origins of a warped language

AND THE ONE WE'VE ALL BEEN WAITING FOR

fuck

According to one source:

Etymology: akin to Dutch fokken to breed (cattle), Swedish dialect fokka to copulate Date: 1503

Yet, according to dictionary.com:

Middle English, attested in pseudo-Latin fuccant, (they) fuck, deciphered from gxddbov.]

Word History: The obscenity fuck is a very old word and has been considered shocking from the first, though it is seen in print much more often now than in the past. Its first known occurrence, in code because of its unacceptability, is in a poem composed in a mixture of Latin and English sometime before 1500. The poem, which satirizes the Carmelite friars of Cambridge, England, takes its title, "Flen flyys," from the first words of its opening line, "Flen, flyys, and freris," that is, "fleas, flies, and friars." The line that contains fuck reads "Non sunt in coeli, quia gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk." The Latin words "Non sunt in coeli, quia," mean "they [the friars] are not in heaven, since." The code "gxddbov xxkxzt pg ifmk" is easily broken by simply substituting the preceding letter in the alphabet, keeping in mind differences in the alphabet and in spelling between then and now: i was then used for both i and j; v was used for both u and v; and vv was used for w. This yields "fvccant [a fake Latin form] vvivys of heli." The whole thus reads in translation: "They are not in heaven because they fuck wives of Ely [a town near Cambridge]."

"Brand spanking new"
Origin: Doctors have traditionally spanked babies immediately after delivery to start them crying, and breathing.

"Let the cat out of the bag"
Origin:      At medieval markets, unscrupulous traders would display a pig for sale.  However, the pig was always given to the customer in a bag, with strict instructions not to open the bag until they were some way away.  The trader would hand the customer a bag containing something that wriggled, and it was only later that the buyer would find he'd been conned when he opened the bag to reveal that it contained a cat, not a pig.  Therefore, "letting the cat out of the bag" revealed the secret of the con trick.  

And something we're all familiar with

"To paint the town red"
Origin: This phrase originated with the Roman Empire. Roman soldiers used to wash the walls of a newly-conquered town or city with the blood of the vanquished. This was usually accomplished with a great degree of gusto, hence the term being applied to a great night on the town

Okay, it?s been a while but another phrase came up on the weekend that I thought worthy of investigation. Unfortunately, the further I dig, the less likely it becomes that a definitive answer can be found.

?Dressed to the nines?

There are at least half a dozen theories about this one. What we do know is that the phrase is first recorded in the late eighteenth century in poems by Robert Burns.
One very persistent theory is that the British Army?s 99th Regiment of Foot were renowned for their smartness, so much so that the other regiments based with them at Aldershot were constantly trying to emulate them?to equal ?the nines?. The big problem with this theory is that the story dates from the 1850s, and the phrase is older.

Other attempts at explanation connect it with the nine Muses of Greek mythology, or with the mystic number nine. One explanation is that nine, in some numerological systems, connotes perfection. So that dressed to the nines means that you have achieved sartorial perfection.

Walter Skeat (the editor of the Oxford Etymological Dictionary and the first secretary of the English Dialect Society) once proposed that it could originally have been ?dressed to the eyes?, which in medieval English would have been ?to then eyne?; the phrase could afterwards have mutated by the same principle that caused ?a norange? to change to ?an orange?. But the reverse problem of dating arises here, in that if it were truly medieval in origin one would expect examples to have turned up before Burns? time.

Another theory is that "Dressed to the nines" is a shipping term from back when ships had 3 masts each with 3 primary yards. Usually not all in use - hence "the whole nine yards". Therefore, on very formal occasions or to celebrate a victory the ship would be in full sail or "dressed to the nines".

One final explanation which relates more to clothing is that this saying refers to the amount of fabric required to make a quality suit - nine yards.

Short answer: nobody knows.  ???

The only time I?ve heard that phrase was in an episode of ?Family Guy? when Stuey tries to convince his teddy that the word ?gullible? isn?t in the dictionary. I feel richer for the knowledge

Here?s one for the ladies

rule of thumb:
- general rule - from an old English law which made it illegal for a man to beat his wife with anything thicker than the width of his thumb.

And from the meaning of phrases to the birth of words, I found these sort of interesting.

Avocado
From "awa guatl," a South American Indigenous word for testicle. The Spanish took this term and used to it refer to what we now call the avocado.

Cretin
From the French "Cr?tin," which originally meant "Christian."

Gorilla
New Latin from Greek Gorillai, for a tribe of hairy women, perhaps of African origin.

Money
From the Latin word "moneta" which originally meant, "warning."

And this is pretty bizarre:

Orange (Eng.); Orange (Fr.); Naranja (Sp.); Arancia (It.)
Interestingly, none of these terms come from the Latin word for orange, citrus aurentium; instead, they all come from the ancient Sanskrit naga ranga, which literally means "fatal indigestion for elephants." In certain traditions the orange, not the apple, is the fruit responsible for original sin. There was an ancient Malay fable--which made its way into the Sanskrit tongue around the Seventh or Eighth Centuries B.C.--that links the orange to the sin of gluttony and has an elephant as the culprit. Apparently, one day an elephant was passing through the forest, when he found a tree unknown to him in a clearing, bowed downward by its weight of beautiful, tempting oranges; as a result, the elephant ate so many that he burst. Many years later a man stumbled upon the scene and noticed the fossilized remains of the elephant with many orange trees growing from what had been its stomach. The man then exclaimed, "Amazing! What a naga ranga (fatal indigestion for elephants)!"

Considering our love of all things nerdy (including bad jokes), I thought I might add these:

Geek
It is commonly touted that geek originally meant a sideshow performer who bites the heads off chickens or snakes. While this is a sense of the word, it is not the original one.
Geek is actually a very old word. It is a variant of geck, a term of Low German/Dutch origin that dates in English to 1511. It means a fool, simpleton, or dupe. Geck is even used by Shakespeare in Twelfth Night, V.i.:
Why haue you suffer'd me to be imprison'd. And made the most notorious gecke and gull That ere inuention plaid on?
The geek spelling is an American variation, even though Shakespeare uses the spelling geeke in Cymbeline V.iv., but this is probably just a misspelling. Geek first appears (outside the single Shakespearean usage) in 1876 America. American usage adds the connotation of offensive or undesirable to the original foolish and stupid sense. The Carnival sideshow sense appears in 1928.

Poindexter
Poindexter has been an American slang term for an egghead or nerd for decades, but how did the name come to be associated with really smart people. The answer is cartoons. The cartoon character Felix the Cat, creation of Otto Messmer, made his screen debut in 1919, making him one of the most venerable animated characters in existence.
In 1958, Felix made his television debut and for the TV series Felix's new animator, Joe Oriolo, introduced a number of new characters and foils for Felix. Among these were Felix's archnemesis The Professor and his brainy nephew, Poindexter. Allegedly, Oriolo named Poindexter after his lawyer. The popularity of the cartoon ensured that the name Poindexter would be forever associated with intelligence.

and just for fun:

Cunt
This word for the female genitalia dates back to the Middle English period, c.1325. (Although researchers have found a London street named Gropecuntelane from c. 1230.) Although the word cannot be traced back further than this, there are cognates in a variety of other Germanic languages, indicating a Germanic origin.
Cunt does not come from the Latin cunnus, which is also a term for the female pudenda, although a common root back in the mists of time cannot be discounted. Use of the word as term of abuse for a woman is a 20th century sense, dating to 1929.