During Colonial times, the beds did not have box springs. Instead, all the feathers and other bed material were suspended by a series of criss-cross ropes tied to the bed frame.
Before the children would go to sleep, the mothers would remind them to ‘sleep tight’, or to tighten the ropes attached to the bed frame, so that the next morning, the ropes would not loosen so much that they would fall through the bed.
Month: March 2010
Most people think that the word ‘sin’ means that one has done a deed that is evil. The word arose from the Greeks, who used the term when an archer has missed his mark.
So, in essence, the word “sin” just means: “one has missed the mark.”
The term was first used in 1829 to describe a popular sideshow act of two siblings from Southeast Asia that were joined at the stomach by a small stretch of skin.
In the 1800s, long sea voyages were very difficult and dangerous, so people were understandably hesitant to become sailors. But sea captains and shipping companies still needed crews to sail their ships, so they gathered sailors any way they could — even if that meant resorting to kidnapping.
The word “shanghai” comes from the name of the Chinese city of Shanghai. People started to use the city’s name for that unscrupulous way of obtaining sailors because the East was often a destination of ships that had kidnapped men for their crew.
In German, Schmuck actually means jewelry. Although this word is of Yiddish origin, which is consistent with its English meaning.
It is just interesting that the same word actually means something completely in another language.