Tagged Questions
4
votes
5answers
297 views
Was there textspeak before texting?
2b |! 2b, < = ?
With such a rich history of inventive writing and puns, it seemed bizarre to me that the idea of writing in txtspk would be a new one. I found a brief degree of truncation in ...
4
votes
2answers
358 views
Officer's shoulder bars - what are they?
I have read one historical joke, that during the Civil War Officer's shoulder bars were called "pumpkin rinds". Where are these mysterious shoulder bars from? I can find only shoulder boards or straps ...
7
votes
1answer
300 views
“Machine” as a 1920s American term for “car”
I've recently been reading some of the short stories of Dashiell Hammett featuring the Continental Op. These stories were written in the 1920s and are about a detective investigating crime in and ...
3
votes
1answer
657 views
Origin of Tootsie or Tootsy (foot) [closed]
I was just sitting thinking I had cold tootsies meaning my toes or feet!
This got me wondering, where on earth does the word tootsie/tootsy come from?
I did google this and got definitions ...
4
votes
2answers
2k views
Where did the slang usages of “cool” come from?
I see and hear two general slang usages of cool - one meaning great (illustrated by a and b below), and one meaning acceptable/okay (illustrated by c and d). The following are Dictionary.com's four ...
4
votes
1answer
303 views
Chicks - Girls, Cats - Boys?
The 1950's song Fever (covered, among others, by Elvis Presley) contains the following lines:
Now you've listened to my story
Here's the point that I have made
Cats were born to give chicks ...
10
votes
5answers
19k views
What is the origin and history of the word “motherf---er”?
I'm not a native English speaker, but I would like to know how and why people started using mother fucker. Today it seems it has lost its meaning because people use it all the time, but was there a ...
