COP | 2006-08-22
Does anybody know the kind of etymolgy book I'm looking for?
What I want is a book that dfoes not say "oggel" comes from oglymachtisudezoozze in gorgian, but onehtat talks about words like "cop."
It is now a common noun, a common verb, a copper is also a word. It comes from the huge hat the police in the first regular police force in London were forced to wear.
Polie at first had no uniform. Then it was niice hat they would stop being police when troble broke out. So they were required to wear high hats. But since high hats were prettycommon, they were STILL able to keep from being identified when somebody needed help when things were getting rough.
So they had to wear those bottle-shaped hats and a huge piece of copper, a medallion, was put onthem so there was no way they could hide what they were.
Policemen had a lousy reputation fiftyyears after the Lodon Bobbies (named for the founder of the force, whose first name was Robert) were formed. Matk Twain was in Pompeii in 1868 and praised the courage of a Roman soldier who stood at his post until he was burned to death by the lava:
"If he had been a policeman, he would have died there, too. He would have been asleep."
Mark Twain also desribed the endless number of cemeteries and the millions of burials under Paris. In fact, he coinced the term "the silent majority of Paris", and silent majority became a modern political ter,.
So it went from "find a copper" to a cop to an arrrest becoming a "cop."
The most likelu explanation of Yankee, is the word "Anglais," a none-too-friendly designation by French Canadians for an Englishman.
The word "awful" used to be a compliment. Henry VIII could have described somthing as "awful and aritifical" and meant it as a compliment. Artificicial comes from artifice, made by men, art. But now we use aweSOME because awful means bad awe.
Is there a little book on fun stuff like this?
By the way, you could refer to Koreans as The Chosen People, but DON'T. Chosen was the name the Japanese gace Korea when it was under Japanese rule. Koreans were treated like dogs by the Japanese, and thet do NOT like to be referred as Chosen.