landlubber
sailor's term of contempt for a landsman, c.1700, from land (n.) + lubber (q.v
Word Origins
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BubbleGumTiger
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Lukewarm
Most of us know that lukewarm means tepid, moderately warm. But the term is another of those strange ones to the modern ear. What the heck does luke have to do with temperature?
This is another case where an archaic word remains fossilized in a word still in use. Luke is a Middle English form of the Old English hléow meaning warm or sunny. From a poem c.1205:
And opened wes his breoste. Tha blod com forth luke.
By the late 14th century, the form lukewarm had made its appearance, with a shift in meaning to tepid. From John de Trevisa's Bartholomeus of that year:
The broth of clete . . . comfortyth the teeth: yf it be luke warme hote holde in the mouth. [One manuscript reads "lewke hote."]
Most of us know that lukewarm means tepid, moderately warm. But the term is another of those strange ones to the modern ear. What the heck does luke have to do with temperature?
This is another case where an archaic word remains fossilized in a word still in use. Luke is a Middle English form of the Old English hléow meaning warm or sunny. From a poem c.1205:
And opened wes his breoste. Tha blod com forth luke.
By the late 14th century, the form lukewarm had made its appearance, with a shift in meaning to tepid. From John de Trevisa's Bartholomeus of that year:
The broth of clete . . . comfortyth the teeth: yf it be luke warme hote holde in the mouth. [One manuscript reads "lewke hote."]
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Baker's Dozen
The popular tale behind this phrase's origin is that a medieval law specified the weight of loaves of bread and any baker who shorted a customer was in for dire punishment. So, baker's would include a thirteenth loaf with each dozen just to be safe. The story is partly true. There was such a law, but the practice of adding an extra loaf to the dozen had nothing to do with fear of punishment.
The law in question was the Assize of Bread and Ale, first promulgated in England in 1266. There are various versions of the law promulgated over the years, but they all regulated the size and price of loaves of bread that were sold on the market. During years of good harvests, bakers could make more bread than they could sell locally, so they would sell the excess loaves to hucksters, or middlemen. But since the size and price was strictly regulated, the only way for these distributors to make money would be for the baker to give them extra loaves. The baker would give the huckster a thirteenth, or vantage, loaf for each dozen. This extra loaf provided the profit for the middleman.
The practice of adding the thirteenth loaf is older than the phrase. The phrase only dates to 1599
The popular tale behind this phrase's origin is that a medieval law specified the weight of loaves of bread and any baker who shorted a customer was in for dire punishment. So, baker's would include a thirteenth loaf with each dozen just to be safe. The story is partly true. There was such a law, but the practice of adding an extra loaf to the dozen had nothing to do with fear of punishment.
The law in question was the Assize of Bread and Ale, first promulgated in England in 1266. There are various versions of the law promulgated over the years, but they all regulated the size and price of loaves of bread that were sold on the market. During years of good harvests, bakers could make more bread than they could sell locally, so they would sell the excess loaves to hucksters, or middlemen. But since the size and price was strictly regulated, the only way for these distributors to make money would be for the baker to give them extra loaves. The baker would give the huckster a thirteenth, or vantage, loaf for each dozen. This extra loaf provided the profit for the middleman.
The practice of adding the thirteenth loaf is older than the phrase. The phrase only dates to 1599
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Hoosier
Most people know that a Hoosier is a native of Indiana. But where does the term come from and what does it mean? The answer is an unsatisfying "origin unknown." The word dates to at 1826, when it appears in the Chicago Tribune of 2 June:
The Indiana hoosiers that came out last fall is settled from 2 to 4 milds [sic] of us.
Hoosier also has the sense of an uneducated, rural yokel, a rustic. Some believe that this is actually the original sense and that it later specialized to mean someone from Indiana. This is a possibility, especially if the 1826 usage is in this sense. But this rustic sense can only be unambiguously dated to 1836, after the appearance of the Indiana sense. From Spirit of the Times, 15 October of that year:
After waiting almost as long as the Hoosier did for salt river to run by that he might pass over dry, I at last caught an opening.
In 1919, historian J.P. Dunn proposed that Hoosier came from a Cumberland dialectical term hoozer, meaning something large or big—literally a big hill. This explanation is often repeated, but it is almost certainly false. There is only a single attestation of the British term, in an 1899 word list of the Cumberland dialect, well after the term was established in the US. There are no known uses of hoozer in America
Most people know that a Hoosier is a native of Indiana. But where does the term come from and what does it mean? The answer is an unsatisfying "origin unknown." The word dates to at 1826, when it appears in the Chicago Tribune of 2 June:
The Indiana hoosiers that came out last fall is settled from 2 to 4 milds [sic] of us.
Hoosier also has the sense of an uneducated, rural yokel, a rustic. Some believe that this is actually the original sense and that it later specialized to mean someone from Indiana. This is a possibility, especially if the 1826 usage is in this sense. But this rustic sense can only be unambiguously dated to 1836, after the appearance of the Indiana sense. From Spirit of the Times, 15 October of that year:
After waiting almost as long as the Hoosier did for salt river to run by that he might pass over dry, I at last caught an opening.
In 1919, historian J.P. Dunn proposed that Hoosier came from a Cumberland dialectical term hoozer, meaning something large or big—literally a big hill. This explanation is often repeated, but it is almost certainly false. There is only a single attestation of the British term, in an 1899 word list of the Cumberland dialect, well after the term was established in the US. There are no known uses of hoozer in America
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Buy The Farm
To buy the farm is to die, usually in a battle or aircraft accident. It has spawned several false explanations of its origin. The phrase as we know it dates to the 1950s, but has its roots in older variants. The farm in the phrase is a metaphor for a grave, the last plot of land a soldier will own.
