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Since people don’t spell very well, shouldn’t we just give up and accept variant spelling?
“Instead of complaining about the state of the education system as we correct the same mistakes year after year, I’ve got a better idea,” Ken Smith, a criminology lecturer at Bucks New University, wrote in the Times Higher Education Supplement.
“University teachers should simply accept as variant spelling those words our students most commonly misspell.”
To kickstart his proposal, Smith suggested 10 common misspellings that should immediately be accepted into the pantheon of variants, including “ignor,” “occured,” “thier,” “truely,” “speach” and “twelth” (it should be “twelfth”).
Then of course there are words like “misspelt” (often spelled “mispelt”), not to mention “varient,” a commonly used variant of “variant.”
Is “misspelt” even a word? I don’t think we should give up so easily. Here at Neatorama, we often misspell words, but it’s not because we aren’t trying. If everyone spelled words any way they wanted, reading would be too difficult for too many people. What do you think? Link
(image credit: Flickr user edwardfilms)
How many times has someone tried to convince you that the attacks on 9/11 were an inside job, a government plot, or caused by someone other than the hijackers? Besides the conspiracy theorists, there are those folks who believe anything a friend forwards to them by email. The problem is that you don’t have any facts at your fingertips to refute their arguments. A post at YesButNoButYes gives you the short course in responding to popular conspiracy theories with counterpoints. This may come in handy as we get closer to the seventh anniversary of 9/11. Link -Thanks, Johnny!
When his co-worker went on vacation, Neatorama reader Howard and his co-workers turned his office into … a bathroom! Here’s the prank in all its YouTube-goodness: Link – Thanks Howard!
“Skateboarding is and will always be king. Hard news is king. As Stussy once said knowledge is key. Or as Supreme says knowledge reigns supreme. Or more importantly as KRS-ONE states Knowledge Reigns Supreme. It does, so learn something”.
Sneeze Magazine is a large 22 x 16 format, loose leaf, skate magazine with awesome photography meant to be taken apart and hung up on your walls. The primary distribution method is via the old style newspaper boxes so it’s available 24/7 to anybody looking for it. The goal is to create a destination for the reader by having one box per city in a select location — like a flagship store. And it’s only two bucks.
If you live in Vancouver you’ll find the box at the corner of Water & Abbot Street in Gastown. New York City’s got theirs at Lafayette & Prince Street. Los Angeles location is coming soon.
Very cool idea, this one scores pretty high up on the neat-o-meter.
For more info, visit SneezeMag
On Monday night, I had the privilege of speaking with actor Stephen Tobolowsky, who has appeared in over 150 TV shows and films. He is one of those ultra-hard-working character actors who most viewers don’t know by name, but who can sometimes prompt exclamations of “Hey, it’s that guy!”
Stephen was gracious enough to review “The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor” with us on the Slashfilm.com podcast. He completely deconstructs to the point that there’s nothing left of it. If you are a fan of Stephen or NOT a fan of the latest “Mummy,” then this is a must-listen.
Taking a break from weighty stuff like finding a cure for cancer and the like, scientists have discovered that dogs, jus tlike humans, find yawns contagious:
A team from Birkbeck College at the University of London wanted to know whether canines – known to be highly skilled at reading human social cues – could read the human yawn signal, reports the BBC.
The team found that 21 out of 29 dogs yawned when the stranger in front of them had first. By contrast, no dogs yawned during the test where the person did not yawn.
Yep – that’s a giant crop-circle ad for Papa John’s Pizza (whole wheat crust pizza ad in a field of wheat? My, what a metonymy! Wait, or is it metaphor?). Anyways, here’s The Fire Wire blog has the story:
Look, it’s a bird, it’s a plane – it’s a pizza?
That’s right, it’s a pizza. If you’re flying in or out of Denver International Airport, look out the window and you’ll see a pizza cut into a wheat field near West 128th Avenue and Pena Boulevard. The crop circle, designed by artist Stan Herd, is a promotional vehicle for Papa John’s Pizza.
The pizza’s “pepperoni” is made of cedar mulch, with cornstalks standing in for green pepper, black mulch for olives, and flattened wheat stalk for cheese. It will be completed in time for the convention and will remain in place until the first snowfall.
Blog aggregation is a crowded field – but Regator, a new website that features the best bits of the Internet, hand-picked and organized into nearly 500 categories, is pretty neat (fast and easy to use).
