A) It is lunatic night on our street, apparently. Also, it seems that "directly outside our window" is a really good place to have extended, loud, group arguments. At least, it must be, because there's been about four in the last hour and a half. If it keeps up, next week I'm putting up a velvet rope and charging a ten dollar cover.
B) It's not important why I was looking up Civil War-era slang a few weeks ago. It only matters that I was.
Because now I'm going to share it with you.
Words/Phrases I'd never heard before:
-grab a root (have dinner)
-desecrated vegetables (dehydrated veggies)
-paper collar man (rich guy)
Words/Phrases I had no idea were from that era:
-sawbones (doctor, as in Dr. Leonard "Bones" McCoy)
-snug as a bug (I'm guessing "in a rug" came later.)
-tuckered out (ditto for "plum-")
Words/Phrases that amuse me:
-"mustered out" (done got killed, used ironically, hence the ironyquotes (tm), natch)
-scarce as hens' teeth (pretty much what it sounds like, which is "rare")
-see the elephant (combat or, er, some of the other things soldiers tend to get up to, nudge nudge, wink wink)
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2 comments:
You may not think it's important for us to know WHY you were looking up civil war era expressions, but that doesn't mean we don't want to know!!
"See the elephant" refers to a once-famous hotel in the shape of an elephant. The idea being that once you'd seen the elephant you had seen everything.... "Sawbones" is because early doctors did so many amputations (recall the amputation scene in "Gone With the Wind.") During the "recent unpleasantness," amputated limbs were stacked in huge mounds.
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