The earliest variant is the phrase to buy it. From W. N. Glascock's Naval Sketch-Book in 1825:
Never mind, in closing with Crappo, if we didn't buy it with his raking broadsides.
Crappo in this quotation is a slang word for the French, especially used in reference to French sailors.
This is still in use today. From Noble's With a Bristol Fighter Squadron, 1920, in reference to the WWI:
The wings and fuselage, with fifty-three bullet holes, caused us to realize on our return how near we had been to "buying it".
WWI also saw nouns paired with the verb to buy. From Frasier & Gibbons Soldier & Sailor Words of 1925:
Packet, a bullet wound, e.g. it would be said of a wounded man:–He "stopped a packet" or "bought a packet"–i.e., got hit by a bullet. Also, any trouble or unexpected bad luck.
And Longstreet's Canvas Falcons of 1929 includes this reference to 1917 air combat:
"The major bought one," I said, climbing out, covered with my own slime.
Partridge's Dictionary of Catchphrases records become a landowner as WWI slang meaning to die, the first use of the metaphor of acquiring land meaning death.
7 March 1954 sees the New York Times record in an article on Air Force slang:
Bought a plot: Had a fatal crash.
The same year sees in Harvey's Jet:
Those jet jockeys just bought the shop, didn't they?
Finally, in 1955 the form buy the farm is recorded. It first appears in print in an article in American Speech, along with a false explanation of its origin:
Buy the farm; buy a plot, v.phr. Crash fatally. (Jet pilots say that when a jet crashes on a farm the farmer usually sues the government for damages done to his farm by the crash and the amount demanded is always more than enough to pay off the mortgage and then buy the farm outright. Since this type of crash [i.e., in a jet fighter] is nearly always fatal to the pilot, the pilot pays for the farm with his life.)
From the earlier variants on the phrase, it is clear that the notion of the government buying land damaged in a crash is not the origin of the phrase. A variation on this myth is that the phrase is linked to a soldier's insurance, which would allow his family to pay off the mortgage on their farm if he died. Similarly, this is also false.
Buy the farm is only one of a long list of variants that dates back nearly two centuries.
To buy the farm is to die, usually in a battle or aircraft accident. It has spawned several false explanations of its origin. The phrase as we know it dates to the 1950s, but has its roots in older variants. The farm in the phrase is a metaphor for a grave, the last plot of land a soldier will own.
The earliest variant is the phrase to buy it. From W. N. Glascock's Naval Sketch-Book in 1825:
Never mind, in closing with Crappo, if we didn't buy it with his raking broadsides.
Crappo in this quotation is a slang word for the French, especially used in reference to French sailors.
This is still in use today. From Noble's With a Bristol Fighter Squadron, 1920, in reference to the WWI:
The wings and fuselage, with fifty-three bullet holes, caused us to realize on our return how near we had been to "buying it".
WWI also saw nouns paired with the verb to buy. From Frasier & Gibbons Soldier & Sailor Words of 1925:
Packet, a bullet wound, e.g. it would be said of a wounded man:–He "stopped a packet" or "bought a packet"–i.e., got hit by a bullet. Also, any trouble or unexpected bad luck.
And Longstreet's Canvas Falcons of 1929 includes this reference to 1917 air combat:
"The major bought one," I said, climbing out, covered with my own slime.
Partridge's Dictionary of Catchphrases records become a landowner as WWI slang meaning to die, the first use of the metaphor of acquiring land meaning death.
7 March 1954 sees the New York Times record in an article on Air Force slang:
Bought a plot: Had a fatal crash.
The same year sees in Harvey's Jet:
Those jet jockeys just bought the shop, didn't they?
Finally, in 1955 the form buy the farm is recorded. It first appears in print in an article in American Speech, along with a false explanation of its origin:
Buy the farm; buy a plot, v.phr. Crash fatally. (Jet pilots say that when a jet crashes on a farm the farmer usually sues the government for damages done to his farm by the crash and the amount demanded is always more than enough to pay off the mortgage and then buy the farm outright. Since this type of crash [i.e., in a jet fighter] is nearly always fatal to the pilot, the pilot pays for the farm with his life.)
From the earlier variants on the phrase, it is clear that the notion of the government buying land damaged in a crash is not the origin of the phrase. A variation on this myth is that the phrase is linked to a soldier's insurance, which would allow his family to pay off the mortgage on their farm if he died. Similarly, this is also false.
Buy the farm is only one of a long list of variants that dates back nearly two centuries.
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paladin
1592, "one of the 12 knights in attendance on Charlemagne," from M.Fr. paladin "a warrior," from It. paladino, from L. palatinus "palace official;" noun use of palatinus "of the palace" (see palace). The O.Fr. form of the word was palaisin (which gave M.E. palasin, c.1400); the It. form prevailed because, though the matter was French, the poets who wrote the romances were mostly Italians.
1592, "one of the 12 knights in attendance on Charlemagne," from M.Fr. paladin "a warrior," from It. paladino, from L. palatinus "palace official;" noun use of palatinus "of the palace" (see palace). The O.Fr. form of the word was palaisin (which gave M.E. palasin, c.1400); the It. form prevailed because, though the matter was French, the poets who wrote the romances were mostly Italians.
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