Help: Need Mudcat Verification

Subject: Need Mudcat Verification
From: SINSULL
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 12:38 PM

This just in from a relative. I know someone here has researched it all and KNOWS the truth. Please verify:
Subject: And Now You Know

> 1. In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes! When you pulled on the ropes the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase "goodnight, sleep tight"
2. It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer and because their calendar was lunar based, this period was called the "honey month" or what we know today as the honeymoon. > > > >
3. In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts. So in oldEngland, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them to mind their own pints and quarts and settle down. It's where we get the phrase mind your P's and Q's" > > > >
4. Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim or handle of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. "Wet your whistle" is the phrase inspired by this practice. > > > >
5. In ancient England a person could not have sex unless you had consent of the King (unless you were in the Royal Family). When anyone wanted to have a baby, they got consent of the King, the King gave them a placard that they hung on their door while they were having sex. The placard had F.*.*.*. (Fornication Under Consent of the King) on it. Now you know where it came from. > > > >
6. In Scotland! , a new game was invented. It was entitled GentlemenOnly, Ladies Forbidden.... and thus the abbreviated term "GOLF" entered into the English language.

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Lox
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 12:42 PM

Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm

I'm more than a little skeptical about the last two.

lox

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Amergin
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 12:44 PM

Here's a link about fuck...click here

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 12:44 PM

I had understood "Mind your P's and Q's" to come from Pleases and Thankyous.

Jon

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: nutty
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 12:50 PM

As children we used to say -

Good Night , Sleep Tight
Don't let the bedbugs bite

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Jon Freeman
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 12:52 PM

Nuty, we used to have 2 more lines to that:

If they do, squeeze them tight
And they'll never come another night.

Jon

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: SINSULL
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 12:55 PM

We had:
If they do, hit 'em with a shoe;
If they don't, leave 'em alone.

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: katlaughing
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 01:12 PM

I've seen the rope beds, Sins, in fact my first ex had one, from having been on a ship. I've also seen them in living history museums in New England. They really do tighten the ropes up to take up the sagging.

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Malcolm Douglas
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 01:17 PM

I can't speak for the first two offhand, but the others are certainly made up!

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Pondering It All
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 01:18 PM

Nathan

Thank you for that wealth of knowledge on a subject that I really needed no more knowledge on. I should have known you would be the one to provide it for me.

Pondering (Still)

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Gary T
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 01:35 PM

Number 5 is myth. The origin of "fuck" can be easily traced to a Germanic root word, as can the very similar modern German version of the word.

I'm virtually certain number 6 is also a myth. I remember hearing that it was simply a reversal of the word "flog," which is essentially what golfers did to that poor little ball.

There have been any number of lists purporting to explain the origins of modern words and phrases. The overwhelming majority of what I've seen have been cute, but utterly false. I'd be very skeptical of every item on that list until I saw reliable evidence to support them.

Keep in mind that the item is not proven unless ALL of its parts are proven. For example, we can accept that there are beds which are tightened up with ropes. That doesn't necessarily mean, though, that the phrase "sleep tight" came from there. It could refer to being tucked in tightly, or just be a convenient if somewhat meaningless rhyme for "goodnight," or may come from an archaic meaning of "tight."

These stories sound so cool we want to believe them. If you're after the facts, however, the attitude needs to be "I'll believe it when I see it" (as in see verifiable sources).

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Amergin
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 01:38 PM

Gary, if you have bothered to click on that link I had posted above, you would have seen that 5 had already been shown to be a lie...

Pondering, you are quite welcome. (do I know you?)

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Katcina
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 01:41 PM

Yes Nathan, better than you shall ever realize.

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Morticia
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 01:50 PM

2 is true but was a custom in medieval England....the mead being served to both bride and groom on their wedding day.The rest are made up.

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: catspaw49
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 01:55 PM

The "fuck" thing has had so many myths (For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge) that the truth, as Malclom so well stated, is kinda' pathetic......but he is right. Sins, if you haven't read Allan Sherman's "Rape of the A.P.E." you need to!! Great book with a funny chapter devoted to the word fuck.

The only acronym I know to be fact is POSH for Port Out, Starboard Home....the best cabins , away from the sun, when travelling from England to India.

Your first two I have heard before and I thought were true, but what do I know?

Spaw

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Metchosin
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 02:19 PM

Gary T I imagine it would raise the eyebrows of some German visitors to English speaking countries to hear that Vickie had hurt her foot.

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: McGrath of Harlow
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 02:43 PM

I don't think we need to get etymologically worked-up about jokes. (Apart from the honeymoon one, as qualified by Morticia, I'm afraid they are all fictional. So far as "wetting your whistle goes" - well, ever tried whistling when you're bone dry?)