Why, Neatorama made it as one of the main sources of the What the? channel (alongside great blogs like mental_floss and Boing Boing) – and so far, in just under a minute, I found me some really neat post material (see below)!
Check it out: Link – Thanks Kimberly Turner!
When you gotta go, you gotta go – but what if you have to poop in the middle of nowhere and you forgot your Bumper Dumper? Well, fret not with this lightweight portable cardboard toilet, aptly named the Sh-t Box, made by The Brown Corporation: Link – via The Inquisitr and Regator
When it came to her dog, death didn’t stop Bernann McKinney. When Bernann McKinney’s pit bull Booger – who saved her life when she was attacked by another dog – died two years ago, the California woman decided to clone the dog:
Her quest to have Booger live on in puppy clones raised eyebrows and also raised the ire of ethics activists. But McKinney doesn’t see what the fuss is about. “Actually, the cloning process isn’t much different than in vitro fertilization,” she says. “Basically, DNA is taken out and the DNA is inserted into a surrogate mother dog, who then has the babies very normally.”
The five little canine clones cost McKinney dearly — she sold her home to pay the $50,000 fee for the process. And that was actually a bargain-basement rate: RNL offered McKinney a discount from the $150,000 it planned to charge for the service, believing her case will be a boon for business. The firm expects to clone up to 100 dogs in the next year.
(Photo: Jin Han Hong / AP)
A 12 minute short depicting the origin of “The Bat-Man” and introducing his amazing skills and abilities… Bob Kane and Bill Finger drew on a lot of silent films to create Batman, and I’ve always wanted to give the story a try using silent film techniques. What with that whole copyright/waste of time thing, you’ll have to settle for this collage. Here are the original influences re-arranged to tell Bruce Wayne’s story and his crusade against crime.
A quick two day collage by Andre Perkowski. Drone music by Palker & Perkowski, an outtake from “The Vampire’s Tomb” sessions.
See part two here. -via Gorilla Mask
If you’ve ever wondered how old your favorite internet sensation is, or more importantly, how it got started, here’s a fun interactive timeline deigned by BK Gupta. Zoom in with the + flags at the bottom to expand the timeline. Each meme listed has links and/or video to explain its history. Some links NSFW. Link -via Digg
Have IMDB and Wikipedia become too mundane and realistic for you? Then look no further than the Parallel Universe Film Guide, a hilarious, Wikipedia-like catalogue of fictional films. From the site’s front page:
There are many (many, many) film websites out there in Internetville, U.S.A., so why another one? Because this one is designed to have a little fun with all of those other websites and with the people who take films way too seriously. You will not find any familiar sounding movie titles or actors or directors here because, well, there aren’t any. The Parallel Universe Film Guide is a grand parody of film buffdom and film history. Everything here has specific targets in the “real” world and I hope there is enough to amuse any person who drops by even casually to look. But…the more you know about films, the more you will get all the references in this parallel universe and be able to enjoy matching all the elements in my fictional world with those of the so-called real one with which we are sadly all too familiar.
Many film listing pages also contains quotes from the film, made-up actors and directors, and plot summaries. Spend some time plumbing the depths of this site and I doubt you will leave unamused. From the bizarro film titles (e.g. “Fudgie the Whale: The Musical,” “How the Jeekelstaf Swiped Daylight Saving Time,” “A Connecticut Mailman in Joseph Stalin’s Pants,” “I Know What You Did That Day Last Week You Took Off For So-Called Religious Reasons,”) to the uproarious “About our Staff” page, site-creator Spencer Green has truly demonstrated an incomparable passion for fake films.
Link – via Very Short List
Today’s collaboration with What is it? blog brings us this strange gadget – can you tell us what it is for?
First person who guessed right will win a free Neatorama T-shirt of their choosing – if no one gets it right, then the funniest guess will win. Contest rules are simple: place your guess in the comment section. One guess per comment, please, but you can add as many as you’d like. Please post no URL, let others play.
For more clues, check out What is it? Blog. Good luck!
Update 8/8/08 – here’s the answer: “This tool was used for holding either a lamb’s leg (14th photo from the top) or a drumstick from a roasted fowl.
Congratulations to montyhaul, who got it right first!
Hello, Neatoramans! I'd like to take a minute and update you on the status of the blog. A lot of things happened on the blog in July 2008 - and that was with me gone on a trip for about a week (betcha you didn't know, huh?).
