Word Origins

 

*TELEGRAPH

A dated pun has it that there are three ways to spread news rapidly: telegraph, telephone, or tell-a-woman. But the French inventor Chappe had no pun in mind when he gave this name to the instrument which he had devised in 1793 for transmitting messages by means of a sort of semaphore. It comes from two Greek words, tele, "far off," and graphein, "to write." There have, since Chappe's day, been other devices known as telegraphs, but the word has now become restricted almost entirely to the electro-magnetic instrument invented by Samuel Morse in the 1830's. Telephone, too, was coined much earlier than the invention of the instrument with which it is now associated. The first element is the same as above—the second is the Greek phone, "sound, voice." All this to say, John Wayne road the telegraph lines in his 1933 film.

*Inspired by Charles Funk (1881–1957)

Word Origins

 

*WHIPPERSNAPPER

The word itself is merely a balanced extension of whip-snapper, "one who cracks a whip." Its use is most often in the sense of "one who cracks a whip loudly to make a fearsome noise because he himself would have no attention paid to him otherwise." In other words, "an insignificant, impudent, and presumptuous nobody."

Above: When they first met, Jim Rockford thought Richie Brockelman was a young “whippersnapper” on The Rockford Files episode, The House on Willis Avenue.

*Inspired by Charles Funk (1881–1957)

Word Origins

 

*CHOP SUEY

The chop is English, in the sense of “chipped” or “cut,” but the suey is Chinese sui, “bits.” Like the term itself, the concoction is of mixed origin. It was first devised over one hundred twenty years ago by Chinese operating a restaurant in Brooklyn, who composed it of bits of fried or stewed chicken or pork, rice, noodles, and sesame seeds or oil, and served steamy in its own juice. Author Herbert Asbury stated in 1928 it was the invention of a dishwasher in San Francisco about 1860. 

*Inspired by Charles Funk (1881–1957)

This Guy

 

*HIGHFALUTIN

It has been in the written language of America since 1839, so it was undoubtedly in wide use in much earlier common speech. Bartlett's Dictionary of Americanisms, 1877, quotes a speech delivered in 1848 by Leslie Coombs:

“I was at the Barnburner’s convention in Utica, and the first person I heard was a good-looking, fat, rosy-looking man, who got up and ground out what we term … a regular built fourth-of-July—star-spangled-banner—times-that-tried-men’s-souls—Jefferson speech, making gestures to suit the highfalutens.”

It boils down to someone suspected of being pretentious, pompous, or fancy. In other words, a select group of politicians serving way more than fifteen years. Or that guy, above.

*Inspired by Charles Funk (1881–1957)

Word Origins

 

*TYMPANY

Used in modern times as a collective noun to designate the aggregation of kettledrums in an orchestra, this word is actually the Anglicized form of the Latin tympanum, “a drum,” from the Greek tympanon, “a drum,” from typtein, “to strike, beat.” The modem use of tympany may have arisen from the mistaken belief that this spelling, or at least the pronunciation thereof, represented the Latin plural, tympani.

*Inspired by Charles Funk (1881–1957)

Word Origins

 

*STALEMATE

Originally, the term was just stale—the mate part was added, possibly originally in jest, because a stalemate, like a checkmate, serves to end the game. Unlike checkmate, (from Arabic) and chess itself, stale seems to have originated in the French estaler (étaler), one of the meanings of which is “to fix,” in the sense of “to set in place.” The latter is related to the German stellen, “to place.” 

*Inspired by Charles Funk (1881–1957)