Somnolence
Mar. 20th, 2005 10:44 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
alfvaenFrom the Fake Etymology article on Wikipedia I have learned the following:
"Rule of thumb" has nothing to do with the supposed English law that you couldn't beat your wife with anything thicker than your thumb.
While Otto Titzling, supposed inventor of the bra, is fictional, Thomas Crapper is real. He did not invent the flush toilet, though he was a plumber. I remembered reading an autobiographical book by a hoaxer who wrote books about both figures, so I thought they were both fictional. For some reason I had it associated with Abbie Hoffman, but it was, in fact, Wallace Reyburn. The word "crap" is not related to Crapper at all(whose name is a variant of "Cropper"), but it's unknown which of them lead to the slang term "crapper" for "toilet".
"Welsh rarebit" is, in fact, a folk-etymologized version of "Welsh rabbit", not the other way around, as I had always presumed.
California was named after a fictional island of Amazons in a Spanish book popular around the time of its discovery.
Anything else that supposedly came from an acronym(For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, Port Out Starboard Home, etc.)from before the 20th century is almost certainly bogus, too.
And, in general, beware if the explanation sounds too cool, because like any such story, it's likely apocryphal.
"Rule of thumb" has nothing to do with the supposed English law that you couldn't beat your wife with anything thicker than your thumb.
While Otto Titzling, supposed inventor of the bra, is fictional, Thomas Crapper is real. He did not invent the flush toilet, though he was a plumber. I remembered reading an autobiographical book by a hoaxer who wrote books about both figures, so I thought they were both fictional. For some reason I had it associated with Abbie Hoffman, but it was, in fact, Wallace Reyburn. The word "crap" is not related to Crapper at all(whose name is a variant of "Cropper"), but it's unknown which of them lead to the slang term "crapper" for "toilet".
"Welsh rarebit" is, in fact, a folk-etymologized version of "Welsh rabbit", not the other way around, as I had always presumed.
California was named after a fictional island of Amazons in a Spanish book popular around the time of its discovery.
Anything else that supposedly came from an acronym(For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge, Port Out Starboard Home, etc.)from before the 20th century is almost certainly bogus, too.
And, in general, beware if the explanation sounds too cool, because like any such story, it's likely apocryphal.
