http://u.nu/6is63

or: http://u.nu/4is63

Many words in the English language have defied attempts to trace their origins. Even such common words as blizzard, flare, freak, pad, and puzzle are listed in dictionaries as being of “unknown origin.” It is not even that their roots have been lost with the passage of time: no one can explain the appearance of certain contemporary words, such as hijack, which was first recorded in the 1920’s.

http://u.nu/3is63

http://u.nu/2is63

The investigation of the source of such words has led to many different explanations, some more farfetched than others. Here are some examples.

Balderdash

http://u.nu/9tt63

http://u.nu/8tt63

The English satiric writer Thomas Nashe has the honor of being the first person known to have used the word balderdash – in his book Have with You to Saffron Walden, published in 1596. He used it to mean a foam or froth, but the sense was soon lost.

http://u.nu/5ut63

http://u.nu/4ut63

During the next century it was used to describe an odd mixture of drinks, such as wine and beer, but by about 1660 it had also come to mean a nonsensical jumble of words. Balderdash became popular in the United States in the 1920’s. The satirist H.L. Mencken often used it to describe the speeches of politicians of the day.

http://u.nu/2vt63

http://u.nu/7ut63

But where did the word come from? There is a Medieval Latin word, balductum, meaning a curdled milk drink, which may be connected to the original sense. An Old English dialect word, balder, meaning coarse language; the Dutch balderen, “to roar”; and the Welsh balldordus, “idle chatter,” are among the numerous sources that have been suggested for the later meaning. But to this day no one has discovered the origin of balderdash.

Ballyhoo

http://u.nu/6ps63

or: http://u.nu/5ps63

As a description for a sensational piece of publicity, ballyhoo was first recorded in the United States in 1913. Etymologist have been arguing about its origin ever since.

http://u.nu/9rs63

http://u.nu/5rs63

One possibility is Ballyhooly, the name of a village in Cork, Ireland. Another, that the word comes from B’allah hoo (“Through God it is”), a cry heard among the dervishes who appeared at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. Still another belief suggests that it comes from ballahou, a two-masted sailing ship used in the West Indies, which in turn is derived from the name of a Central American wood used in making boats. An alternative suggestion: bally, a euphemism for bloody, was joined to hooey, meaning bunkum. A popular 19th-century music-hall song contained the phrase “the ballyhooly truth” or “whole bloody truth.”

Butterfly

http://u.nu/8ts63

http://u.nu/7ts63

Is a butterfly so named because it “flutters by”? Does the name perhaps come from the butter-yellow color of the wings of some common butterflies? No one knows. But perhaps the most appealing explanation points to an ancient belief that butterflies stole milk and butter. In a number of folktales, butterflies are witches in disguise.

Gremlin

Image via Wikipedia

Gremlins were apparently hard at work during World War II, when pilots blamed them for everything that went wrong with airplanes, Service Slang, compiled by J. L. Hunt and A. G. Pringle in 1943, defined gremlins as “the pixies that are supposed to haunt aircraft and persuade the pilots (especially learners) to do strange things. They sit on the wings and make faces at air crew, thus taking their minds off the job in hand.”

Image via Wikipedia

The idea that gremlins were grinning goblins may account for the origin of the world. In Ireland a gruaimin was an ill-tempered goblin. There are also an Old English word, greme, meaning “to vex”; the Danish gram, “a devil”; and the Old Norse, gramr, “angry.” Farfetched theories have been claimed a connection with the Kremlin in Moscow.

The jinx of gremlins may have been exorcised; however, Steven Spielberg’s 1984 movie Gremlins was one of the most successful films of all time.

Hobo

http://u.nu/92t63

http://u.nu/82t63

“Bums loafs and sits. Tramps loafs and walks. But a hobo moves and works, and he’s clean.” That is how Godfrey Irwin explained the difference between bums, tramps, and hoboes in American Tramp and Underworld Slang, published in 1931. So hoboes were originally itinerant workers, not tramps.

Could the name have come from hoe boy, a migratory farmhand? Or from the warning “Ho, boy!” shouted by American rail workers as they tossed mailbags from trains in the Northwest? French lumberjacks in Canada were known to shout “Hout Bois!” (“High timber!”) – The equivalent of “Timber!” in English – and thus they may have come to be called hoboes.

An Alternative suggestion: the French musical instrument hautbois became hautboy or hoboy (and later the oboe) in English. The wandering minstrels who played the hoboy may have been hailed as the original hoboes.

Hoodlum

http://u.nu/5kt63

http://u.nu/4kt63

The only aspect of the origin of hoodlum on which all the experts agree is that it first appeared in San Francisco in the 1870’s.

Some believe that it arose from a newspaper article in which the name of Muldoon, leader of a street gang, was spelled backward. Thus the word became noodlum, which in turn was eventually changed to hoodlum.

Alternatively, the Pidgin English hood lahnt, or “lazy Mandarin,” was used about the Chinese inhabitants of San Francisco. The street cry of “Huddle ‘em!” has been suggested. Lastly – and perhaps most likely – the Bavarian word hodalump, meaning “rogue,” was brought by German immigrants to San Francisco in the 1860’s.

Posh

http://u.nu/7vt63

http://u.nu/4vt63

Early in the 19th century, posh came into use as a slang word for a low-denomination coin, apparently derived from the Gypsy word posh (“a half”). Later in the century – and no one knows why – it came to connote a dandy. Posh was then subsequently used to mean stylish. It was first recorded in its modern sense, smart, in the English periodical Punch on September 25, 1918.

The most commonly repeated account of its origin is that posh, standing for “port (side) out, starboard home,” was stamped on the luggage labels and tickets of passengers sailing from Britain to India. Since their cabins were on the side of the vessel away from the sun, these passengers paid a higher fare – and were termed posh. The truth of this is uncertain. Not a single ticket or label on which posh had been stamped has survived.

Yankee

Image via Wikipedia

This nickname for a New Englander dates from the mid-18th century, when many sailors visiting New England were of Dutch origin. Yankee may have come from a Flemish nickname for Dutchmen, Jan Kees (“Johnny Cheese”). Alternatively, it may be derived from Janke (“little John” in Dutch). And James Fenimore Cooper, author of The Last of the Mohicans, suggests that Yankee comes from Yangees, an Indian pronunciation of English.