Unfortunately, I get to thinking about lots of things. I think of things I've read, movies I've seen, people I've met. All kinds of things. Things that don't help me go back to sleep. My mind has a tendency to race in various direction when I think of things. Usually, it's money, or the lack thereof. Don't get me wrong, I do ok. I mean, I'm not piss poor. The phrase "piss poor" comes from a time when urine was used for the tanning of animal skins and dying cloth. If you had a very lousy job or no work at all, members of the family would urinate into a pot and then that was sold to a local tanner(bet that guy loved his job!). But if you were really bad off, you didn't even have a pot to piss in. And, there is an even longer version of this phrase for the lowest of the low who didn't have "a pot to piss in or window to throw it out of."
I'm certainly not hoity-toity.
The phrase "hoity-toity" has been kicked around a lot. There's been discussion on how it's spelled, where it comes from, or even what it means. By definition, hoity-toity has been used to mean pretentious. Many people claim that it comes from the French and two words: haut and toit, which translate (literally) into high roof. The thought is that those with higher roofs looked down on those of us who were piss poor. The phrase isn't French, however, and probably has more to do with our penchant for liking rhyming phrases like "artsy-fartsy" and "fuddy-duddy." The base of the phrase is the word hoit which is an obsolete, 16th century verb which means "to play a fool." I guess those with money could be more frivolous than the commoners.
That's some hifalutin knowledge, eh?
The word "hifalutin" is a strictly American word. It comes from the days of steamboats. The expensive seats were high up on the decks next to the smokestacks. The smokestacks had very high fluted tops for the sake of the smoke. Those up on deck had money. Ergo, hifalutin. Wait a minute, that boat had a high roof.
The riff-raff couldn't sit up there.
The phrase riff-raff does come to us from the French (ah, those sneaky French). There was on old expression rifle et rafle. These words are from the verbs rifler, to strip, and raffler, to carry off. The phrase referred to the plundering of the bodies of the dead on the battlefield and the carry off the spoils. The French phrase came into English in the forms rif and raf meaning "every scrap". It’s more than likely that the negative associations of common soldiers ransacking the bodies of the dead linked the expression to mean "general undesirable people."
Riff-Raff was one of Underdog's arch enemies.
The phrase underdog comes from...awww, who cares? I know my logastellus (look it up, I'll wait) isn't all that important to you. In fact, I'm just hoping that it will help me sleep. Hey, at least I haven't delved into what groups of animals are called. Because a group of dogs is called a pack....
The Alpha dog is the hoity-toity one.
No comments:
Post a Comment