Word Histories

Overreach leads to withdrawal of consent by the governed. https://wordhistories.net/2023/12/20/iron-hand-velvet-glove/

Git does not have the "slave" term, only "master" term. But the "master" term is being removed because it is derived from master-slave connotation from Bitkeeper allegedly. https://discourse.gnome.org/t/renaming-master-branch-to-mainline/841/1… Master-slaves have been replaced in many projects, such as Drupal (primary/replicas), Django (leader/followers), OpenSSH (parent/children). I wonder what would happen to robot term? Robot comes from Czech language, which is robota. It means forced labour. https://wordhistories.net/2017/06/14/origin-of-slave/

The Dutch term for the German 'neurgierig' is 'nieuwsgierig' which translates to 'greedy for news' and as such is even closer to the subject of this post. I also use an RSS reader - Nextcloud News - to follow the 'news' (including this here site, HN) and I sometimes feel the same about what is pushed by the legacy media and its more recent competition. Much of what is published is tailored to fit some political agenda, often a 'progressive' one for most of the legacy news media and - due to my conscious choices - a more 'conservative' one for the more recent counterparts. I made this choice to get a somewhat more balanced view of what actual facts the stuff published by 'left' and 'right' seems to be based on but... man, is it often tiring to see 'both' sides go on and on and on pushing their agendas. Even more tiring is to see how useful idiots [1] happily take the propaganda pushed by the media and trumpet it as if it were pure gospel, often with dire consequences. Should I just quit following the legacy media and the more recent anti-dotes and try to live here in quiet and solitude on the farm? Well, no, I don't think I should. I will be confronted with te results of the media poisoning the minds of their victims the next time I go to a city and find the roads blocked by a crowd of people shouting inane slogans. Where did they get those from, what are they blathering about, why does this crowd of screechy weasels hollering about some supposed misdeed performed by some…

I could agree in principle on the volume argument, perhaps after looking over some economic models. However, a big part of the USD stability in the past 78+ years stems from the causation chains which make the following fact possible: the US Navy is the second air force in the world [1]. In order to believe in the stability of BTC, I must ask the stalinist question: "how many divisions has Satoshi?" [2]. It is a sad reality but might will make right in this silly world of ours for the foreseeable future. Now that's an invariant which I would have loved to see cryptocurrencies tackle, but they seem to have no interest in this, it's more of a changing of the guard ceremony, this crypto-fiat dance. Coming to your question, to regulate or not to regulate [3]. I come from the very far left field (pun intended). The most different approach that I've seen recently, one which could maybe move the world in a significant way, is the financo-fiction detailed in Yanis Varoufakis' Another Now [4]. One of the more radical proposals from the book is that the persons starting a company should have only one share each: more of a library card system than a market. In another presentation, Varoufakis says something along the lines: compounding interest becomes a tool of exploitation when the poor are forced to borrow more and more from the rich which only get richer. Therefore, no, I am against the status quo as much as you can get, and although I am not an optimist, I believe it is up to us…

No that expression has been around a long time. In the UK we call it 'Belt and Braces' https://wordhistories.net/2018/12/13/belt-braces/

> Memory safe languages are pretty much motherhood and apple pie at this point For anyone else who never heard of this saying: > The phrase motherhood and apple pie denotes a core principle, value, belief, characteristic, aspect, etc., of the U.S.A. or its citizens. https://wordhistories.net/2021/05/22/motherhood-applepie/

The point of smoking is about the origins of the term 'nanny state' [0]: [0]: https://wordhistories.net/2020/10/03/nanny-state/

context https://wordhistories.net/2016/10/22/pour-encourager-les-autres/

More info: https://wordhistories.net/2022/12/05/garbage-in-garbage-out/

Yes, what the author describes is encapsulated by the common idiom, "fair-weather friends" : https://www.google.com/search?q=fair-weather+friends A google search found an article that cites an origin of that phrase as early as 1685: https://wordhistories.net/2021/01/14/fairweather-friend/ The level of "friendship" exists on a spectrum and sometimes we're surprised when the true extent of that friendship is revealed because of difficult circumstances. Sometimes, your "drinking buddies" -- are really just friends to share good times with alcohol. They're not friends you can lean on if you get cancer.

I've learned by now that almost no one originated the quotes commonly attributed to them, so you should always look them up: "a sheep in sheep’s clothing" I always thought it was Churchill. But, sigh: https://wordhistories.net/2019/08/04/sheep-sheeps-clothing/

These things definitely go in cycles, in the 90s, in the UK "Twoccing" was a big deal, particularly in and around Newcastle. (The stem 'twoc' is derived from Taken Without Owners Consent) It was almost entirely kids aged 8-18 stealing and racing cars until they ran out of gas, or crashed. Police had very little recourse given that the perpetrators were minors https://wordhistories.net/2021/04/21/twoc/

Nettles hurt less when handled roughly. There's even a phrase about it: https://wordhistories.net/2019/01/28/grasp-nettle-origin/

It's not a typo. https://wordhistories.net/2017/06/05/origin-of-grauniad/

Agreed. I've had some nice colleagues in Shanghai, and I suspect they'd prefer that the name of their home not be used to refer to an awful practice. FWIW, according to https://wordhistories.net/2019/07/16/shanghai-kidnap/ , in 1857, in San Francisco, they considered the term vulgar slang: > It was suspected that he had been drugged and carried off, or, as it is vulgarly called, “Shanghaied,” on the ship Oliver Jordan, which sailed yesterday.

uhm, no...? https://wordhistories.net/2021/09/20/lead-balloon/ It's a common idiom in political discourse. Or was this a bad joke?

Also Voltaire in Candide: > ".. in this country it is found good, from time to time, to kill one Admiral to encourage the others.” https://wordhistories.net/2016/10/22/pour-encourager-les-autres/

Also, for black sheep, see "Judas sheep".[1] Black sheep were sometimes trained to lead the other sheep to slaughter. [1] https://wordhistories.net/2019/08/30/judas-sheep-judas-goat/

For those unaware "Grauniad" is a decades-old nickname for The Guardian, used particularly by satirical mag Private Eye in reference to its reputation at one time for typos and the like. https://wordhistories.net/2017/06/05/origin-of-grauniad/

"To encourage the others" that may be harbouring non-Tesla approved thoughts. http://wordhistories.net/2016/10/22/pour-encourager-les-autres/

"Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed" is the usual phrase, creatively altered by the parent. (See https://wordhistories.net/2018/07/01/brighteyed-bushytailed-origin/ for an in-depth etymology)

The author implies that the idiom 'shelling out' has its origins in shell money, I'm pretty skeptical of that claim: https://wordhistories.net/2016/09/21/shell-out/