Some etymological fictions
When Tumblr informs me I’ve got a new follower, I often skim through their blog, and that’s how I found this list of “interesting crazy facts”. The proper response to this kind of list — ducking accusations of being a party pooper — is “[citation needed]”. The list contains four etymological myths, that is, myths about the origins of words and phrases. Let me educate you:
Many years ago in Scotland, a new game was invented. It was ruled ’ Gentlemen Only..Ladies Forbidden’..and thus the word GOLF entered into the English Language.
Actually, the origin of the word golf is unknown, but we do know that the game is Scottish and that it’s not an acronym. That’s just silly. One possible explanation is the Middle Dutch word colf, colve, meaning stick, club or bat. The first attested use of “golf” is a little amusing: it’s a 15th century ban on playing football and golf.
In the 1400’s a law was set forth that a man was not allowed to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Hence we have “the rule of thumb”.
This is utterly false. As far as we know, the origin of this phrase is exactly as it appears, namely, using the thumb to measure stuff.
In Shakespeare’s time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase “goodnight, sleep tight.”
Alternatively, we could point out that “tight” used to mean sound, as in, “sleep soundly”.
It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride’s father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month, which we know today as the honeymoon.
It seems incredible that this tradition would survive into Modern English, and alas, it’s too good to be true. If I were to guess how this word originated, I’d say that honey represents sweetness, and moon represents how long it was presumed to last. That’s what the sources say, too.
The curse of the geek: you cannot present us with an unexpected, complicated connection and expect us not to verify it. For fellow geeks, I left the rest of the list to fact-check, if anyone’s bored. I’m sure half of the other alleged facts are equally fictitious.