We've added some awesome new T-shirt designs to Neatorama's online shop:
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The
Dangers of Teleportation by Mike Jacobsen |
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Chicken
Oops by Kevin Cornell (New Artist!) |
Type
Bike by Matt Sutter |
I
Heart Biology from our new Science
section (it's a bit lonely there now) |
We've also added some extra color options for some of our best selling shirts. They're also now available in ladies' fit t-shirts (the very comfy Bella shirts):
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| Neatoramanaut,
now in black & dark grey |
NEW! Neatorama
Lolcat, in natural |
Neatoramabot,
now in black and dark grey |
The extra income from our fledgling online shop allowed us to eliminate an ad unit on Neatorama. As of the end of July 2008, we no longer have those double underline, in-text ads on the blog's permalink pages. You may also notice that we've taken off one text link ad group on the front page.
It's my goal to further reduce the amount of ads on this blog (when we started, Neatorama had no ads whatsoever!). Hopefully, as the business grows, we'll be able to take out more ads from the blog (at the moment, though, we still need that revenue to help offset Neatorama's high bandwidth costs). So if you see a T-shirt you like, please buy one! Your business helps support this blog: Link
9 BEST NEATORAMA POSTS
We added 452 posts and got more than 6,800 legit (non-spam) comments.
That's a lot - and unless you read the blog every day (and even if you
did), it's easy to miss some great posts. So, to re-cap, here are my favorite
Neatorama posts from July 2008, in no particular order:
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MOST CONTROVERSIAL / COMMENTED:
- Was
it Self Defense or Murder?
- Why
Conservatives Are Happier Than Liberals
- Which
is Better: Charcoal or Gas Grill?
- Is
the "Men at Work" Sign Sexist?
- Why
Do Asian Students Perform Better in School than Latinos?
- Replate:
Share Your Leftovers with the Homeless
As always, please tell your friends about us and thank you for reading Neatorama!
The following is reprinted from The Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.
FLY OFF THE HANDLE
Meaning: Get very angry, very quickly.
Origin: Refers to axe heads, which, in the days before
mass merchandising, were sometimes fastened poorly to their handles. If
one flew off while being used, it was a dangerous situation ... with unpredictable
results.
HIGH ON THE HOG
Meaning: Luxurious, prosperous.
Origin: The tastiest parts of a hog are its upper parts.
If you're living high on the hog, you've got the best it has to offer.
PULL THE WOOL OVER SOMEONE'S EYES
Meaning: Fool someone.
Origin: "Goes back to the days when all gentlemen
wore powdered wigs like the ones still worn by the judges in British courts.
The word wool was then a popular, joking term for hair ... The expression
'pull the wool over his eyes' came from the practice of tilting a man's
wig over his eyes, so he couldn't see what was going on."
HOOKER
Meaning: Prostitute.
Origin: Although occasionally used before the Civil War,
its widespread popularity can probably be traced to General Joseph Hooker,
a Union soldier who was well-known for the liquor and whores in his camp.
He was ultimately demoted, and Washington prostitutes were jokingly referred
to as "Hooker's Division."
LET THE CAT OUT OF THE BAG
Meaning: Reveal the truth.
Origin: Refers to a con game practiced at country fairs
in old England. A trickster tried to sell a cat in burlap bag to an unwary
bumpkin, saying it was a pig. If the victim figured out the trick and
insisted on seeing the animal, the cat had to be let out of the bag.
STEAL SOMEONE'S THUNDER
Meaning: To preempt; to draw attention away from someone else's
achievement in favor of your own.
Origin: English dramatist John Dennis invented a gadget
for imitating the sound of thunder and introduced it in a play in the
early 1700s. The play flopped. Soon after, Dennis noted that another play
in the same theater was using his sound-effects device. He angrily exclaimed,
"That is my thunder, by God; the villains will play my thunder, but
not my play." The story got around London, and the phrase grew out
of it.
PAY THROUGH THE NOSE
Meaning: To pay a high price; to pay dearly.
Origin: Comes from the ninth-century Ireland. When the
Danes conquered the Irish, they imposed an exorbitant Nose Tax on the
island's inhabitants. They took a census (by counting noses) and levied
oppressive sums on their victims, forcing them to pay by threatening to
have their noses actually slit. Paying the tax was "paying trough
the nose."
CHARLEY HORSE
Meaning: A muscle cramp.
Origin: In 1640, Charles I of England expanded the London
police force. The new recruits were nicknamed "Charleys." There
wasn't enough money to provide the new police with horses so they patrolled
on foot. They joked that their sore feet and legs came from riding "Charley's
horse."
