Blah-Blah-Blahg: Food For Nought

I do love the word loo. And while in the loo, sometimes I contemplate all the other words and idiomatic phrases I fancy. Today, I began a short list:

*put the kabosh on (coming from the Gaelic phrase cie báis meaning “cap of death”. The word báis is apparently pronounced “bawsh” and cie is presumably pronounced with a hard initial consonant, rather like “kai”. Alternately, Webster’s Dictionary attributes its existence to Middle High German kiebe, meaning “carrion”. Others argue it comes from the Yiddish word Kabas or Kabbasten, “to suppress”)

*videlicet (pointless AND weird word)

*won't cut mustard (alludes to the difficulty of cutting mustard in its various forms; for example: mustard seed, the plant, and, of course, French's)

*jerkwater (we the existence of this word to the invention of the steam engine — However, the boilers of early locomotives needed to be refilled with water ALL the damned time, and water tanks were few and far between. Thus, small trains that ran on rural lines often had to stop to take on water from local supplies. These trains were commonly called “jerkwaters” from the jerking of water up into buckets from the supply to the engine. The derogatory use of “jerkwater” for all things trivial reflects the fact that these jerkwater trains ran on lines connecting podunk towns (BTW podunk is of Algonquin origin)

*bellyaching (it's just a good and underused word. Plus, bellyaching can be very cathartic around the holidays while eating mass quantities of heartburn-inducing foods with the people you love most - even if they are mouth-breathers, close-talkers, or far too chipper sweater/pancho-wearing fools)


That's as far as I got with my etymological dorkdom... To be continued