Did you know that ... Red tape originally referred to the red colored tape used to secure legal documents or other official correspondence.
Versions of the word yo originated in the early fifteenth century as a warning or call to attention.
To jump on the bandwagon was first popularized in political campaigns.
The Complete Idiot's Guide to Weird Word Origins by Paul McFedries has made a pit stop at my desk before wending its way to the "NEW" shelf in the young adult department. I was surprised to find an entry for the word book -- I mean, it doesn't seem like such a weird word, but the origin is interesting! Here is the listing I found:
"Authors sometimes jokingly refer to themselves as 'tree-killers' because of the great numbers of trees that go into the making of their books. However, from a historical point of view, they could also get away with calling themselves 'tree-makers.' That's because the word book can be traced back to Anglo-Saxon times when scribblers used to scribble on chunks of bark from the beech tree. Their name for this tree was boc, and eventually that also became their name for the slabs of beech bark-based writings that they would bind together. That word eventually changed to book and stuck around even when the beech-bark slabs were replaced by printed pages." (p. 18, 2008)
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