That guy at work is always trying to undermine me with the boss.
The term undermine comes from way back in the day when a military forced besieged a castle or walled town, the main goal was to breach the walls.
At first this was done by having sappers get close to the wall and either set fire or later place explosives next to it. When moats, deep ditches filled with water surrounding the walls, came into play this got more difficult as they could not get as close.
One way around this was to dig tunnels starting from he other side of the moat and leading to the foundations of the wall. There they would either start fires and allow the heat to crack and damage the wall from underneath, or later they would set off explosions below the foundations hoping to bring he walls down. This became known as undermining.
Garnish, as in to decorate . Mostly used now in reference to food preparation. It does however hearken back to old French where it meant to warn a town of impending attack.
Once a town was given a “garnish” it would start to prepare for the battle by “dressing” the fortifications with banners and soldiers.
Medieval chefs, if their side was victorious, would later cook a feast where a cake or some such desert that resembled a castle was the centerpiece. This “cake” would be decorated with the banners and flags of the town and even little soldiers and such to show that the town was standing “garnished”. The term would eventually just stay in the kitchen and away from the battlefield.
As in “Buffy and I took the yacht out to the island this morning.”
A yacht is a type of light water craft that wayyyy back in the day was favored by pirates. Small and quick they were perfect for coastal raiding and quick strikes at sea. The name comes from the Dutch word jachten which means “to hunt”.
in 1660 Holland presented the English King Charles II with a yacht named Mary. It was 100 tons, carried eight cannon and was given to celebrate the restoration of the English monarchy. It was at the precise time that the word entered the English language. There are not many times when you can actually point to the exact entrance of such a word, that alone makes it kind of cool. The pirate connection adds a little also and provides the military connection. Hmmm… makes you wonder what the Minnow was really doing on that three hour tour…
The Ancient Greeks knew how to celebrate a win. At the place where the battle turned they would build a monument to celebrate their victory. This monument would normally be made up of the enemy’s cast off weapons. The monument itself was called a trope which in Greek means “a turning.” As time passed the name became used for anything brought back after a victory. So that runner-up trophy you got in little league, you can thank the Ancient Greeks for that!
No, not the game show. The danger of loss, harm or failure.
The game was in jeopardy right until the end.
Our love’s in jeopardy (baby ooo…ooo).
The term comes from medieval France when archery competitions were tied going into the final round and the final two competitors were tied. (Look they didn’t have TV back then.)
The ever excited umpire (see here) would cry out “Jeu parti!” (the game is divided!). This morphed into the modern meaning due to the fact that both parties were in danger of losing.
I would like to think this is used to prevent trouble, but I think I know better.
I apologize for the double post. A WordPress Theme Update ate the last one causing quite the flap. See what I did, worked today’s word right into it. The good news is if you managed to read the first version, this one is slightly different.
So when we use flap today we mean any kind of fuss or excitement. That caused quite a flap! Weave the British Navy to thank for that one.
At the turn of the century (20th) when reliable radio communications were still a ways off ships used a series of flags to send messages to one another. The system f flags is caused semaphore code and is actually still used today.
On Royal Naval vessels during times of great excitement or problems or general hub bub flags would be run up the pole to let other ships know what was going on. The bigger the trouble the more flags. The more flags the louder the flap noise. As such any kind of commotion was termed a flap. Eventually the term left the navy and found its way into the everyday lexicon.
A sabot is a wooden shoe like the one seen above. These shoes were popular among the lower classes of the 19th century and often seen on the feet of the factory workers. One group of people that wore shoes like this were Luddites, a religious group that spurned any advancement in technology. They took it upon themselves to try and stall the industrialization of civilization by under taking planned acts of destruction.
Their targets were the fancy new stocking and weaving machines in textile mills of England. They would take their wooden shoes and toss them into the machines breaking them and causing general chaos. And eventually the term became used to mean any kind of purposeful destruction.
People, Places and Things from US Military History
