Symbols Which Have Lost Their True Meaning Over Time

We're taught to look for hidden meaning in some symbols, a search we can't give up once it has begun, but some symbols are simply too vexing or arcane to understand.

And then there are those symbols that seem to have hidden meaning but actually mean whatever you'd like them to mean, such as the fleur-de-lis, asterisk or looped square.

These symbols are often seen as iconic and powerful because of the organizations they're associated with, like the looped square and Apple computers or the fleur-de-lis and the Boy Scouts, but their true meaning is mostly lost to time.

Like the symbols themselves, you shouldn't take this mental_floss article 4 Symbols Without Actual Meanings at face value, because these symbols actually have more than one meaning, depending on who you ask.


Comments (0)

They put all sorts of animals in their liquor bottles over there. They think they can drink the animals characteristics or some jazz like that...
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It's incredibly common in those cultures. There's a video of the foul mouthed TV Chef and one of the Top Gear guys drinking the stuff. I posted it over on my forum; let me see if I can find it.

Here it is:
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=VKEPPw5Jd2M

I'd love to try the stuff just to say I had, but the quality of the liquor is I'm sure absolute crap.

The REALLY fowl stuff (pun intended) is some nordic or icelandic or inuit cultures (apologies, I don't remember which) actually put birds into bottles. That's very dangerous - much higher likelihood of contamination. The other animals aren't really that big of a deal.
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Dude! That's 3 Snake Wine! An ex-boyfriend of mine found some of that when he was doing a moving job for a Chinese restaurant. The proprietor told him it would make him sexually attractive and so he drank some of it. Maybe it worked, I sure thought he was hot.
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I love how we're not supposed to reuse plastic water bottles because the chemicals will leach into the water, but RATTLESNAKES... that's just fine.
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They sell this type in China too. I had the opportunity to try snake wine (because how badass does it sound to say you've drank snake?) but I had to decline for the rat one.. that was.. wrong to say the elast.
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Oh yea, we were told by the older Vietnamese guy that he has a glass every morning because it makes him stronger, but the rat wine - that's only for special occasions!

It is absolutely foul by the way!!
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It is correct, that you find snakes in rice wine in about every shop in Viet Nam. The monkeys are harder to find though:
http://www.plan-b.in/22-February-06.81.0.html
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http://youtube.com/watch?v=bZZXcRFpFAg

I had some of the stuff, a friend has a neighbor that is from Vietnam, he had a few bottles of it. They poured the shot before I got to see the bottle, it was pretty potent stuff.
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