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Cake Walk: The strange origin of an unwittingly prejudiced term
by Josh Clark | November 14, 2011
Surely you’ve heard the term cake walk, used to describe some sort of challenge or task that is reckoned to be pitifully easy. Surely you have, please, please don’t lie. That figurative definition has been around since the early 19th century, as long as the literal one; in fact it appeared in print first. But did you know that the term is actually pretty racist? I’ll bet you didn’t. Nor did I until I looked into the origin of the term and found it has roots in the Antebellum South of the early 19th century.
Just So Everyone Remembers: Etymology of Geek
by Josh Clark | September 7, 2011
I’m very proud of the geek community. As the gay community did with the word queer, geeks wrested control of a disparaging term from the disparagers and took it as their own. What was once derisive is now a source of pride. That is all well and good; I think it’s important to remember what a geek once was, however, if at least only to preserve the really unique and weird original sense of the word alongside the new one.
In our episode on female astronauts, Molly and I perpetuated a myth during our listener mail segment. Say it ain’t so!
We read an email about the supposed etymology of the phrase “rule of thumb,” linking it to an old law about wife beating. As the myth goes, “rule of thumb” relates to a British law, allowing a husband to beat his wife with a stick, as long as it isn’t wider than the man’s thumb.
Thanks to Monday’s Boobquake, I’ve had breasts on the brain this week. Specifically, the sexualization of women’s cleavage – not to be confused with men’s “he-vage”‘ – in Western culture. According to Marilyn Yalom’s History of the Breast, women’s fashions favored décolletage throughout the Renaissance, but today it’s far more fraught with innuendo. Tracking down [...]
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