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Hollowfox
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 03:00 PM

1)Rope beds were common into the 19th century. The ropes don't secure the mattress, they support it. If they're aren't tight, you'll feel like you've slept on a waffle iron. (I own a rope bed.)
2) I'd heard that it's saxon, but I don't have time to look it up.
3) The other educated guess is that it comes from typesetting.
4) I've also seen them in pewter.
5) I heard this as a joke told by the Irish against the English. BTW, 'Spaw, did you hear about the radio station out west that got the call letters approved by the FCC until they went on the air and said, "KCUF, the station that does everything backwards!" It's probably pure folklore, but it's a good story anyway.
6) This is a new one for me.

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: katlaughing
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 03:53 PM

That's right, meant to say the mattress rests on the web of roping.

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Greyeyes
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 05:38 PM

What Gary T said. Nobody disputes rope beds. Does that make it the origin of the expression?

An on-line reference library

Which says:-

"Honeymoon The month after marriage, or so much of it as is spent away from home; so called from the practice of the ancient Teutons of drinking honey-wine (hydromel) for thirty days after marriage. Attila, the Hun, indulged so freely in hydromel at his wedding-feast that he died.

""It was the custom of the higher order of the Teutons ... to drink mead or metheglin (a beverage made from honey) for thirty days after every wedding. From this comes the expression `to spend the honeymoon.' " - W. Pulleyn: Etymological Compendium, 8, 9, p. 142."

So not Babylonian.

"P's and Q's Mind your P's and Q's. Be very circumspect in your behaviour. Several explanations have been suggested, but none seems to be wholly satisfactory. The following comes nearest to the point of the caution:- In the reign of Louis XIV., when wigs of unwieldy size were worn, and bows were made with very great formality; two things were specially required, a "step" with the feet, and a low bend of the body. In the latter the wig would be very apt to get deranged, and even to fall off. The caution, therefore, of the French dancing-master to his pupils was, "Mind your P's [i.e. pieds, feet] and Q's [i.e. queues, wigs].""

This source is unhelpful on the others. Any-one with access to a hard copy of Brewer should settle everything. I will check on Monday if no-one else has

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Bill D
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 05:45 PM

'p's & 'q's was used to tell apprentice typesetters to be careful, as these 2 letters were mirror images in many fonts, and were often reversed..(I used to have a foot-treadle operated platen press, and sorting 'pied' (spilled) type was always an adventure...and you ALWAYS got some of the Ps & Qs wrong.)

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: catspaw49
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 05:51 PM

Hollowfox, I had never heard that one. Like you say, myth or not, its a good story.

The local school system administrators here get real upset when you bring up a piece of history that they ADAMANTLY DENY!!! When they combined several districts into one a new name was in order and the people then in power (good, straight-laced, farm folk) had already approved the new nickname before someone pointed out they were being had........otherwise this school could be the "Fairfield Union Charging Knights."

Sometimes schools just miss it altogther. Johnstown goes by the Jonnies and of course there are always porta-potties being drug out by other teams and burned or destroyed prior to a Johnstown game.....often AT the game.

Spaw

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Greyeyes
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 05:51 PM

That's the version I'd heard, but I've never seen it verified in a reliable source. It doesn't seem to relate to correct behaviour, so I'm not convinced that's where the expression arose from. Sorry to be sceptical, but I'm a librarian, and I must see sources, preferably hard-copy.

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Greyeyes
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 05:54 PM

Referring to Bill D's Ps & Qs theory, that is.

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: rangeroger
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 11:29 PM

Gee, I had always thought it stood for Freedom Under Clark Kerr.

rr

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: poor lonesome boy
Date: 10 Feb 01 - 11:36 PM

I've been told by great uncles and such that Ps and Qs came from pints and quarts of milk on the doorstep.. back when they were delivered. Now, I'm too young to be an expert on this one, and too old to remember the whole story, but I'm to understand this is more to do with milk than beer, or even old presses for that matter. that's my story.. etc. etc.

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: katlaughing
Date: 11 Feb 01 - 01:11 AM

Here's a bit more on the p's and q's, some already noted, some not. I hated it when my mother used to say this to me!**BG**

From Phrase Finder:There have been several theories posted on Phrase Finder about "minding your P's and Q's."

To mind your Ps and Qs is to be careful; cautious. The Ps here are said to be pints and the Qs to be quarts. The publican "chalks up" or "puts on the slate" the drinks supplied to customers; they must be aware of how much they have drunk or their bills will be unexpectedly large.

An alternative view is that P derives from the French pied=foot and the Q comes from queue=tail(of a wig) and that the whole saying is based on 18th century court etiquette.

Advice to a child learning its letters to be careful not to mix up the handwritten lower-case letters p and q. Similar advice to a printer's apprentice, for whom the backward-facing metal type letters would be especially confusing.

An abbreviation of mind your please's and thank-you's.

Instructions from a French dancing master to be sure to perform the dance figures pieds and queues accurately.

An admonishment to seamen not to soil their navy pea-jackets with their tarred queues, that is, their pigtails.

