FLOTSAM & JETSAM

The idea here, we were thinking, is that people could send short facts & anecdotes to us, which we would reproduce here. Send them to submissions@theshoremag.com Here’s some to get you started.

1) The phrase “on/off the wagon,” in reference to one’s sobriety, comes from the mid-(last)millennium English habit of hanging people. Convicted felons would be brought to the gallows on a wagon. In town the wagon would stop at a pub and the men were allowed to get off and have a last drink.

2) Leeches have 32 brains.

3) Savvy or savvey is an Americanization of the Spanish sabe, a form of the verb saber, meaning “to know.” “Do you savvy?” is equivalent to “¿Sabe Usted?” Both expressions mean “Do you know?” Savvy was originally acquired from the Mexicans by early ranchers in the Southwest who spelled and pronounced the word savvy rather than sabe because in Spanish b and v are pronounced almost alike and in many words are used interchangeably. Used as a noun, savvy means understanding, mental grasp or knowledge of affairs. Regardless of usage, the word is slang.

4) It is supposed that monkey in monkey wrench is a corruption of the proper name Moncke (pronounced mun-ke). There is a notion that wrenches, with moving jaws adjustable by a screw, were first made by a London blacksmith named Charles Moncke and that the implements were originally called “Moncke wrenches.” Owing to popular ignorance as to the origin of the word, it was naturally corrupted into monkey.

5) Slugs have four noses.

6) A surd is an irrational quantity and as such cannot be expressed in the form p/q where p and q are integers. A surd cannot be exactly determined, nor can the sum or difference of surds. There is a story that the Pythagorean philospher Hippasus, while at sea, used geometric methods to demostrate the “surdiness” of the square root of 2. Upon notifying his fellow seafarers of the great discovery, Hippasus was immediately thrown overboard.

7) If someone in class is boffing, British schoolchildren may be laughing or plugging their noses as the term is slang for “farting.” American children, however, may have a different reaction as in the United States the term is slang for “copulating,” and may be a corruption of buff, meaning “to rub.” Don't ask how the two slang meanings came to be - we certainly had nothing to do with it.

8) An enthymeme is an argument in which one of the premises is not explicitly stated but is nevertheless persuasive because it is self-evident.