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Beds
The word bed can trace its ancient origins to a concept of digging at a time when shovels were not yet invented. The first beds may have been graves or places dug out for sleeping. The digging concept tells us why "flowerbeds" and "riverbeds" were not thought of as places for flowers and rivers to sleep.
"Bedridden", confined to a bed, was originally meant to cheer up the person who had to ride the bed for a while. We'd probably talk of a bed-jockey today.
A separate room for sleeping didn't occupy common homes until relatively recently. The bedstead was the place where the bed stood. Today, bedstead denotes the frame of the bed. The word bedroom didn't appear in English until the 17th century. A couple of hundred years later "bedbug" became an established word. When the bedbugs were eliminated, it was safe to coin the term "bedroom eyes" (1940s).
PuzzlePlanets embedded writer, Joel Miller |
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"Don't think that you think all your thoughts. Many thoughts go unthunk."
Dartwill Aquila |
"Until the Donkey tried to clear the fence, he thought himself a Deer."
Arthur Guiterman |
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| Hesiod, who lived in Greece 2800 years ago, told his brother Perseus, "Half is more than the whole". He was advising his brother to settle for half without litigation because it would be more that winning the whole after the lawyers had taken their share. |
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The word nicotine comes from the Latin term Nicotiana tabacum in honor of Jean Nicot who brought tobacco to France from Spain. "Tobacco" is a Spanish variation of the Arabic "tabbaq", which meant a medicinal plant long before tobacco was known. Fancy that! |
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" If your train's on the wrong track every station you come to is the wrong station."
Bernard Malamud |
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| The following words entered the English language 80 years ago: |
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| Cosmetic surgery
designated plastic surgery done to repair damages to the face. "Face-lifting", to remove wrinkles, had already been a term for four years. In less than a decade the noun face-lift would appear. |
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Hollywood, as a term to mean the American film industry, was used by Aldous Huxley. "Fantasize" was also first recorded at this time.
"Hollywood", "fantasize" and "cosmetic surgery" were all born in 1926. What a coincidence! |
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