I just found out the origins of the slang terms 'Quid' and 'Bucks', do you have any random interesting general knowledge you'd like to share?

[BewareTheBeardedDragon]

Ds asked me today why we call money quid and not bucks like the Americans, so we looked it up.

Quid comes from the Latin Quid Pro Quo, meaning something for something.

Bucks comes from early colonial use of deerskins as barter currency 'buckskins'.

I was pleased ds had asked as I find these things fascinating and pleasing.

I'd love to hear anyone else's fascinating facts.

Not sure if the same is true of lamb
England's mediaeval riches were mostly based on the wool trade, so I would think most sheep were bred for that rather than meat, and not eaten till older, but I'm not a mediaevalist, so I could be making wrong assumptions.

[quote EugenesAxe]@DodoApplet wow that's a great one! I knew a female swan was a pen but hadn't put two and two together 😂

Presumably a pen-knife is so called because it's what you used to cut your quill with? Given killing swans is illegal - sorry I'm being a bit dense.[/quote]
As you say, it would be for cutting the nib of the quill (and in any case, in a showdown between a hungry 17th century peasant armed with a pen-knife and an angry swan, I think my money would be on the swan!)

As I said it's what my English teacher told me but I did just Google it and there are several different origins ,and soldiers during the Napoleonic wars ( not world war 1 as I thought ) did used to burn lice and call it chatting , anyway there was no Google 30 odd years ago so I guess my English teacher just read something and took it as fact?

@x2boys

As I said it's what my English teacher told me but I did just Google it and there are several different origins ,and soldiers during the Napoleonic wars ( not world war 1 as I thought ) did used to burn lice and call it chatting , anyway there was no Google 30 odd years ago so I guess my English teacher just read something and took it as fact?

Probably - it's the sort of thing journalists sometimes invent for '50 things you didn't know' type features. In my experience it's very rare for longstanding words to have a definite moment of origin like this.

so I guess my English teacher just read something and took it as fact?
You'd think an English teacher would be aware that a good dictionary such as the OED includes a note on date of first known usage, even in the days of paper.

@EBearhug

so I guess my English teacher just read something and took it as fact? You'd think an English teacher would be aware that a good dictionary such as the OED includes a note on date of first known usage, even in the days of paper.

You'd hope so wouldn't you!

@susiella

NeonK I used to livery with a lady from Iceland. When she broke up with her boyfriend she went back to Iceland. She took her horse, Florence, with her. This was in 2004-2005. Have the rules changed since then?

Looks like it’s been for quite a while now!

From www.guidetoieland.is:

“In 982 AD, the Icelandic parliament Alþingi passed laws that prohibited any importation of other horse breeds into the country, meaning that for over a thousand years, the breed has been kept in complete isolation within the island.

Consequently, it is one of the purest horse breeds in the world. Although individual animals may be exported, once gone, they may never return.”

@IncludeWomenInTheSequel

The term 'capital punishment' is a contraction of 'the man without the capital gets the punishment'.

Basically, if you can't pay for your crime either directly or indirectly through good legal representation , you pay for it with your life.

Really threw me to realise that inequality was actually built into the justice system on purpose.

I very much doubt that's true. Capital derives from the Latin caput/capitis, meaning "head" so I'm pretty sure that it is meant to say that you pay for this crime with your head, i.e. your life.

Oops, I didn't see others had mentioned it already.

Actually this thing about completely different words for the animal and its cooked meat

I think I may have wrong questioning lamb as it it probably lamb and kebab.

@DPotter

I understand that in polite French society you are required to have your elbows on the table. This is to show you don't have weapons in your hands.

Not your elbows exactly. You rest your forearms on the table.

Oh good, somewhere to empty out the useless contents of my brain (and Notes):

The word “business” comes from the Old English “bisignis” meaning “anxiety

Oct. 3 2011: Grumpy the Clown is elected to the Brazilian legislature. Francisco Silva, whose clown name is “Tiririca” (Portuguese for “grumpy”), said he did not know what representatives actually did, but promised voters that if they elected him, he would find out and would let them know. Grumpy received over 1.3 million votes.