NOT UP TO SCRATCH
Meaning: Inadequate, subpar.
Origin: In the early days of boxing, there was no bell
to signal the beginning of a round. Instead, the referee would scratch
a line on the ground between fighters, and the round began when both
men stepped over it. When a boxer couldn't cross the line to keep a match
going, people said that he was not "up to the scratch."
CAUGHT RED-HANDED
Meaning: Caught in the act.
Origin: For hundreds of years, stealing and butchering
another person's livestock was a common crime. But it was hard to prove
unless the thief was caught with a dead animal ... and blood on his hands.
GIVE SOMEONE "THE BIRD"
Meaning: Make a nasty gesture at someone (usually with
the middle finger uplifted).
Origin: There are many versions. The "cleanest":
Originally "the bird" referred to the hissing sound that audiences
made when they didn't like a performance. Hissing is the sound that a
goose makes when it's threatened or angry.
LAY AN EGG
Meaning: Fail.
Origin: From the British sport of cricket. When you fail
to score, you get a zero - which looks like an egg. The term is also taken
from baseball, where a zero is a "goose egg."
BURY THE HATCHET
Meaning: Make peace with an enemy.
Origin: Some Native American tribes declare peace by
literally burying a tomahawk in the ground.
CHEW THE FAT
Meaning: Chat; engage in idle conversation.
Origin: Originally a sailor's term. Before refrigeration,
ships carried food that wouldn't spoil. One of them was salted pork skin,
a practically inedible morsel that consisted largely of fat. Sailors would
only eat it if all other food was gone... and they often complained as
they did. This (and other) idle chatter eventually became known as "chewing
the fat."
TO THE BITTER END
Meaning: To the very end - often an unpleasant one.
Origin: Surprisingly, it has nothing to do with bitterness.
It's a sailing term that refers to the end of a mooring line or anchor
line that is attached to the bitts, sturdy wooden or metal posts
that are mounted on the ship's deck.
HAVE A SCREW LOOSE
Meaning: Something is wrong with the person or mechanism.
Origin: The phrase comes from the cotton industry and
dates back as far as the 1780s, when the industrial revolution made mass
production of textiles possible for the first time. Huge mills sprang
up to take advantage of the new technology (and the cheap labor), but
it was difficult to keep all the machines running properly; any machine
that broke down or produced defective cloth was said to have "a screw
loose" somewhere.
SPEAK OF THE DEVIL
Meaning: Someone appears after you mention them.
Origin: People once believed that you could actually
summon the Devil by saying his name.
BORN WITH A SILVER SPOON IN YOUR MOUTH
Meaning: Pampered; lucky; born into wealth or prosperous
circumstances.
Origin: At one time, it was customary for godparents
to give their godchild a silver spoon at the christening. These people
were usually well-off so the spoon came to represent the child's good
fortune.
TO CLOSE RANKS
Meaning: To present a united front.
Origin: "In the old-time European armies, the soldiers
were aligned side by side, in neat rows, or ranks, on the battlefield.
When the enemy attacked, officers would order the troops to close ranks;
that is, to move the rows close together, so that the enemy faced a seemingly
impregnable mass of men." (From Fighting Words, by Christine
Ammer)
FOR THE BIRDS
Meaning: Worthless.
Origin: According to Robert claiborne in Loose Cannons
and Red Herrings, it refers to city streets as they were before cars.
"When I was a youngster on the streets of New York, one could both
see and smell the emissions of horse-drawn wagons. Since there was no
way of controlling these emissions, they, or the undigested oats in them,
served to nourish a large population of English sparrows. If you say something's
for the birds, you're politely saying it's horseshit."
BEYOND THE PALE
Meaning: Socially unacceptable.
Origin: "The pale in this expression has nothing
to do with the whitish color, but comes originally from the Latin palus,
meaning a pole, or stake. Since stakes are often used to mark boundaries,
a pale was a particular area within certain limits." The
pale that inspired this expression was the area around Dublin
in Ireland. Until the 1500s, that area was subject to British law. "Those
who lived beyond the pale were outside English jurisdiction and were thought
to be uncivilized." (From Getting to the Roots, by Martin
Manser)
I'VE GOT A FROG IN MY THROAT
Meaning: I'm hoarse from a cold.
