quword 趣词
Word Origins Dictionary
- bunkum[bunkum 词源字典]
- bunkum: [19] Buncombe is a county of North Carolina, USA. Around 1820, during a debate in the US Congress, its representative Felix Walker rose to make a speech. He spoke on – and on – and on. Fellow congressmen pleaded with him to sit down, but he refused to be deflected, declaring that he had to make a speech ‘for Buncombe’. Most of what he said was fatuous and irrelevant, and henceforth bunkum (or buncombe, as it was at first spelled) became a term for political windbagging intended to ingratiate the speaker with the voters rather than address the real issues.
It early passed into the more general sense ‘nonsense, claptrap’. Its abbreviated form, bunk, is 20th-century; it was popularized by Henry Ford’s remark ‘History is more or less bunk’, made in 1916. Of the other English words bunk, ‘bed’ [19] is probably short for bunker, which first appeared in 16th-century Scottish English, meaning ‘chest, box’; while bunk as in do a bunk and bunk off [19] is of unknown origin.
[bunkum etymology, bunkum origin, 英语词源] - bag (v.)
- mid-15c., "to swell out like a bag;" also "to put money in a bag," from bag (n.). Earliest verbal sense was "to be pregnant" (c. 1400). Of clothes, "to hang loosely," 1824. For sense "catch, seize, steal," see bag (n.). Related: Bagged; bagging.
- baggy (adj.)
- "puffed out, hanging loosely," 1831, from bag (n.) + -y (2). Bagging in this sense is from 1590s. Baggie as a small protective plastic bag is from 1969. Baggies "baggy shorts" is from 1962, surfer slang. Related: Baggily; bagginess.
- brown-bag (v.)
- "to bring lunch or liquor in a brown paper bag," 1970, from brown (adj.) + bag (n.). Related: Brown-bagging.
- sandbag (v.)
- 1860, "furnish with sandbags," from sandbag (n.). Meaning "pretend weakness," 1970s perhaps is extended from poker-playing sense of "refrain from raising at the first opportunity in hopes of raising more steeply later" (1940), which perhaps is from sandbagger in the sense of "bully or ruffian who uses a sandbag as a weapon to knock his intended victim unconscious" (1882). Hence "to fell or stun with a blow from a sandbag" (1887). Related: Sandbagged; sandbagging.