[Vhfcn-l] Monday musings

[Gary Thewlis]

Life is like the stock market. Some days you're up. Some days you're down.
And some days you feel like something the bull left behind.

Paula Wall

 

To succeed in life, you need three things: a wishbone, a backbone, and a
funny bone.

Reba McEntire

 

Money is the best deodorant.

Elizabeth Taylor

 

The trouble with being punctual is that nobody's there to appreciate it.

Franklin P. Jones

 

I don't like money, actually, but it quiets my nerves.

Joe Louis

 

It is only an auctioneer who can equally and impartially admire all schools
of art.

Oscar Wilde

 

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Kitty (as used in poker)

 

This has no connection with the pet name for a cat. The explanation put
forward, rather cautiously, in the various Oxford dictionaries is that the
word came from an old North Country English term for a prison. One of the
links in the chain of evidence for this is extremely weak, but there is
another possibility.

 

The most frequent usage of kitty is that of some fund of money for communal
use made up of individual contributions. You might, for example, go to the
pub with a group of friends and have a whip round for contributions to a
kitty to pay for the first rounds of drinks. Or a club might pay for the tea
and biscuits at meetings by arranging to have a kitty. This sense is first
recorded in the 1880s. Though it had close associations with poker games in
its earliest recorded examples, it wasn't (and isn't) the name for the prize
pot itself, but instead for a sum taken out of the pot to pay for the
expenses of the game, such as buying drinks or a house percentage. For
example, in 1935, Alvin Pollock wrote in a book called The Underworld Speaks
that the kitty was the "money taken from virtually every gambling pot for
purpose of profits or expenses".

 

Going back in time half a century, we know that kitty was a term in various
northern English dialects for a prison or house of correction. It's a
modified form of kidcote (a word which has had several spellings), once
known from English counties such as Yorkshire and Lincolnshire - prisons of
this name once existed in Wakefield, York, Lincoln, Gainsborough and
Lancaster among other places. Kidcote is recorded from the sixteenth century
but had become obsolete by the time the English Dialect Dictionary was
compiled at the end of the nineteenth century. That work quotes several
sources to show that a kidcote was usually a temporary lock-up or holding
cell in which prisoners were put overnight to await their appearance before
magistrates. It seems to have been a facetious term, since it probably
literally meant a pen for a young goat (kid plus cote, a little cottage, so
a close relative of dovecote).

 

So far so good. Oxford Dictionaries say tentatively that the money sense of
kitty comes from the prison sense. This looks very much like a bunch of
researchers pushing words around and doing the lexicographical equivalent of
making two and two equal five, as no direct evidence seems to exist to show
that the one evolved out of the other, and the concepts are far apart. One
writer, not from Oxford Dictionaries, has suggested that the money in the
kitty was so called because it was taken out of general circulation and, as
it were, locked up or imprisoned until it was needed. This is stretching
matters a bit too far to be readily credible.

 

Let us turn to another suggestion, which makes rather more sense, though
there's no more evidence for it than for the other one. It's asserted,
especially in some American dictionaries and also in the Collins dictionary,
that it's from the much older kit for a set of articles needed for a
particular purpose, such as a soldier's kit, so that a kitty would be a
diminutive form, a small kit. If so, it would be a relative of the American
whole kit and caboodle; that might be relevant, as the first known example
of the word is from a little book on the rules of draw poker written by John
Keller and published in New York in 1887.

 

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One-off

 

This began as a British expression but is now widely known in the US and
elsewhere apparently.

 

It comes out of manufacturing, in which off has long been used to mark a
number of items to be produced of one kind: 20-off, 500-off. This seems to
have begun in foundry work, or a similar trade, in which items were cast off
a mould or from a pattern ("We'll have 20 off that pattern and 500 off that
other one".) An example is in a book of 1947 by James Crowther and Richard
Whiddington, Science at War: "Manufacturers found it very difficult to give
up mass production, in order to make the 200 or so sets 'off'."

 

A one-off was just a single item, used in particular to refer to a
prototype. The first known example appeared in the Proceedings of the
Institute of British Foundrymen in 1934: "A splendid one-off pattern can be
swept up in very little time." (The reference is to a casting mould formed
in sand.)

 

Out of this came our current figurative sense of something that is done,
made, or happens only once - as you say, one of a kind. An example appeared
in the Coventry Evening Telegraph in February 2006: "Anyone who would like
to donate in Mo's memory is welcome to make a one-off donation or more
long-term contributions."

 

It can also be used of a special person, someone for whom it might be said
"After they made him, they broke the mould". Here's an example from the
Daily Telegraph of 13 April 2006, about Michael Eavis, who runs the
Glastonbury Festival: "I have great respect for him. He's a fantastic
eccentric, really, a one-off."

 

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George Washington trivia

 

Washington had a history of dental problems. When he was 57 he had all of
his teeth pulled out. Many have grown to believe over the years that he wore
wooden dentures but that was not the case. In fact, his dentures were made
from human or animal teeth and ivory or lead.

 

Many years ago a set of his authentic false teeth was stolen from the
Smithsonian Institution.

 

George Washington was so much of an ice cream lover, he had "ice-boxes" kept
full for his family and guests. They apparently ordered thousands of gallons
over the years.

 

George Washington made Thanksgiving a holiday in October of 1789. He said it
was to be observed on November 26.

 

George Washington began school at age six and left school at age fifteen to
become a surveyor. Although the Washington's were not considered poor, his
mother still couldn't afford to send him to college.

 

Many historians have estimated that George Washington's IQ was around 125.

 

George Washington inherited 11 slaves from his father and at the time it was
commonplace to own them. As he grew older, Washington's attitude toward
slavery changed dramatically. In his will he emancipated his 11 slaves and
his estate paid them a pension for decades.