There was once an expression P and Q, often written pee and kew, which was a seventeenth-century colloquial expression for "prime quality". This later became a dialect expression (the English Dialect Dictionary reports it in Victorian times from Shropshire and Herefordshire).

OED2 has a citation from Rowlands' Knave of Harts of 1612: "Bring in a quart of Maligo, right true: And looke, you Rogue, that it be Pee and Kew." Nobody is really sure what either P or Q stood for. To say they're the initials of "Prime Quality" seems to be folk etymology, because surely that would make "PQ" rather than "P and Q".

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: GUEST,kendall
Date: 11 Feb 01 - 05:39 PM

I was told it stood for First Universalist Church of Kennebunk.

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Sourdough
Date: 11 Feb 01 - 09:52 PM

Yes, I used to be sure that POSH stood for Port Out - Starboard Home but like so many other of my cherished beliefs, it seems to be questionable. Here is what the American Heritage SDictionary has to say about it:

"Oh yes, Mater, we had a posh time of it down there." So in Punch for September 25, 1918, do we find the first recorded instance posh, meaning "smart and fashionable." A popular theory holds that it is derived from the initials of "Port Out, Starboard Home," the cooler, and thus more expensive side of ships traveling between England and India in the mid-19th century. The acronym POSH was supposedly stamped on the tickets of first-class passengers traveling on that side of ships owned by the Peninsular and Oriental Steam Navigation Company. No known evidence supports this theory, however. Another word posh was 19th- and early 20th-century British slang for "money," specifically "a halfpenny, cash of small value." This word is borrowed from the Romany word påh, "half," which was used in combinations such as påhera, "halfpenny." Posh, also meaning "a dandy," is recorded in two dictionaries of slang, published in 1890 and 1902, although this particular posh may be still another word. This word or these words are, however, much more likely to be the source of posh than "Port Out, Starboard Home," although the latter source certainly has caught the public's etymological fancy. **Truth to tell, it sure caught mine. I hate tolet go of it.

Sourdough

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Hollowfox
Date: 12 Feb 01 - 10:42 AM

FWIW, greyeyes, the "pints" and "printing" theories were both given as acceptable answers for the "p & q" question on "Says You", a quiz show on National Public Radio that deals with language. Their website doesn't seem to archive past shows, but if you send an e-mail, they might be able to cite sources. http://www.wgbh.org/radio/saysyou

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 12 Feb 01 - 10:56 AM

There was a character called Murray Posh in George and Weedon Grossmith's sublime comic novel Diary of a Nobody. They may have used the name as the term was in current use OR the term may have been taken from the book OR no connection whatsoever!
RtS( it could be my desert island book, though slim it is always a delight)

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: GUEST,Roger the skiffler
Date: 12 Feb 01 - 11:06 AM

Should have said: first published 1892.
RtS

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Greyeyes
Date: 12 Feb 01 - 02:59 PM

Hollowfox, how can they both be right? That just makes me even more suspicious. Couldn't check at work today, crisis management. Branch closures announced and the mobile axed. Happy days.

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Hollowfox
Date: 13 Feb 01 - 02:34 PM

No way can I guess which one (if either) is right, greyeyes, I was just "one more cook putting her foot in the stew." I'd believe either of those before that French thing about feet and wigs, though.

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: catspaw49
Date: 13 Feb 01 - 02:47 PM

Well 'Dough, now I can officially say, "I don't know a damn thing."

It was so reassuring knowing something...........and now all of that is gone too.......................sigh.........................

Spaw

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Greyeyes
Date: 13 Feb 01 - 03:41 PM

Actually I quite liked the feet and wigs theory.

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Blackcatter
Date: 13 Feb 01 - 04:47 PM

greetings

I always love it when I find someone who insists that the word fuck cannot be ancient! We know that ancient people we not uptight about sex and like everything else in their world they would have words to describe it.

As for golf - my Random House Unabridged Dictionary says it is meival Scottish in origin but hasn't a clue has to its creation.

pax yall

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Greyeyes
Date: 13 Feb 01 - 05:01 PM

Golf is derived from a dutch word for club. The Dutch played a game not dissimilar to golf much earlier than anyone in the UK, C15.

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: Mark Cohen
Date: 13 Feb 01 - 06:59 PM

OK, now how about we start on OK? What'll it be, Old Kinderhook, Oll Kerrect...or French dancing masters drinking mead on their passage to India while having unlawful carnal knowledge with a golf ball in a rope bed? Have at it, folks!

Aloha,
Mark

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: SINSULL
Date: 13 Feb 01 - 07:40 PM

Actually it was carnal knowledge with a wig, Mark.

Subject: RE: Help: Need Mudcat Verification
From: catspaw49
Date: 13 Feb 01 - 08:01 PM

I always thought carnal knowledge was a talk with a butcher...............

Spaw