Evidently Henry IIX kept a stable of "hobby horses", leading to the use of the word hobby for any pastime that takes up a lot of time and money, though for some reason his use of decapitation hasn't survived as a synonym for divorce. And it seems limousine derives from the French sheepskins used to keep chauffeurs nice and snug.
Who says telly isn't educational?
A limousine, somewhat obviouslyTo reassure JD that I can still read as well as slob in front of the box, just today I finished The Last Corsair, a history of the WW1 German surface raider the Emden. It's an almost unbelievable yarn and well worth a read.
Following their hair-raising adventures the survivors of her crew were treated to a 'bierabend' (beer-evening). Could that be the origin of the phrase to go on a bender?
6 comments:
I'm certainly glad you tossed in that comment about decapitation, or I don't know how long it would have taken me to realize that Henry IIX is the same person as Henry VIII ... it's been a long week.
Nice spot on "bierabend". No idea if it's true or not but it certainly sounds plausible.
According to www.etymonline.com the word bender is US slang for a drinking bout first attested in 1846. Maybe the German's borrowed it.
Another possible origin of bender: this was slang for an old sixpence piece, so called because it had some silver in it and it could be bent to prove it was genuine. Going on a bender was to go out drinking with a whole sixpence. This was, of course, before the last budget tax increases on alcohol.
A limousine is usually considered something like a large luxurious automobile usually driven by a chauffeur. The word limousine or shorter limo is a French word and there is really no English equivalent. That is, if you call it anything else, a town car or whatever, it is either a limousine or it isn't.
I'd say that limousine is an English word. From French, but definitely English now (as well as French, I presume).
After all, if we used the word in our magazine, we wouldn't italicise it to indicate a foreign word.
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