Boxing day. I am not boxing. A am waiting. Waiting for some people to arrive. So to fill in the waiting time I checked the blogs. No new blogs. No new comments. Blog it all. Where are all the dovetale bloggers? Must've been busy shopping, wrapping presents, baking, visiting, Christmas caroling, etc.etc.
Slowly, slowly the days are getting longer. Not noticable yet, but we know. The days are lenghtening. The year is coming to an end. 2006 waiting at the threshold.
Oh, by the way, wanna know where the word threshold comes from? In earlier days the floor of poor people's houses was dirt. Hence the saying, "dirt poor." Wealthy people had slate floors. Slippery when wet. They would spread thresh (straw) on the floor to keep their footing. The thresh would keep slipping out of the door and they'd keep on adding more thresh. Then someone thought of placing a piece of wood in the entrance to keep the thresh from slipping out. Hence the saying "threshold".
One of my favourites is: In early days at bath time, one hot tub was filled. Father got to go in first to wash. Then the sons and any other men. Then mother and children. Babies came last. By that time the water was so dirty that you could loose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater."
I have more. But I will spare you those for now. Enough education for one boxing day. I like language and am always interested in origins. For the Dutch language I have a book that traces all the folkhabits, histories, etc. from way back, to the words and phrases we use. I have not been able to find such a book for the English language. Except a page in a newsletter, recently, where I have been quoting from here.
Don't anyone get too drunk parting with the old year, collapsing into the new. Make sensible (Ha, how boring!) resolutions over turkey soup and turkey sandwiches. Before you know it the sun will shine again.
netty
Here's one old bugger, I mean blogger... me.
ReplyDeleteHey guys, some poems to keep the fire burning in these long post-Solstice nights. Check out the Leaf Press site: http://www.leafpress.ca/index.htm. "Looking for Love".
Good to hear from you Netty. As the year draws to a close, and I contemplate new beginnnings, I will be careful not to throw the baby out with the bath water.
Larry hesitates to put this into the blogosphere because he figures most people already know this...
ReplyDeletethat boxing day is not about pugilism, but rather the day after, which everyone spends boxing up the Christmas decorations.
That is right, ain't it?
But certainly as a child, Larry assumed with confidence that Boxing Day was certainly the day that Mohammed Ali/Cassius Clay put out everybody's lights.
Funny, Netty, that you should spend the Boxing Day blogging about the origins of words and phrases, because Larry had just such a thing in mind a couple of days ago when the original meaning of a phrase wafted into his consciousness like smoke from a distant fire. Unfortunately, the phrase has now unwafted, dispersed by Christmas busyness. It may return again, who knows, like a bad penny. (There's one for you...why does a bad penny always turn up?)
I like sayings..a lot of mine are more modern than the ones you folks have suggested...
ReplyDeleteone is:
Knowledge is limited... Imagination encircles the world...this one is from Albert E.
another one that comes to mind is about "there will come a time when you believe everything is finished....that will be the beginning"...
That one comes to mind in my work..everyone likes to be done but in my line of work I have to keep myself and others thinking NOPE the hard work is just starting...
smiles
Ouch, my back!(Ha,ha!) You had to have me go for that heavy Webster dictionary, Larry, to find the word
ReplyDeletepugilism. OK, so I should have caught on to the connection, it's fist fights, so boxing. Oh well, never too old to learn, and some days I seem to be smarter than others. (Which doesn't necesarrily make me smart.)
To check if an egg is good or bad, you put it in water. A rotten egg floats to the top. Is there a similararity with a penny? Probably not but hey, I tried. Does "turning up" mean flip upside down or appearing again? Pennies used to be copper. Copper turns green when it wears or weathers. So maybe that way it becomes conspicuous and that's just the one you can't miss. You always see it turn up again?
OK, OK, I shut up. But hey, people in Jeopardy always get praised when they keep on trying. Tell me Larry, where the expression comes from, because
this definitely seems a case where my knowledge is limited and my imagination soars around the world. Good old Albert! I treasure his photo on my wall.
P.S. You were right Larry about the boxes part of boxing day. Also I think when the gift boxes end up at the curb to be picked up by the garbage, ahum sanitary employees. Not always did we have to tie them up in managable, bound by required size, packages.
ReplyDelete"A penny for your thoughts"... perhaps we should now be saying a loonie for your thoughts. I still have a silver dollar that my grandmother gave me in 1967 - Centennial year. I remember how precious and rare a dollar coin seemed then... HAH! Now they're commonplace. But a silver dollar for your thoughts, now THAT sounds poetic, huh?
ReplyDeleteBobby Bacon is off on an adventure to visit Mama and Papa Bacon. Maybe when he arrives he'll drop in for some conversation at the Dove Tale cafe...
A penny saved is a penny earned?When I was a kid we had half pennies. My dad used to claim that such a half penny, if we found or received one, was the beginning of one hunderd thousand guilders.For a half penny we could buy candy at the store called "The Children's Friend",(De Kinderfriend),accross the street on the corner.You could get, folded in a paper, black on white, a licorice powder; or an assortment of licorice; or a piece of chewing gum; or sweet wood, a twig of a tree that tasted sweet when you chewed it; or a sour ball candy... and when you were lucky enough to have a whole penny, you could buy a lunch bag full of broken cookies. Oh the decisions to be made, in that palace of temptations.
