Here's another somewhat brief trivia question for your enjoyment.
Continuing with the current theme of places and names, today's trivia is about phrases that carry a nationality, like Dutch uncle. These are decently common in certain registers of English, and often carry some sort of insult to the country involved. Dutch uncle, along with Dutch courage and some more obscure examples, comes from the 17th-century Anglo-Dutch Wars, when anti-Dutch sentiment was running high. Other such phrases have more obscure etymologies, like Russian roulette. (These terms are an interesting opposition to freedom fries, a euphemism in which the nationality was dropped due to anti-French sentiment.)
Your challenge: name a two-word phrase starting with a nationality which is also an eggcorn - a term whose etymology includes some kind of misinterpretation.
Showing posts with label names. Show all posts
Showing posts with label names. Show all posts
Sunday, March 13, 2011
Sunday, February 27, 2011
Sunday Trivia 5
Hey guys,
A couple of weeks ago the Sunday trivia question was about toponyms, words that come from place names, so just to cover all the bases, this week's is about eponyms, words that come from people's names. Like toponyms, they're all over the place, especially the boring ones which are capitalized and completely transparent: degrees Fahrenheit, the Adam's apple, the Gatling gun. Others are now extremely opaque, and the people they reference often forgotten: boycott, diesel, silhouette, and sideburns, to name a few.
Julius Caesar has spread his name around with incredible success, possibly more than anyone in history. Along with being the source of the month of July, he also lent his cognomen to historical titles including the Czar and the Kaiser, a cipher, and a cocktail. (The Caesar salad, however, is named after restauranteur Caesar Cardini.) Don't get me started on Rome, whose culture dominates us more than most people realize, in our alphabet, calendar, architecture, government, religion, and, of course, language - all roads, after all.
Anyway, your trivia question today is about an eponym. Name an extremely common, opaque eponym that's just one syllable.
(My hint, hopefully just as opaque: Never forget.)
A couple of weeks ago the Sunday trivia question was about toponyms, words that come from place names, so just to cover all the bases, this week's is about eponyms, words that come from people's names. Like toponyms, they're all over the place, especially the boring ones which are capitalized and completely transparent: degrees Fahrenheit, the Adam's apple, the Gatling gun. Others are now extremely opaque, and the people they reference often forgotten: boycott, diesel, silhouette, and sideburns, to name a few.
Julius Caesar has spread his name around with incredible success, possibly more than anyone in history. Along with being the source of the month of July, he also lent his cognomen to historical titles including the Czar and the Kaiser, a cipher, and a cocktail. (The Caesar salad, however, is named after restauranteur Caesar Cardini.) Don't get me started on Rome, whose culture dominates us more than most people realize, in our alphabet, calendar, architecture, government, religion, and, of course, language - all roads, after all.
Anyway, your trivia question today is about an eponym. Name an extremely common, opaque eponym that's just one syllable.
(My hint, hopefully just as opaque: Never forget.)
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