Origin: Surprisingly, this wasn't inspired by the croaking
sound of a cold-sufferer's voice, but by a weird medical practice. "In
the Middle Ages," says Christine Ammer in It's Raining Cats and
Dogs, "infections such as thrush were sometimes treated by putting
a live frog head first into the patient's mouth; by inhaling, the frog
was believed to draw the patient's infection into its own body. The treatment
is happily obsolete, but its memory survives in the 19th century term
frog in one's throat."
SOMETHING FITS TO A "T"
Meaning: It fits perfectly.
Origin: Commonly thought of as a reference to the T-square,
which is used to draw parallel lines and angles. But this phrase was used
in the 1600s, before anyone called it a T-square. "A more likely
explanation is that the expression was originally 'to a tittle.' A tittle
was the dot over the 'i,' so the phrase meant 'to a dot' or 'fine point.'"
(From Why Do We Say It, by Nigel Rees)
X X X
Meaning: A kiss, at the end of a letter.
Origin: In medieval times, when most people were illiterate,
"contracts were not considered legal until each signer included St.
Andrew's cross after their name." (Or instead of a signature, if
the signer couldn't write.) To prove their sincerity, signers were then
required to kiss the X. "Throughout the centuries this custom faded
out, but the letter X [became associated] with a kiss." This is also
probably where the phrase "sealed with a kiss" comes from. (From
I've Got Goose Pimples, by Martin Vanoni)
READ BETWEEN THE LINES
Meaning: To perceive or understand a hidden meaning.
Origin: In the 16th century it became common for politicians,
soldiers, and businesspeople to write in code. To ordinary folks, this
writing was unintelligible. They concluded that the meaning was not in
the lines of gibberish, but in the space between them.
YOU'RE NO SPRING CHICKEN
Meaning: You're not young anymore; you're past your prime.
Origin: Until recent generations, there were no incubators
and few warm hen houses. That meant chicks couldn't be raised during winter.
New England growers found that those born in the spring brought premium
prices in the summer market places. When these Yankee traders tried to
pass off old birds as part of the spring crop, smart buyers would protest
that the bird was "no spring chicken."
SON OF A GUN
Meaning: An epithet.
Origin: In the 1800s, British sailors took women along
on extended voyages. When babies were born at sea, the mothers delivered
them in a partitioned section of the gundeck. Because no one could be
sure who the true fathers were, each of these "gunnery"
babies was jokingly called a "son of a gun."
PUT UP YOUR DUKES
Meaning: Raise your fists and get ready to fight.
Origin: In the early 1800s, the Duke of York, Frederick
Augustus, shocked English society by taking up boxing. He gained such
admiration from boxers that many started referring to their fists as the
"Dukes of York," and later "dukes."
HAVE AN AXE TO GRIND
Meaning: Having a hidden agenda.
Origin: The expression comes from a story told by Benjamin
Franklin. A man once praised Franklin's father's grindstone and asked
young Benjamin to demonstrate how the grindstone worked. As Franklin complied,
the stranger placed his own axe upon the grindstone, praising the young
boy for his cleverness and vigor. When the axe was sharpened, the man
laughed at Franklin and walked away, giving the boy a valuable lesson
about people with "an axe to grind."
UPPER CRUST
Meaning: Elite.
Origin: In the Middle Ages, the highest-level nobility
and royal were served the choice part of a loaf of bread, the "upper
crust," before it was offered to other diners.
MEET A DEADLINE
Meaning: Finish a project by an appointed time.
Origin: The phrase was born in prisoner-of-war camps
during the Civil War. Because resources were scarce, the prison camps
were sometimes nothing more than a plot of land surrounded by a marked
line. If a prisoner tried to cross the line, he would be shot. So it became
known as the "deadline."
TOE THE LINE
Meaning: Behave or act in accordance with the rules.
Origin: In the early days of the British Parliament,
members wore swords in the House of Commons. To keep the members from
fighting during heated debates, the Speaker of the House of Commons forced
the Government and Opposition parties to sit on opposite sides of the
chamber. Lines, two sword-lengths plus one foot apart, were drawn in the
carpet. Members were required to stand behind the lines when the House
was in session. To this day, when a member steps over the line during
a debate, the speaker yells: "Toe the line!"
SECOND STRING
Meaning: Replacement or backup.
Origin: You might have caught William Tell without an
apple, but not without a second string. In medieval times, an archer always
carried a second string in case the one on his bow broke.
IN THE LIMELIGHT
Meaning: At the center of attention.
