Some of our familiar sayings originated back in the 15th century in Merry Old England.
Here are some aphorisms and trivia of that period.
In Shakespeare’s time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes. When you pulled on the ropes the mattresses tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase: “Goodnight, sleep tight.”
In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts. So in Old England, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them to mind their own pints and quarts and settle down. It is where we get the phrase “Mind your P’s and Q’s.”
Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim or handle of their ceramic cup. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. “Wet your whistle” is the phrase inspired by this practice.
In Scotland, meanwhile, a new game was invented. It was titled Gentlemen Only Ladies Forbidden…and thus the word GOLF entered the English language.
Farther back in time, it was the accepted practice in Babylon about 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 the Babylonian calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey money or what we know today as the honeymoon.
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Here are some more examples of loopy logic:
- Same-Day Dry Cleaning—All Garments Ready in 48 hours.
- 55 percent of young people looking for their first job are unemployed.
- Serious crime in the country dropped slightly in the first half of the year, but rape, robbery, theft, and homicides posted increases.
- They are going to like it whether they like it or not.
- Come to think about it, I had not thought about it.
- As you will see, the limitations of this product are endless.
- A little pain never hurt anyone.
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Latest Brassiere Technology—Beverly Hills, CA, security consultant Paxton Quigley introduced Super Bra recently, a $30 garment that doubles as a holster for a gun the size of a snub-nosed .38 caliber revolver.
“If a woman is attacked,” Quigley said, “the purse is the first thing taken from her so a good place to conceal a weapon is in the chest area.”
And last year, the British firm Gossard introduced the $40 Ultra Airotic Bra that inflates (via accompanying pump) up to two cup sizes for the woman who, according to a spokesperson, does not want “Huge breasts through the day but does want to have them in the evening.”
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The following exchange, sent along by one of my former students doing quite well as an agriculture instructor, could be prefaced by the headline: “Nice Ranch, But Where Are the Cattle?”
“That’s a nice ranch you have. What do you call it?”
“I wanted to call it Lazy Y. My wife wanted to call it Lazy Z. My son wanted to call it Bar None. My daughter wanted to call it Rocking Horse. My father wanted to call it Flying W. And my mother wanted to call it Boots and Saddles.”
“Which one did you name it?”
“Well, I wanted to make everyone happy, so I named it the Lazy Y – Lazy Z – Bar None – Rocking Horse – Flying W – Boots and Saddles Ranch.”
“Some ranch; I don’t see any cattle.”
“None of them survived the branding.”
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An eighty-six-year-old widower in Florida announced he was going to marry a girl of 22 and friends tried to talk him out of it.
“What’s so wrong about it?” he asked. “She’s the same age as my first wife when I married her.”
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