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There's A Word For That
Lycanthropy is a disease in which a man thinks he's a wolf. It is the scientific name for "wolf man" or, werewolf.
Clans of long ago that wanted to get rid of their unwanted people without killing them used to burn their houses down - hence the expression "to get fired."
Pokemon stands for "pocket monster."
The name Ethiopia means "land of sunburned faces" in Greek.
A coward was originally a boy who took care of cows.
MAFIA is an acronym for Morte Alla Francia Italia Anela, or "Death to the French is Italy's Cry"
The Sanskrit word for "war" means "desire for more cows."
"Hara kiri" is an impolite way of saying the Japanese word "seppuku" which means, literally, "belly splitting."
A bird watching term: peebeegeebee = a pied-billed grebe.
"Big cheese" and "big wheel" are Medieval terms of envious respect for those who could afford to buy whole wheels of cheese at a time, an expense few could enjoy. Both these terms are often used sarcastically today.
The slash character is called a virgule, or solidus. A URL uses slash characters, not back slash characters.
"Corduroy" comes from the French, "cord du roi" or "cloth of the king."
In the Greek alphabet "X" is the first letter for the word Christ, "Xristos." Xmas means "Christ's mass."
If you come from Manchester, you are a Mancunian.
There are six words in the English language with the letter combination "uu." Muumuu, vacuum, continuum, duumvirate, duumvir and residuum.
The abbreviation "ORD" for Chicago's O'Hare airport comes from the old name "Orchard Field."
Ekistics is the science of human settlements, including city or community planning and design.
A greenish facial tint has long been associated with illness, as suggested by the phrase "green around the gills." As a person who is very envious is considered by many folks to be unwell, these people have been described as "green (or sick) with envy."
"Acre" literally means the amount of land plowable in one day.
"Doubleheader," which refers to two baseball games played back to back, was originally a railroad term that referred to two engines in a switching yard hooked up back to back on a single train. The train could also be called a "two-header."
I would hurl words into this darkness and wait for an echo, and if an echo sounded, no matter how faintly, I would send other words to tell, to march, to fight, to create a sense of hunger for life that gnaws in us all.
~Richard Wright