Origin: In 1826, Thomas Drummond invented the limelight,
an amazingly bright white light, by running an intense oxygen-hydrogen
flame through a lime cylinder. At first, the bright light was used in
lighthouses to direct ships. Later, theater began using the limelight
like a spotlight - to direct the audience's attention to a certain actor.
If an actor was to be the focal point of a particular scene, he was thrust
"into the limelight."
FLASH IN THE PAN
Meaning: Short-lived success.
Origin: In the 1700s, the pan of a flintlock
musket was a part that held the gunpowder. If all went well, sparks from
the flint would ignite the charge, which would then propel the bullet
out of the barrel. However, sometimes the gun powder would burn without
igniting a main charge. The flash would burn brightly but only briefly,
with no lasting effect.
HAM ACTOR (HAM)
Meaning: Someone who enjoys putting on a show, or who
plays rather obviously to an audience (though not necessarily on stage).
Origin: An American phrase originating in the 1880s.
Minstrel shows, the mass entertainment of the time, often featured less-than-talented
performers who overacted. They frequently appeared in blackface, and used
ham fat to remove their makeup. Thus, they were referred to as "ham-fat
men," later shortened to "hams."
WHIPPING BOY
Meaning: A scapegoat, or something who is habitually
picked on.
Origin: Hundreds of years ago, it was normal practice
for a European prince to be raised with a commoner of the same age. Since
princes couldn't be disciplined like ordinary kids, the commoner would
be beaten whenever the prince did something wrong. The commoner was called
the prince's "whipping boy."
GO BERSERK
Meaning: Go crazy or to act with reckless abandon.
Origin: Viking warriors were incredibly wild and ferocious
in battle, probably because they ate hallucinogenic mushrooms in prebattle
ceremonies. They charged their enemies recklessly, wearing nothing more
than bearskin, which in Old Norse was pronounced "berserkr"
or "bear-sark."
PULL SOMEONE'S LEG
Meaning: Fool someone.
Origin: Years ago back-alley thieves worked in pairs.
One thief, known as a "tripper up," would use a cane, rope,
or piece of wire to trip a pedestrian, knocking them to the ground. While
the victim was down, the second thief would rob them. Pulling your
leg originally referred to the way the "tripper up" tried
to make someone stumble. Today it only refers to tripping someone figuratively.
RAINING CATS AND DOGS
Meaning: Torrential rain.
Origin: In the days before garbage collection, people
tossed their trash in the gutter - including deceased housepets - and
it just lay there. When it rained really hard, the garbage, including
the bodies of dead cats and dogs, went floating down the street.
PIE IN THE SKY
Meaning: An illusion, a dream, a fantasy, an unrealistic
goal.
Origin: Joe Hill, a famous labor organizer of the early
20th century, wrote a tune called "The Preacher and the Slave,"
in which he accused the clergy of promising a better life in Heaven while
people starved on Earth. A few of the lines: "Work and pray, live
on hay, you'll get pie in the sky when you die (That's a lie!)."
HACK WRITER
Meaning: Writer who churns out words for money.
Origin: In Victorian England, a hackney, or "hack,"
was a carriage for hire. (The term is still used in reference to taxi
drivers, who need their "hack's licenses" to work.) Hack became
a description of anyone who plies their trade strictly for cash.
LONG IN THE TOOTH
Meaning: Old.
Origin: Originally used to describe old horses. As horses
age, their gums recede, giving the impression that their teeth are growing.
The longer the teeth look, the older the horse.
STOOL PIGEON
Meaning: Informer, traitor.
Origin: To catch passenger pigeons (now extinct), hunters
would nail a pigeon to a stool. Its alarmed cries would attract other
birds, and the hunters would shoot them by the thousands. The poor creature
that played the traitor was called a "stool pigeon."
BEAT AROUND THE BUSH
Meaning: Go about things in a circuitous manner, go around
an issue rather than deal with it directly.
Origin: In the Middle Ages, people caught birds by dropping
a net over a bush and clubbing the ground around it to scare the birds
into flying into the net. Once a bird was caught, you could stop beating
around the bush and start eating. |
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The article above is reprinted with permission from The Best of Uncle John's Bathroom Reader.
Since 1988, the Bathroom Reader Institute had published a series of popular books containing irresistible bits of trivia and obscure yet fascinating facts.
If you like Neatorama, you'll love the Bathroom Reader Institute's books - go ahead and check 'em out!
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