Avisiting lecturer at a private educational institute was awaiting the payment for his services. The Director of Studies called him and asked him to bring an invoice to make the payment.
For a moment, he wondered why a statement for his services was called an invoice. The word ‘invoice’ serves as a noun and a verb. It has been borrowed from the French word ‘invoice.’ It is also an alteration of the now obsolete English word ‘invoyes’ the plural form of ‘invoy.’ Closely connected to the word ‘invoice’ is ‘enoy’ who is a messenger, representative or diplomat.
Most of us have eaten hot dogs at various restaurants. Sometimes, you may be curious to know a sausage in a bread-roll is called a ‘hot dog.’ Sausage dogs were quite popular in the United States in the 19th century. The term ‘hot dogs’ was popularised by cartoonist Tad Dorgan in the 1900s when he sketched vendors selling sausages from hot water tanks.
Children often ask their parents whether birds sleep. Unlike other animals birds do not have a particular place to sleep. They sleep while staying upright on their perches. They can do so because of their flexor tendon that runs down the back of their legs and under their feet. Bird watchers say that when a bird lands in a perch, its legs bend causing the tendon to automatically tighten and flex the toes thus closing the claws firmly round the perch. When the bird wakes up in the morning and straightens its legs to leave the perch the tendon relaxes and the grip is released.
Spin doctors
Most top-rung politicians have one or more advisers. According to reliable sources, a former president had so many advisers that he had never consulted some of them. In the United States and other developed countries such advisers are known as ‘spin doctors.’ The term ‘spin’ is a sporting metaphor for the twist given to a ball by a baseball pitcher. This is similar to the slant put on information presented by politicians or their advisers. Even the word ‘doctor’ is used to mean someone who tampers or falsifies information.
We are quite familiar with the saying, “See no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.” This is sound advice, but it is closely associated with three wise monkeys. One monkey covers his eyes and sees no evil, another monkey covers his ears and hears no evil and the third monkey covers his mouth and speaks no evil. The three monkeys appear in a wooden carving at the 17th century Toshogu Shrine in Nikko, Japan. The shrine is the mausoleum of the Shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu and the three monkeys were the guardians of the stables.
Young brides and bridegrooms are proud to wear their wedding rings. They usually wear them on the third fingers popularly known as the ring fingers. As they grow old, women still wear the wedding rings, but some men do not do so for various reasons. Ancient Greeks and Romans believed that a vein or nerve linked the ring finger to the heart, believed to be the seat of emotions.
Dutch courage
Social media showed a former minister behaving violently under the influence of liquor or Dutch courage. The phrase ‘Dutch courage’ became popular during the first three Anglo-Dutch wars in the 17th century. Due to the strong rivalry between the English and Dutch the word ‘Dutch’ became a derisive term. Dutch courage is not real courage but it is induced by alcohol.
Elephants have unusually big ears. African bush elephants have bigger ears than their Indian or Sri Lankan counterparts. However, prehistoric Siberian mammoth had small furry ears. When their bodies are overheated, elephants pump blood into their wide flat ears from which heat easily escapes into the surrounding atmosphere. Therefore big ears serve an important purpose for elephants.
During the recent general elections the National People’s Power (NPP) won more than two thirds of parliamentary seats hands down. If you win something hands down, you win it easily or with little or no effort. The term comes from horse racing. In a close race, a jockey strikes his horse with a bat to force it to maintain or increase the speed. If the horse runs fast, the jockey stops striking it. In effect, he puts his hands down. The term first appeared in the mid-19th century.
Mosquito bites
Most of us are trying to eliminate mosquitoes and their breeding places. However, mosquitoes are found almost everywhere. Strangely, mosquitoes bite some people more than others. When you watch television with your family members, mosquitoes usually bite big-made men and women who wear dark-coloured clothes. Mosquitoes usually do not approach those wearing light-coloured clothes and spare babies. Another fact is that mosquitoes bite more men than women.
Teachers often say, “”Mind your ‘P’s and ‘Q’s” when handling stubborn children. Teachers want their students to be careful or particular in their words or behaviour. The expression is recorded from the late 18th century, and may refer to the difficulty found by a child learning to write in distinguishing between the tailed letters ‘P’s and ‘Q’s.
In old English pubs, barmen would record customers’ tabs on a blackboard, with a ‘P’ for a pint and ‘Q’ for a quart. To ‘mind one’s P’s and Q’s would be to make sure the barmen did not mark a pint as a quart. However, Robert Fisher, Professor of Linguistics at the University of Toronto, believes that the phrase comes from the early days of the printing press. When printers set type, letters were reversed so that they would print in the right direction. As lower case p’s and q’s are similar, printers had to be extra careful not to mix them up.
Traders adopt various tactics to attract customers. They mark prices as Rs 99, instead of Rs 100. Research shows that such tactics produce good results. Traders know that customers have a limited capacity for information. When bombarded with lots of different price tags, their brains take in only the first digit price or a couple of digits on a tag. When the price is very specific, shoppers are more likely to associate it with honesty than a slightly higher round figure. Some customers may also experience a feel-good factor when receiving change.
Blue films
Some teenagers and adults see ‘blue’ films. The word ‘blue’ became a euphemism for ‘indecent’ in the early 19th century. The origin of the expression is quite interesting. Travellers from Asia reported that Chinese brothels were painted blue so that they could be easily identified. In Spain, however, the colour for indecent films is green because that is the colour of the censor’s certificate. In Italy they use red in association with red-light districts.
When someone took my first photograph in 1945, he asked me not to smile. So I pressed my lips and posed for the box camera. Today, however, the photographer would ask you to say ‘cheese.’ I have watched many old family photographs in which the subjects were not smiling. Ann Thomas, Curator of Photographs at the National Gallery of Canada, says, “In the early days of photography, there existed a tradition of formality in which posing for a photograph was considered a solemn occasion. The arrival of smiling faces in photographs came after the invention of the snapshot in the 1880s with the introduction of the Kodak dry-plate camera.”
