Origin of the Word HOOLIGAN

Here's one for the word nerds. I was wondering where the word HOOLIGAN comes from and whether it's related to the Old English word "hloo", meaning gang.

It turns out that it's is a relatively recent coinage, appearing in the 1890s. It's origin is murky but believed to be derived from the Irish surname Houlihan and used in a comedy sketch to describe a fictional, very rowdy, Irish family. It caught on from there and is still used widely today.

 

Al- Words with an Arabic Origin

Many English words have roots in French, Latin and Greek, but let's not forget about Arabic.

In Arabic, the word for THE is AL-, and this can be seen in many English words, such as:

Algebra

Algorithm

Alchemy

Alcohol

Almanac

Alcove

These words are usually anglicized (made easier for English speakers to pronounce).

For example, the word algebra in the original Arabic is “al-jabr” and it means “the restoration” – referring to restoring (balancing) two sides of an equation.

Why is WENT the past tense of GO?

In present tense, it is GO. In past tense, it is WENT. Why is this? The two words look completely different from each other.

In the past, when English was Old English, there were two words for GO. There was GO and there was WEND. The past tense of GO was GAED and the past tense of WEND was WENT.

As time passed, WEND became less popular and GAED became less popular. In modern English, we are left with GO and WENT. GAED and WEND are no longer used. The word WANDER is related to WEND/WENT.

Why do some words become more popular and some become less popular over time? There are many reasons, but mainly they just sound nicer. Perhaps GAED and WEND do not sound as nice as GO and WENT.

The Final Straw

The final straw

‘The final straw’ or ‘the last straw’ is an interesting idiom. It means the last in a series of negative incidents that leads to disaster. Okay, maybe that is a little difficult to imagine. How about the following:

Imagine a man has a camel and he uses the camel to carry straw (straw as in hay, not drinking straws!). He places pieces of straw on the camel’s back one by one until slowly the camel is hopelessly overburdened. Eventually, the man will place one final straw on the camels back and the camel’s back will break! This is what we call ‘the final straw’. And, yes, another version of the idiom is ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’.

Now imagine Bob’s boss is really mean to him. He shouts at him every day and insults him, but Bob perseveres. One day, Bob wants to take the afternoon off to visit his sick mother in hospital. His boss says no and Bob resigns. This is ‘the straw that broke the camel’s back’ or, as we said earlier, means the last in a series of negative incidents that leads to disaster.

Poor camels!

Why are soft drinks called soft drinks?

Q: Why are soft drinks called soft drinks?

A: Typically, alcoholic drinks have been known as 'strong' drinks and the stronger ones have been known as 'hard' liquor. To differentiate juices and sodas, they are known as 'soft drinks'.

This originated as a marketing term. Makers of sodas had trouble marketing their products because they were known as 'soda' in some parts of America, 'pop', 'cola' or even just 'coke' in others. In Britain and other countries, they were known as 'fizzy drinks'. Hence the term 'soft drink' was created as a universal term - it sounds nice and also sounds like a pleasant alternative to alcohol.


References:

www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/07/why-carbonated-beverages-are-called-soft-drinks/
english.stackexchange.com/questions/169092/why-soft-drink

Where is the word OK from?

(From Yahoo Answers)

1839, only survivor of a slang fad in Boston and New York c.1838-9 for abbreviations of common phrases with deliberate, jocular misspellings (cf. K.G. for "no go," as if spelled "know go"); in this case, "oll korrect." Further popularized by use as an election slogan by the O.K. Club, New York boosters of Democratic president Martin Van Buren's 1840 re-election bid, in allusion to his nickname Old Kinderhook, from his birth in the N.Y. village of Kinderhook. Van Buren lost, the word stuck, in part because it filled a need for a quick way to write an approval on a document, bill, etc. The noun is first attested 1841; the verb 1888. Spelled out as okeh, 1919, by Woodrow Wilson, on assumption that it represented Choctaw okeh "it is so" (a theory which lacks historical documentation); this was ousted quickly by okay after the appearance of that form in 1929. Okey-doke is student slang first attested 1932. Greek immigrants to America who returned home early 20c. having picked up U.S. speech mannerisms were known in Greece as okay-boys, among other things.

H.L. Mencken once described "O.K." as "the most successful of Americanisms," an estimation verified by U.S. troops during the Second World War, who reported encountering the phrase all over the world. Of all the scores of theories (and sub-theories) as to the origin of "O.K.," the most widely heard traces "O.K." to the "O.K. Club," a political committee supporting Martin Van Buren's unsuccessful bid for the Presidency in 1840. The "O.K.," it is said, was short for "Old Kinderhook," Van Buren's nickname.

It appears that this theory is not so much wrong (the "O.K. Club" certainly existed) as it is incomplete. Chances are good the Van Buren's partisans would never have named their club "O.K." had the phrase not already been widely known as an abbreviation of "oll korrect," a humorous misspelling of "all correct." American speech in the early 1800s was awash in similar abbreviations, two of which, "N.G." ("no good") and "P.D.Q." ("Pretty Damn Quick"), are still heard today.

Ironically, while "O.K." didn't save Van Buren's campaign, the campaign gave "O.K." a new lease on life -- until then, it had never been as popular as a competing phrase, "O.W." (for "oll wright"). (By the way, before we start feeling too superior to the cornball 1800s, is "oll wright" really any worse than the "excuuuse me!" or "not!" fads of a few years ago?).

OK is without doubt the best-known and widest-travelled Americanism, used and recognised even by people who hardly know another word of English. Running in parallel with its popularity have been many attempts to explain where it came from — amateur etymologists have been obsessed with OK and theories have bred unchecked for the past 150 years.

It's Bedlam!

In English, when we say something is 'bedlam', it means chaos or madness.

The word bedlam comes from the name of a hospital for mental patients - Hospital of Saint Mary of Bethlehem. The common people pronounced Bethlehem as Bedlam.

In the 1700s people used to go to this hospital for entertainment. They would bring their families to laugh at the mad people there! Please don't try this today!