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Why do we refer to a tired story or joke as an “old chestnut”?

If a joke or expression works, especially for a comic or a public speaker, it is usually overused and is consequently called “an old chestnut.” The expression comes from a British play, The Broken Sword, or The Torrent of the Valley, written by William Dimond (1780–1837) and first produced in 1816 at London’s Royal Covent Garden Theatre. Within that play a principal character continually repeats the same joke about a cork tree, each time with a subtle variation, including changing the tree from cork to chestnut. Finally, tiring of the joke, another character, Pablo, says: “A chestnut! I’ve heard you tell that joke twenty-seven times and I’m sure it was a chestnut!”

The impact moment when the phrase likely entered the English language was during a dinner party somewhat later in the nineteenth century. At the dinner the American actor William Warren the Younger (1812–1888), who at the time was playing the part of Pablo, used the “chestnut line” from the play to interrupt a guest who had begun to repeat an old familiar joke. Coincidentally perhaps, the younger Warren’s father, also named William, was an actor, too, who for a time was associated with Philadelphia’s Chestnut Street Theater.

Why is an artist’s inspiration called a “muse”?

Many great artists have been influenced by a muse, a person whose very existence inspires them to reach beyond themselves. It literally means the inspiration a man receives from a special woman. The word muse, as it is used in this case, comes from any of the nine beautiful daughters of Mnemosyne and Zeus, each of whom in Greek mythology presided over a different art or science. Muse is the derivative of such words as music, museum, and mosaic.

The Greek Muses also gave us the English word muzzle, because before muse entered English around 1380 it was known in Old French as muser, “to ponder or loiter,” usually with your nose in the air (something all artists are familiar with). Before that the derivative in Gallo-Romance was musa or “snout.”

Muse	Art or Science	Symbol
Calliope	Epic poetry	Tablet and stylus/scroll
Clio	History	Open chest of books
Erato	Love and poetry	Lyre
Euterpe	Lyric poetry	Flute
Melpomene	Tragedy	Tragic mask
Polyhymnia	Sacred poetry	None; she sits pensively
Terpsichore	Choral song and dance	Lyre
Thalia	Comedy	Comic mask/wreath of ivy
Urania	Astronomy	Staff pointing to a globe

Why is making it up as you go called “winging it”?

“Winging it” usually implies the same thing as having your first swimming lesson by being thrown into the deep end of a pool. It takes courage and sometimes ability you didn’t know you had. It’s an exercise familiar to good salespeople. The expression derives from an unprepared stage actor standing in the “wings” and cramming desperately before hearing a cue that will force him onstage.

QUICKIES

Did You Know …

that playing cards in Spanish are called tarjeta, meaning “little shields”?

that “no dice,” meaning “no deal,” comes from a time when dice were tossed during a game and either didn’t land flat or were thrown out of play?

that “egg on your face” means to look foolish or embarrassed and comes from bad actors having eggs thrown at them by the audience?

that “one potato, two potato, three potato, four,” the children’s counting-rhyme, originated in Canada around 1885?

How did “Greensleeves” become a Christmas song?

The ballad “Greensleeves” was first published in 1580, but no doubt had been known long before that. One early lyric (“Lady Greensleeves”) was a love song to a well-dressed woman, possibly a prostitute. The music’s first application to Christmas appeared in New Christmas Carols of 1642 and was entitled “The Old Year Now Is Fled.” William Dix, a British insurance agent, wrote a poem in 1865 entitled “The Manger Throne.” In 1872 a publisher took three of the poem’s many verses, set them to the “Greensleeves” melody, and published the resulting song as “What Child Is This?”

Contrary to a popular legend, England’s King Henry VIII (1491–1547) did not write the music for “Greensleeves.”

The song has been around for 500 years and has been used to cover a myriad of lyrics within almost as many different theatrical productions and has even been referenced by William Shakespeare (1564–1616). Its most successful modern secular rendition was as the theme for the 1962 John Ford (1895–1973) movie How the West Was Won.

Why do jazz musicians call a spontaneous collaboration a “jam”?

All musicians refer to an informal and exhilarating musical session as “jamming,” but the term first surfaced in the jazz world during the 1920s. “Jam” in jazz is a short, free, improvised passage performed by the whole band. It means pushing or “jamming” all the players and notes into a defined free-flowing session. And just like the preserved fruit “jammed” into a jar, a musical jam is sweet!

Preserved fruit was first called jam during the 1730s simply because it was crushed, then “jammed” into a jar. To be “in a jam” has the same origin and means to be pressed into a tight or confining predicament. Jamming radio signals is a term from World War I and means to force so much extra sound through a defined enemy channel that the original intended message is incoherent. All this is from jam, a little seventeenth-century word of unknown origin that meant to press tightly.

Who is the “Thinker” in Auguste Rodin’s famous statue?

The French sculptor Auguste Rodin’s statue commonly called The Thinker (Le penseur) is one of the best-known pieces of art in the world. Yet when Rodin (1840–1917) first cast a small plaster version in 1880, he meant it as a depiction of the Italian poet Dante Alighieri (circa 1265–1321) pondering his great allegorical epic The Divine Comedy in front of the Gates of Hell. In fact, Rodin named the sculpture The Poet. It was an obscure critic, unfamiliar with Dante, who misnamed the masterpiece with the title we use today — The Thinker.