(Probably Apocryphal) The actress Diana Dors' original name was Diana Fluck. She changed it not long after her new agent mistakenly introduced her to someone as 'Diana Clunt'.

Less well know that the Dryads and Naiads are the Hyades (pronounced Hi-ad-eez), five greek nymphs who brought the rain by weeping. Their name means 'the rainy ones'.

The day before Shrove Tuesday is Collop Monday when you are supposed to eat up any bacon/meat before lent.

Leinster Gardens is a street in Bayswater. It has two false façades at numbers 23 & 24, constructed at the time of the original steamhauled-underground that had a short section exposed to the surface. These frontages look like the rest of the street but have no “house” behind them.

The Catatumbo river in Venezuela has had a lightning storm raging for over 400 years.

Not so much a fact as an anecdote, but worth knowing i think - John Le Mesurier's (best known for his role as Sergeant Wilson in Dad's Army) last words were "It's all been rather lovely".

Leinster Gardens is a street in Bayswater. It has two false façades at numbers 23 & 24, constructed at the time of the original steamhauled-underground that had a short section exposed to the surface. These frontages look like the rest of the street but have no “house” behind them

Wow, I’ve just looked at these on google earth, they are quite spooky! If you look at the street view for the street behind, Porchester Terrace, you can see the void.

This thread is wonderful!

The Catatumbo river in Venezuela has had a lightning storm raging for over 400 years.

I don't know why but I find that quite creepy.

Learnt this from research after recent watching of Its a Sin: AIDS hit Haiti as hard as it did after The Democratic Republic of Congo became free of its colonial rulers. The Belgians running the place all left and the UN appealed for French speakers to come and do the governmental jobs. Lots of Haitians came over and did the jobs, partaking in the local sex trade whilst they did. AIDS is thought to have originated near to TDRoC and had already infiltrated the local prostitute population. AIDS also spreads far more easily when genital ulcers are present and for some reason the sex workers in and around TDRoC were riddled with them. One or more Haitians got AIDS and took it back across the Atlantic, where it then spread to the US (they think coming into San Fransisco originally from a gay Haitian). The rest is history.

Berk is Berkeley hunt AFAIK.
I am a proper Londoner

[quote GETTINGLIKEMYMOTHER]One for the etymologically minded!

We had the son of a Swedish friend staying for a few months after he got a job in London. I met him at Heathrow (had never met before) so had to ask and write his name on a placard - surname Aker, with a little circle thing over the A.
I asked him later whether it meant anything in Swedish.
Yes, it meant ‘field’.
So being me I instantly thought ‘acre’ and looked it up in my big fat Oxford.

Berk is Berkeley hunt AFAIK.

Well that just says it all about some residents of Berkshire
I feel sorry for the nice ones.

Does anyone know why we got rid of the letter 'thorn'? It would make so much sense for English to have a letter to represent the 'th' sound.

Love this! English is such a hodge lodge language.

I prefer to think of it as a mugger, it goes to other languages and mugs them for words we don't have.

Does anyone know why we got rid of the letter 'thorn'? It would make so much sense for English to have a letter to represent the 'th' sound.

Printing presses from Europe didn’t have the letter thorn. So for a while British printers substituted the letter y as closest in shape. Which is why you see signs “Ye shoppe” fir the shop, but it would have still been pronounced with a th as in the and not with a y sound.

@pistachioglace

Berk is Berkeley hunt AFAIK.

Well that just says it all about some residents of Berkshire
I feel sorry for the nice ones.

It's in Gloucestershire.

• pistachioglace

<strong>Berk is Berkeley hunt AFAIK.</strong>

Well that just says it all about some residents of Berkshire grin
I feel sorry for the nice ones.

It's in Gloucestershire.*

I know, it's not far from where I live. It was a joke based on the name.

Reading the first part of this thread I have discovered a new fact.

On any factual MN thread there will always be at least one fact which is not actually factual.

@TwoLeftSocksWithHoles
Sorry but you're talking nonsense. Venereal comes directly from Latin- vener, from Venus, sexual love.