Off topic, I know. Some Common English Terms, Explained!

[Grizzly]

Interesting History


They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families
used to all pee in a pot & then once a day it was taken &
Sold to the tannery.......if you had to do this to survive
you were "Piss Poor"

But worse than that were the really poor folk who couldn't
even afford to buy a pot......they "didn't have a pot to
piss in" & were the lowest of the low

The next time you are washing your hands and complain
because the water temperature isn't just how you like it,
think about how things used to be. Here are some facts about
the 1500s:

Most people got married in June because they took their
yearly bath in May, and they still smelled pretty good by
June.. However, since they were starting to smell . ..... .
Brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odor.
Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting
Married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man
of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then
all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the
children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so
dirty you could actually lose someone in it.. Hence the
saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the Bath water!"

Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no
wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get
warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs)
lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and
sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof...
Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the
house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence,
a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top
afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into
existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other
than dirt. Hence the saying, "Dirt poor." The wealthy had
slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet,
so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their
footing. As the winter wore on, they added more thresh until,
when you opened the door, it would all start slipping
outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way.
Hence: a thresh hold.

(Getting quite an education, aren't you?)

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big
kettle that always hung over the fire.. Every day they lit
the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly
vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the
stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold
overnight and then start over the next day. Sometimes stew
had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence
the rhyme: Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas
porridge in the pot nine days old. Sometimes they could
obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When
visitors came over, they would hang up their bacon to show
off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, "bring home
the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests
and would all sit around and chew the fat.

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high
acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food,
causing lead poisoning death. This happened most often with
tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were
considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt
bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests
got the top, or the upper crust.

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination
would Sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days.
Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and
prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen
table for a couple of days and the family would gather
around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake
up. Hence the custom of holding a wake.

England is old and small and the local folks started running
out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins
and would take the bones to a bone-house, and reuse the
grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins
were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they
realized they had been burying people alive... So they would
tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, lead it through the
coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell.
Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night
(the graveyard shift.) to listen for the bell; thus,someone
could be, saved by the bell or was considered a dead ringer.

And that's the truth....Now, whoever said History was boring!!!

So...get out there and educate someone! ~~~ Share these
facts with a friend.
Grizzly

[Quality]

Thats some interesting info there

I will have to look for more as it really is fascinating - how we used to be

[chemi-cool]

And how about that:

Any person found breaking a boiled egg at the sharp end will be sentenced to 24 hours in the village stocks (enacted by Edward VI).

[Gary]

Interesting stuff

[coolhibby1875]

It seems that cats were at one time thought to have influence over storms, especially by sailors, and that dogs were symbols of storms, often accompanying images and descriptions of the Norse storm god Odin. So when some particularly violent tempest appeared, people suggested it was caused by cats (bringing the rain) and dogs (the wind).
There is, I have to report, no evidence that I can find for any connection between the saying and the mythology other than the flat assertions of writers. The phrase first appears in its modern form in Jonathan Swift’s A Complete Collection of Polite and Ingenious Conversation in 1738: “I know Sir John will go, though he was sure it would rain cats and dogs”, though a variant form is recorded in 1653 in City Wit, a work of the English playwright Richard Brome, in which he wrote “It shall raine ... Dogs and Polecats”, which seems to suggest a stranger and less easily comprehensible origin.
There are other similes which employ falls of improbable objects as figurative ways of expressing the sensory overload of noise and confusion that can occur during a violent rainstorm; people have said that it’s raining like pitchforks (first recorded in 1815), hammer handles, and even chicken coops. It may be that the version with cats and dogs fits into this model, without needing to invoke supernatural beliefs or inadequate drainage.
Having said all that, there is some evidence that suggests a direct link between heavy rain that seems to precipitate cats and dogs. It comes from a poem by Jonathan Swift, A Description of a City Shower:
Sweeping from butchers’ stalls, dung, guts, and blood;
Drown’d puppies, stinking sprats, all drench’d in mud,
Dead cats, and turnip-tops, come tumbling down the flood.
As Swift penned these lines in 1710, nearly 30 years before he wrote the book in which raining cats and dogs appears for the first time, it just might suggest that he was quoting an expression he himself had created.

interesting stuff Grizzly, there are lots of interesting stuff on the net if you searchsome of the points in your post

[Gary]

The nursery rhyme:

"Ring around the rosies
Pocket full of posies
Ashes, ashes... we all fall down"

refers to the custom of filling ones shirt pockets with flowers to mask the smell of death during the black plague, the burning of the bodies... and the end result.

[r.bartlett]

The nursery rhyme:

"Ring around the rosies
Pocket full of posies
Ashes, ashes... we all fall down"

refers to the custom of filling ones shirt pockets with flowers to mask the smell of death during the black plague, the burning of the bodies... and the end result.

This is what we were taught as children but apparently not so...

http://www.snopes.com/language/literary/rosie.asp

[mikeref]

• A stitch in time saves 9...

• Hell for leather ...
• Penny saved, pound foolish
• Waste not want not
• Once bitten, twice shy
• Make hay while the sun shines
• Save for a rainy day
• Flat out like a lizzard drinking
• flat as a tack
• Dear John letter
• Rough as guts
• Early bird gets the worm
• Talk the leg off an iron pot
• Guts for garter
• High as a kite
• Money.. burns a hole in your pocket
• Whole 9 yards.. as explained by Gary
• Wet as a ****
• Snug as a bug in a rug
• Quiet as a mouse
• Tough as nails
• Sight for sore eyes, and cheap as chips. Just thinking out loud as to how others view the english language, though someone might have got the drop on me. A penny for your thoughts. Mike.
  

[El Padre]

Nice one Grizzly, very entertaining, apparently if a housemaid broke a large mirror in a stately home, it would take her seven years to pay for it, hence the term "seven years bad luck" if you break a mirror.

Cheers