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1. Mal
   May 15th, 2008 at 3:27 am

   I remember reading in another book, think it was called something like “shaggy dogs and black sheep”, and it said getting fired was from back in the day if a miner was caught stealing from the mine, the boss (or the master, thank you very much) would take the workers tools and throw them in the furnace (ie, firing them) as punishment.

2. Reechard
   May 15th, 2008 at 3:47 am

   neato, I love etymology. I had read this book about South Africa (The Power of One) where all the indigenous people addressed the occupiers with “baas.” I had no idea it meant master.

3. MoonCake
   May 15th, 2008 at 4:23 am

   i hate the word “teamwork.” it sounds more like “pulling teeth” to me…

4. BikerRay
   May 15th, 2008 at 5:36 am

   You can hoist the right sail - only Superman can hoist a mast.

5. bean
   May 15th, 2008 at 8:24 am

   This is only slightly related to this post, but I love how many random American words were coopted from Dutch. It ranges anywhere from baas, mentioned above, to koekje for cookie, to hoeker for hooker (literally, person on the corner).

6. Thomas
   May 15th, 2008 at 10:55 am

   Mmm… you managed to make corporate drudgery even more depressing.

7. Jimbo
   May 15th, 2008 at 2:24 pm

   The word “Crossed” comes from long ago, (don’t remember date, sometime after 300AD) but the early Catholic church started selling splinters that supposedly came from the cross. The word “Crossed” means to be done wrong.

   The word “Double Crossed” is when someone is done double wronged. Such as deceptively selling them a splinter of wood, saying it was from the cross, and charging them an extra high price for it.

8. Archbob
   May 16th, 2008 at 12:33 am

   Its good to know where some of these oft-heard words come from.

9. Topher
   May 16th, 2008 at 1:39 am

   “Boot”, as in “boot up your computer” or “reboot”. Riding boots used to (and still do, AFAIK) have “bootstraps” formed into loops at the tops of the boots, for pulling the boots on. Someone who improves their lot in life with no outside help is said to have “pulled himself up by his bootstraps” — a form of levitation, as it were. Early computers had very minimal programs stored in ROM or even entered by hand via switches (yes, I did this in the 70s) that would then load a larger program from disk or tape, which would load the operating system. These “boot” programs allowed the computer to bring itself up, with the least possible support from any other resource.

10. Dan
    May 16th, 2008 at 3:27 am

    You don’t “hoist a mast” — you hoist a SAIL. The mast is the big pole that the sails go up and down on. (Easy there big fella!! It’s a nautical term!)

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