‘She thinks I must always be at her beck and call.’ Earl of Worcester (1470).
The original meaning of beck:
Julius Caesars Commentaryes – ‘It should be ready at a beck.’ (A beck was a silent signal, like the nod of the head).
Category: Life
Life
Originally referred to hunting raccoons. The raccoon would usually take to a tree, the dogs used to hunt them would on occasion be barking up the wrong tree and the hunter would lose his prey.
Davy Crockett (1833). Sketches and Eccentricities. ‘I told him…..that he reminded me of the meanest thing on God’s earth, and old coon dog barking up the wrong tree.”‘
An old story relates that a medieval town under siege hung a goose from a tower, symbolizing the stupidity of the attackers.
The attackers were so enraged that they burned the town, thereby literally cooking the townspeople’s goose.
Auguring is what augurs did in ancient Rome. These were official diviners whose function it was, not to foretell the future, but to divine whether the gods approved of a proposed undertaking, such as a military move. They did so by various means, among them observing the behavior of birds and examining the intestines of sacrificed animals. Nowadays, of course, when we use the extended senses of ‘indicate’ and ‘promise,’ auguring is done from other signs. The verb is often used with an adverb, such as ‘well,’ as in ‘high investment returns augured well for Paul’s early retirement.’ ‘Augur’ comes from Latin and is related to the Latin verb ‘augere,’ meaning ‘to increase.’ The exact nature of the connection between ‘augur’ and ‘augere’ is lost in obscurity, however.
In the pirate days, the ships were all equipped with cannons. The cannon balls were places upon a holder that were called ‘Brass Monkeys’ Since the metal used to make the cannon balls were extremely different from the metal used to make the brass monkeys, on an extremely cold day, they would contract at different rates (Different metals react differently to temperature). The cannon balls would literally fall off the holder when the temperature drop to the extremes. Hence the term.