Good stuff Craig, I love finding out the meanings of old words and phrases.

Herb, I've always wondered how 'the whole nine yards' came about - I didn't realise it was such a modern saying.

craigb



 
*England is old and small, and they started running out of places to bury people. So they would dig up coffins and take the bones to a "bone house" and reuse the grave.
 

Oh yes, and 600 years later, we now have to bury people standing up.

Hi,
 
You just need to go read some restoration theater plays ... all of those and many more are in there with all the jokes!

Was John Glasscock in The Restoration Plays too?

Interesting stuff!!  Very cool

Still waiting for Bapu to finish mixing those cover songs too...

I don't have any particular expertise in Middle Ages lore, but I submit that the origin of "trench mouth" given above is in error. Trench mouth, like trench foot as a folk diagnosis originated in the trenches of world war I. High stress, poor diet and hygiene on the front lines may have been responsible for development of severe gingivitis in a significant proportion of the soldiers, although the term today is more commonly applied to "Vincent's Angina" a spirochete and fusiform bacterial co-infection of the oral cavity.

slartabartfast


I don't have any particular expertise in Middle Ages lore, but I submit that the origin of "trench mouth" given above is in error. Trench mouth, like trench foot as a folk diagnosis originated in the trenches of world war I. High stress, poor diet and hygiene on the front lines may have been responsible for development of severe gingivitis in a significant proportion of the soldiers, although the term today is more commonly applied to "Vincent's Angina" a spirochete and fusiform bacterial co-infection of the oral cavity.

Could be.  Do you also think that the swastika is a symbol of evil created by the Nazis too?  Sometimes time reinvents things...

craigb




 
*Lead cups were used to drink ale or whiskey. The combination would sometimes knock people 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."
       

This is nonsense btw. The origins of the word 'wake' have more to do with 'watching over' the spirit of the deceased.

*When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 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."
       

I'm pretty sure this is rubbish too, 'saved by the bell' is an obvious boxing term.

'Dead ringer' is a slang term for an exact match. A 'ringer' referred originally to a horse substituted for one which resembled it perfectly.