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Favorite Trivia – ETYMOLOGIES
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| Mad as a Hatter – Hatters often went mad from mercury poisoning used to cure felt (eventually outlawed).
Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carrol |
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Mind your p’s and q’s – When type was set by hand, letter by letter, the letter in each piece of type looked ‘backward’ in order to print ‘forward.’ Hence, it was easy to mix up lowercase p’s and q’s. Apprentice typesetters were constantly admonished by their masters to ‘mind their p’s and q’s.’” |
666 – Considered to be the biblical number of the beast, Chapter 13, Verse 18, of the New Testament Book of Revelation: “The number of the beast; for it is the number of a man; and his number is six hundred threescore and six.”
69 – Signifies a couple positioned to have oral sex with one another at the same time (6 and 9 are inverted versions of each other).
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| Crow’s Nest – The highest lookout on a ship named for the practice of keeping crows caged high on a mast. If strong winds blew a ship off course and the captain lost sight of land, he would release the crows and follow them to shore.
Cultivating Delight – Diane Ackerman |
| “Margaret sounds like a boring old lady. The only Margaret I know is the one in Dennis the Menace and she’s a prickette. Mama says there is a princess in England named Margaret, but who knows that? I’ve decided to go by my middle name—Earline.” [January 5, 1974]
Miss American Pie: A Diary of Love, Secrets, and Growing Up in the 1970s – Margaret Sartor |
| “Everyone in Cibecue has an Apache name… These names are typically bestowed during early childhood, frequently in response to some memorable or humorous event. A good example is provided by Dan Tessay, a distinguished-looking man in his early sixties, whose Apache name means ‘Bushy Anus.’ As a toddler, Dan was playing near his mother while she plucked feathers from a wild turkey. He stumbled, sat down hard on the feathers, and stood up with several of them clinging to his bare bottom. His grandfather, who observed the incident, was much amused and created Dan’s name on the spot.” [June 26, 1960]
Strong Songs: Excerpts from an Ethnographer’s Journal – Keith H. Basso |
| “Clapter is that earnest applause, with a few ‘whoops’ thrown in, that lets you know the audience agrees with you, but what you just said wasn’t funny enough to actually make them laugh.”
Seth Meyers (Poking a Dead Frog: Conversations with Today’s Top Comedy Writers – Mike Sacks |