons, not least historical inaccuracy: the “population control” theory neglects the fact that at the time in question, fornication referred only to the sin of sex outside marriage, and would not have been used to refer to acts between married partners. Moreover, the practice of adopting acronyms and the like into everyday language (such as yuppie, nimbyism, scuba, radar and sonar) was not common practice until the 20th century. “Fuck” in fact entered Middle English from another Germanic source, most likely Scandinavian.

“Fuck you/The finger” This folk etymology centers on archers who had their middle fingers removed in medieval times to keep them from properly aiming their arrows. English longbow archers caught by the enemy at Agincourt supposedly had their bow fingers amputated, since at that time the longbow was a devastating weapon and would have given a great advantage to the English. The unaffected archers could taunt the enemy by raising their middle fingers to show they were still intact and the archers could still effectively “pluck yew.” This is, however, an untrue story.
(See the origins of the V sign for the real story.)

“Pom” or “Pommy”, an Australian slang term for a person of British descent or origin. The exact origins of the term remain obscure (see here for further information.). A legend persists that the term arises from the acronym P.O.M.E., for “Prisoner of Mother England” (or P.O.H.M, “Prisoners Of His/Her Majesty”) although there is no evidence to support this fact.

Gringo. A recurring fake etymology for the derivation of gringo states that it originated during the Mexican-American War of 1846-48. It has been claimed that Gringo comes from “green go” and used in reference to the American soldiers and the color of their uniforms. This is an example of an invented explanation, because gringo was used in Spanish long before the war and during the Mexican-American War, the US Army did not use green uniforms, but blue ones. Another legend maintains that one of two songs – either “Green Grow the Lilacs” or “Green Grow the Rushes, O” – was popular at the time, and that Mexicans heard the invading US troops singing “Green grow…” and contracted this into gringo. In fact, the word was in use in Spain before the beginning of the nineteenth century and was most likely a corruption of griego ‘Greek’.

Canada. There is a story that it was actually the Spanish who first discovered Canada, but in winter. Upon fixing a telescope on the frozen land, and being asked what he saw, one explorer, not wanting to make landfall, replied ‘Acá nada’ (loosely: “There’s nothing here”).

Lanzarote. A popular story claims that the conqueror Jean de Bethencourt was so impressed with the peaceful nature of the island’s inhabitants that he broke his lance in half. The name supposedly derives from lanza rota (broken lance). This story is unlikely. In reality the island is probably named after the 13th century trader Lancilloto Maloxelo.

S.H.I.T. (for shit). A legend claims that the origin of the term “shit” (actually a shared Germanic word) can be traced back to the farming industry. Dried manure was transported via ship. Often times it would be shipped in the lowest holds of the ship, as the remote sections were ideal for concealing the smell. However, as wooden boats were prone to minor leakage, the manure would become damp and begin expelling methane. On occasion, this methane buildup was exploded when deck hands went into the holds with lit lanterns. Once it was determined what caused the accidents, all manure packages going on ships were required to be labelled “Ship High In Transit”, later abbreviated to S.H.I.T.

G.O.L.F. (for golf). Sometimes thought to be an acronym for “Gentlemen Only; Ladies Forbidden”. However, the word golf is over 500 years old. In the oldest Scottish writings, the word was spelled in various ways (e.g. gouff, goiff, goffe, goff, gowff, and golph). The acronym cannot be formed with any of those spellings, and, furthermore, the development of the acronym in the English language is a 20th century phenomenon, perhaps a backronym.

“Hiccough”, a spelling still occasionally encountered for hiccup, originates in an assumption that the second syllable was originally cough. The word is in fact onomatopoeic in origin.

The word news has been claimed to be an acronym of the four cardinal directions: (North, East, West, and South). However, old spellings of the word varied widely (e.g. newesse, newis, nevis, neus, newys, niewes, newis, nues, etc.). It is simply a plural form of new.

P.O.S.H. (for posh). Claimed to stand for “Port Out, Starboard Home.” On a ship sailing from Britain to India, cabins on the port (left) side receive less sun than those on the starboard (right) side, and on the return trip the opposite is true.

“Welsh Rarebit.” This is supposedly the original spelling of the British cheese-on-toast snack, pronounced and normally spelled ‘Welsh rabbit.” Presumably, the original spelling indicated that the snack was ‘rare’ in the sense of undercooked or only eaten on occasion.
deduced reckoning (for dead reckoning)

T.I.P. for “tip” (in the sense of a gratuity for a waiter), alleged to stand for “to insure promptness”.

Eponyms

Here are some words which are commonly thought to be eponyms, but are not:

Crap – Earl Crapper (The flush toilet was indeed popularised to a large extent and improved, but not invented, by an Englishman named Thomas Crapper, though the coincidence of his surname is, sadly for some, only that – a coincidence. The slang term ‘crap’ for faeces, or to defecate, was in common use long before his time).

the word nasty – Thomas Nast

[jamesintheworld]

LoL Ok, you got me. I wanted to see if anyone believed the stories.

[Author]

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