Rodin’s statue is naked because the sculptor wanted a heroic classical figure to represent Thought as Poetry.

How did the Romans use “thumbs up” and “thumbs down” in the Coliseum?

Ancient Roman spectators in the Coliseum did use their thumbs to show their decisions on whether a losing gladiator should live or die, but not in the manner we see expressed today. It was the movies that gave us the simple “thumbs up or thumbs down.” The thumb symbolized the weapon of the victor. “Up” meant “lift your sword and let him live.” But if the verdict was death, then the thumb was thrust forward and downward in a stabbing motion.

What is the weight of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences’ prized Oscar?

Recipients of the Academy Award, commonly known as the Oscar, always seem to be surprised at its weight. The Oscar was designed in 1928 by Cedric Gibbons (1893–1960), Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer’s chief art director. The statuette depicts a knight standing on a reel of film and holding a crusader sword. Originally, Oscar was made of gold-plated bronze. Today the base of the twenty-four-karat gold-plated britannium statuette is black marble. Oscar is 13.5 inches tall and weighs 8.5 pounds.

Why is a glitzy sales presentation called a “dog and pony show”?

In the late 1800s, shows featuring small animals began touring little North American farming towns that weren’t on the larger circuses’ itineraries. These travelling shows were made up of dogs and ponies that did tricks. Some, like the Gentry Brothers Circus, were very successful, using up to eighty dogs and forty ponies in a single show. Over time the expression “dog and pony show” became a negative description for anything small-time and sleazy, like a low-budget sales presentation that’s heavy on glitz and light on substance.

How did the Ferris wheel get its name?

The first Ferris wheel was built by and named after George Washington Gale Ferris (1859–1896) and was constructed as an attraction for the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. Ferris had set out to build a structure that would rival the Eiffel Tower built four years earlier for the Paris Exposition. The two towers that supported the wheel were 140 feet high, the wheel itself was 250 feet across, and the top of the structure was 264 feet above the ground. It held more than 2,000 passengers, cost $380,000 to build, and earned more than $725,000 during the fair.

Unlike the Eiffel Tower, which survived plans for its demolition when it proved useful as a communications tower, the first Ferris wheel was destroyed in 1906.

What is unique about the Beatles song “Yesterday”?

“Yesterday” has had more airtime than any other song in history. The Beatles’ Paul McCartney (1942– ) said the song came to him in a dream. While writing it he used the working title “Scrambled Eggs.” When McCartney recorded the song in 1965, none of the other Beatles were in the studio. He was alone with his guitar and a group of string musicians. Since the release of “Yesterday,” more than 3,000 versions of it have been recorded.

Why were teenage girls once called “bobbysoxers”?

Frank Sinatra (1915–1998) was the first pop singer to experience primal teenage female screaming and tearful shrieking during a musical performance. These legions of young women and girls were called bobbysoxers because they were the first generation to wear short or cutoff stockings, leaving their nubile bare legs to disappear beneath a shorter rather than longer skirt. “Bobby socks” or “bobbed socks” first appeared in the 1930s and were so called because they had been cut short. “Bobbed” meant “cut short” like the tail of a “bobtailed nag” or a woman’s “bobbed hair.”

Teenager was a new word during the time of the bobbysoxers.

Nubile had always meant “marriageable” until 1973 when it came to mean “sexually attractive.”

Why is the children’s play kit known as LEGO?

LEGO is a trademark name for a child’s plastic construction set derived from a 1934 invention by a humble and struggling Danish carpenter named Ole Kirk Christiansen (1891–1958). The company name LEGO comes from the Danish words leg godt, meaning “play well.” There is a myth that Christiansen didn’t realize that lego in Latin means “I assemble.” In fact, the word in Latin means “I read” and has nothing to do with the legend or the truth of the play kit or the company’s name. The motto on the wall of Christiansen’s carpentry workshop was Only the Best Is Good Enough.

Why is foolish behaviour called “tomfoolery”?

A buffoon was first called a “Tom fool” in 1650 because Tom was a nickname for a “common man.” Although fool once meant “mad” or “insane,” by the seventeenth century it was a reference to a jester or a clown. The name Tom became influenced by “Tom the cat” in the 1809 popular children’s book The Life and Adventures of a Cat. Tom the cat was quite silly and was a promiscuous night crawler. This all led to tomfoolery becoming a word for crazy behaviour.

Another Tom phrase was “Tom o’ Bedlam,” the nickname given to the insane men who, because of overcrowding and spiralling costs, had been released from London’s Bethlehem or “Bedlam” Hospital for the Insane and were given a licence to beg on the streets. (The term is also a dig at the Irish). Bedlam is a cockney pronunciation of Bethlehem.

Where does the Sandman come from?

The Sandman is an elf who sprinkles sand in children’s eyes to make them sleepy. The character is derived from the remarkable mind of Hans Christian Andersen (1805–1875), the Danish writer famous for his fairy tales. Andersen’s Sandman was a device to explain to children the reason for the grit or “sleep” in their eyes when they woke up in the morning. The Sandman is found in Andersen’s 1850 story “Ole Lukoie,” which means “Olaf Shuteye.” Olaf carried two umbrellas. Over good children he held an umbrella with pictures that inspired beautiful dreams. Over bad children he held the other umbrella, which had no pictures and caused frightful dreams.

Andersen was born in the slums of Odense, Denmark, and his incredible life story is well worth reading for inspiration.