ReplyDeleteEven though when I was a kid you could get so much for a penny, my mom used to say to me, "Een dubbeltje voor je gedachten." Which means, "A dime for your thoughts." (That just came back to me out of the haze of the past.) So, the question is, were thoughts valued higher, way back then, or are Dutch Folk more poetic? "Een dubbeltje voor je gedachten" is a beautiful sounding alleteration.
ReplyDeleteSheesh, maybe your thoughts are just worth ten times more than mine!
ReplyDeleteNetty, all those treats you described are familiar to Larry too, even the stick of wood.
ReplyDeleteMarianne, it's possible Larry's parents still have the piggy bank in which we stored silver dollars and fifty cent pieces and old pennies and other possibly rare coins...Kennedy silver dollars!...but Larry has a feeling there aren't too many of them left because he raided it as a teenager.
And Bobby...Larry's favourite Einsteinism is the one about time existing so that everything doesn't happen at once...mainly because that's the only one he can ever remember...
Netty, you must know the phrase "he's a good egg..." Does that mean he will never rise to the top? (Oh, and Larry interprets "turning up" as always reappearing.)
Copper turns green as it weathers. Larry turns green at inopportune moments. The Incredible Hulk also.
Green with envy, Larry?
ReplyDeleteThere may be some wacky kind of truth to good eggs never rising to the top. Seems to me nobody gets there, being honest. Not in the world I am in and observe.
I too have raided coin collections without the excuse of being a teen ager. At times it seemed to me that having living essentials now were more important than waiting for the value of collectors coins to go up. Hans in the past collected. Later I squandered.
Yeah, I can go for that, Marianne," My thoughts being ten times more worth than yours." Oh, oh, I feel myself floating to the top. If I were Pinochio, my nose would grow longer.
I've checked back in my mind to Dutch sayings and expressions and find it a fact that most of them are in rhyme, lyrical, or seem to rhyme because of alleterations and such. Many Dutch sayings date back to the Bible.
If you were accused of being a witch, then they'd put you in a sack, tie up the top, and throw you in the lake. If you rose to the top (like those eggs), then you must be a witch, and they'd kill you anyway. If you sank to the bottom and drowned, then you weren't a witch after all - may you rest in peace. "The proof is in the pudding", one might say, or in the lake.
ReplyDeleteI received two plum puddings for Christmas. Instructions said to heat them in the microwave. Don't have one. I was curious. Never had plum pudding before. So I took the pudding out of the plastic bowl and wrapped it in foil and heated it in the conventional oven. Heated the sauce on top of the stove. It worked. Enjoyed it with my little companions. Pretty good taste but very sweet and filling. Still have left overs from the one. The other one has to wait for more company. Plum pudding anyone?
ReplyDeleteWon't cost you a penny. Pennies from heaven. I'm putting in my penny's worth.
Penny and penny
Laid up will be many
Who will not
save a penny
Shall never have many
Sayings and
A rhyming proverb that floated to the top when I stirred my witches brew.
Larry sez:
ReplyDeleteIs the pudding singing in the kettle?
Let's go see if the pudding is still singing in the kettle!
Tiny Tim did not have a microwave.
And what is a humbug anyway?
I suppose that a humbug is a bug that humms, singing along with the pudding in the kettle. "What's cooking?" asked the black cat. "'Tsnot meat or chocolate" said the golden dog. "What's that bug singing for then?" muttered the cat, her eyes glimmering green in the dim light of the kitchen. "Beats me," yawned the golden, "nothing I want to retrieve. "Aren't people weird, cooking up such nonsense?" Black Feline sighed. "Humbug" grumbled the dog." He put his chin on his paws and went to sleep. The cat jumped on the counter and stole some left behind tit-bits and humbug hummed a tattle tale. (Or should that be kettle tale?
ReplyDeleteAlbert Einstein, Dickens, Hans Christian Anderson and the likes are happily blogging along with us.
Ah, it is good to lose one's virtue. About time, huh? Welcome to the underworld!
ReplyDeletePatience is a virtue
ReplyDeleteVirtue is a grace
Both put together
Make a pretty face
Are virtue and me the pretty face in the underworld? I assume that lost virtue means virtue who is lost and not the loss of virtue?
Netty (who continues being patient for other bloggers to enter the dark road of no return.)
Hi Netty:As for this blogging thing, I'm impressed. You're really getting hi-tech. As for me, I feel like a bump on a blog,I mean log, tonight. I'm sitting at my computer wrapped in a big blanket to ward off the chills, and a mug of hot lemon and honey to soothe my sore throat. In short I feel like a blog, I mean blob-
ReplyDeletenot very creative. Hopefully, by Thursday, the blogs, I mean blaws will have departed and I will have been blogged, I mean blessed with some creative thoughts to share with the group. Sorry for the blaw blogging, but hopefully things will look up in 2006. Cheers.
Well, I guess this means YOU'RE not "Lost Virtue", Shirley! Mmmm... wonder who that is...
ReplyDeleteYeah, I am wondering too. Who is this mysterious blogger? Like to keep us guessing, eh? Typical underworld thing to do, or dwelling on the dark side of the moon?
ReplyDeleteMaybe it is Gollum, who lost Hobbit virtue, sticking to underground caves and rivers...