Rocksalt Copy Creatives

Tom Swift's Electric Rifle gives us 'taser', a play on the initials of the sci fi weapon and the acronym 'laser' #WWOW#wordlove

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Whisky — the water of life. Literally, too, if you speak Gaelic, in which it's 'uisge beatha'. Sounds refreshing #WWOW #wordlove

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Have you ever shouted a slogan? 'Slogan' comes from the Gaelic 'sluagh-ghairm' which means 'battle-cry'. Inspiring stuff!#WWOW #wordlove

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The Latin 'scrupulus', literally a small, sharp stone, is the source of 'scruple', a painful, niggling doubt. If you've ever had a rock in your shoe, you'll understand #WWOW #wordlove

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Have you been working like a machine? 'Robot' comes from the Czech 'robota', meaning 'forced labour' or 'servitude.

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The pejorative term 'quack' comes from the Dutch 'kwakzalver', meaning 'hawker of salves'. I'm not sure I've ever heard a hawk quack.

'Barbarian' comes from the Ancient Greek 'barbaroi', a word meant to echo the unintelligible speech of the Greeks' foreign neighbours 

'Muscle' comes from 'musculus', Latin for 'little mouse', named for the way muscles look moving under the skin

Mortgage looking a bit grim? That's hardly surprising. The term derives from the Old French for 'death pledge'.

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The word 'lobster' is a corruption of the Latin 'locusta' (locust) and the Old English 'loppe' (spider). Not so tasty now.

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Ever felt like taking a weapon to your alarm clock? You shouldn't blame yourself — 'alarm' comes from the Old Italian ‘all’alarme’, literally ‘to the arms!’

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In the 15th century, a 'spud' referred to a shovel and not a potato. It wasn't until 1845 that spuds stopped being spades and started being taters.

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Three Billy Goats Tragic? Tragedy comes from the Greek 'tragodia', literally 'goat-song'. That's one sad goat!

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“I wanna go self-contained underwater breathing apparatus-diving.” Better known as SCUBA!

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Do statues get bad breath? The word gargoyle derives from the Old French 'gargole', meaning 'throat' or 'waterspout', and is also the origin of the word 'gargle'!

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Berserk comes from the Old Norse word berserkr, meaning bear-shirt. Sounds itchy. No wonder they were so angry.

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Burgers, the original takeaway. We ‘took away’ ‘ham’ from ‘burger’. ‘Hamburger’ was a meat named after German city Hamburg. 

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I’m a soldier and my salary is sausages.” Soldier, salary and sausages all come from the Latin word ‘sal’ for salt!

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Know where the word ‘bludgeon’ comes from? No one does. It pummelled its way into language suddenly. Origin unknown. SPOOKY #WWOW #wordlove

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What do you think when you hear ‘buxom blonde’? A woman who is obedient to God? That’s what ‘buxom’ used to mean.

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The first chauvinist pig: French soldier and political fanatic, Nicolas Chauvin, gave us the word ‘chauvinism’.

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What did burglars and editors do while they waited for their verbs, burgle and edit, to catch up? Normally, nouns evolve naturally from their action: a person who could ‘write’ was called a ‘writer’, but sometimes it takes a little backformation to make a living.

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Are you a chocoholic? Would you feel as guilty if we called you a chocolatic? To create the word ‘chocoholic’, we’ve taken ‘-holic’ from ‘alcoholic’, but, grammatically speaking, we should’ve just taken the ‘-ic’. Adding ‘-ic’ to ‘alcohol’ means ‘caused by drunkenness’.

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Dogs: the barking linguistic mystery. No one knows why ‘dog’ — from the Old English word, docga: a specific, powerful breed — suddenly replaced the general word ‘hound’. Now the two have swapped; ‘dog’ is the general word and ‘hound’ refers specifically to a hunting dog.

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“Mr Mesmer, you are mesmerising”. Franz Anton Mesmer was a German physician who developed a theory about a mysterious invisible bodily fluid that could hypnotise, and gave us the word ‘mesmerise’.

“Goodnight, sweetard.” Did you know that ‘sweetheart’ is a mutated word? Read more on the blog: http://www.rocksaltcopycreatives.com/blog/goodnight-sweetard

Boy: “Mum, I dropped a pease on the floor.”
Mum: “You mean, ‘pea’.”
Boy: “No, I mean pease.” 

Read more on the blog: http://bit.ly/OBhuRN

Food for thought: every time you say “goodbye” to someone, you’re actually saying “God be with you.” How much is our language influenced by religion? 

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Sci-fi geeks will know that “tardis” means “Time And Relative Dimension In Space”. But who knew that “laser” stands for “Light Amplification by Stimulated Emission of Radiation”?