Geek: In the circus, a performer who sank sufficiently low would do horrible things (like biting the heads off live chickens) for booze money. The poor soul was called a geek. How it later came to describe smart people is unknown, but I am sure 80’s movies helped it along.
Two Cent’s Worth: During the Civil War, the cheapest cigar you could but cost two pennies. “Two-center” cigars became synonymous with cheapness, and by the late 1800’s, people who wanted to project fauxhumility would offer their two cent’s worth.
Shoddy: A scandal erupted during the Civil War when some textilers sold the army uniforms made out of the scraps left over from their wool-making process. This cheap fabric was called shoddy. In no time, the noun turned into an adjective.
White Paper: In Victorian England, policy and legislation were delivered to Parliament in gigantic books with blue covers called Blue Papers. Lesser, shorter government business was delivered in smaller books with white covers, called White Papers.
Pundits: Brits who traveled to India met Hindi scholars who taught religion and law. They were knows as pandits. Soon enough, scholarly Londoners were known as pundits.
Kiosks: In Turkey, outdoor pavilions used for public meetings were called kiushks.
Haywire: In the 1800’s, New England loggers took bales of hay into the forest with them to feed their horses. These bales were bound with thin wire that was also used to make small repairs on the loggers’ equipment. The more that stuff broke, the more wire the loggers needed. Logging companies and groups of loggers that ended up using a lot of hay wire on their equipment, they were called haywire outfits. Slowly the term began to describe the actual process of the equipment breaking down and not working properly.
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