It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4,000 years ago that for a month
after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all
the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey beer, and because their calendar was
lunar based, this period was called the "honey month" or what we know today
as the "honeymoon."
"Honeymoon
There is a story floating around the internet that honeymoon derives from the Babylonian practice of a new father-in-law giving mead, or honey beer, to his new son-in-law for the first month of their marriage. I don't know if this was a Babylonian practice (although I doubt it since mead was commonly found in the northern latitudes where wine grapes could not be grown).
Well, the story just isn't true. The word first appears in the 16th century. The honey is a reference to the sweetness of a new marriage. And the moon is not a reference to the lunar-based month, but rather a bitter acknowledgement that this sweetness, like a full moon, would quickly fade."
In English pubs, ale is ordered by pints and quarts. So, in old England,
when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them to mind their own
pints and quarts and settle down. It's where we get the phrase "mind your P's
and Q's."
"Mind Your P's & Q's
The phrase dates to the late 18th century--at least 1779. The exact origin is unknown, but several competing hypotheses seem to be the most likely.
The first is that it derives from the phrase p and q which was an abbreviation for prime quality. This English dialectical term dates to the 17th century. So to mind your p's and q's would mean to be exacting in detail and ensure high quality.
The second is that it refers to difficulty children had in learning to distinguish between the letters p and q, being mirror images of one another. To learn one's p's and q's is a phrase meaning to learn one's letters is first recorded around 1830--somewhat later but not impossible as the origin. Often this explanation is identified with printers and distinguish between a p and a q in type, but the early use exclusively deals with children, not printing.
The third, first suggested by Farmer and Henley at the turn of the 20th century, is that the phrase comes from the practice of maintaining a tally in pubs and taverns. Marks under column p, for pint, or q, for quart, would be made on a blackboard. To mind them would be to watch to ensure that the bartender did not misattribute someone else's drinks to your tab or to mark a pint as a quart.
The last is from the world of printing. Typesetters had to be skilled in reading letters backward, as the blocks of type would have mirror images of the letters. The lower-case letters p and q were particularly difficult to distinguish because they are mirrors of one another. Typesetters had to be particularly careful not to confuse the two.
Which is the correct one is anybody's guess. I favor the second explanation, but that is just a personal preference."
Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the
rim or handle of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the
whistle to get some service. "Wet your whistle," is the phrase inspired by
this practice.
"Wet your whistle
Many years ago in England, pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim or handle of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. Wet your whistle, is the phrase inspired by this practice.
Has anyone ever seen one of these mugs? A picture of one? A written description of one, perhaps? Of course not, they never existed.
Since the middle ages, whistle has been used as a slang term for the throat. As in...
Let?s have no pitty, for if you do, here?s that shall cut your whistle.
- Beaumont and Fletcher, Coxcomb , 1612
So, to wet your whistle is simply "to wet your throat"."
In ancient England, you could not have sex unless you had consent of the
King (unless you were in the Royal Family). When anyone wanted to have a
baby, they got consent of the King & the King gave them a placard that they
hung on their door while they were having sex. The placard had F.U.C.K.
(Fornication Under Consent of the King) on it. Now you know where that came
from
"F*ck
Popular etymologies agree, unfortunately incorrectly, that this is an acronym meaning either Fornication Under Consent of the King or For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. The latter usually accompanying a story about how medieval prisoners were forced to wear this word on their clothing.
Deriving the etymology of this word is difficult, as it has been under a taboo for most of its existence and citations are rare. The earliest known use, according to American Heritage and Lighter, predates 1500 and is from a poem written in a mix of Latin and English and entitled 'Flen flyys.' The relevant line reads:
"Non sunt in celi quia fuccant uuiuys of heli."
Translated:
"They [the monks] are not in heaven because they f*ck the wives of Ely [a town near Cambridge]."
Fuccant is a pseudo-Latin word and in the original it is written in cipher to further disguise it.
Ayto mentions the word's use in 1278 as a personal name, John le F*cker , but fails to provide a citation. The earliest usage cite in the OED2 dates from 1503 and is in the form 'f*kkit.' The earliest cite of the current spelling is from 1535.
The word was not in common (published) use prior to the 1960s. Shakespeare did not use it, although he did hint at it for comic effect. In Merry Wives of Windsor (IV.i) he gives us the pun "focative case." In Henry V (IV.iv), the character Pistol threatens to "firk" a French soldier, a word meaning "to strike," but commonly used as an Elizabethan euphemism for f*ck. In the same play (III.iv), Princess Katherine confuses the English words "foot" and "gown" for the French "foutre" and "coun" (f*ck and c*nt, respectively) with comic results. Other poets did use the word, although it was far from common. Robert Burns, for example, used it in an unpublished manuscript.
The taboo was so strong that for 170 years, from 1795 to 1965, f*ck did not appear in a single dictionary of the English language. In 1948, the publishers of The Naked and the Dead persuaded Norman Mailer to use the euphemism "fug" instead, resulting in Dorothy Parker's comment upon meeting Mailer: "So you're the man who can't spell f*ck."
The root is undoubtedly Germanic, as it has cognates in other Northern European languages: Middle Dutch fokken meaning to thrust, to copulate with; dialectical Norwegian fukka meaning to copulate; and dialectical Swedish focka meaning to strike, push, copulate, and fock meaning penis. Both French and Italian have similar words, foutre and fottere respectively. These derive from the Latin futuere.
While these cognates exist, they are probably not the source of f*ck, rather they probably come from a common root. Most of the early known usages of the English word come from Scotland, leading some scholars to believe that the word comes from Scandinavian sources. Others disagree, believing that the number of northern citations reflects that the taboo was weaker in Scotland and the north, resulting in more surviving usages. The fact that there are citations, albeit fewer of them, from southern England dating from the same period seems to bear out this latter theory.
There is also an elaborate explanation that has been circulating on the internet for some years regarding English archers, the Battle of Agincourt, and the phrase Pluck Yew! This explanation is a modern jest--a play on words. However, there may be a bit of truth to it. The British (it's virtually unknown in America) gesture of displaying the index and middle fingers with the back of the hand outwards (a reverse peace sign)--meaning the same as displaying the middle finger alone--may derive from the French practice of cutting the fingers off captured English archers. Archers would taunt the French on the battlefield with this gesture, showing they were intact and still dangerous. The pluck yew part is fancifully absurd. This is not the origin of the middle finger gesture, which is truly ancient, being referred to in classical Greek and Roman texts.
For more information on f*ck and its usages, see The F Word , by Jesse Sheidlower, Random House, 1999, ISBN 0-375-70634-8. This is perhaps the most comprehensive treatment of the word available."
Answers from
here and
here
So no, generally they are not true.
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