Origin of Idioms

I read these in a forwarded email so I can't swear they're all true - but they are interesting!

Many years ago in Scotland a new game was invented. It was ruled "Gentlemen Only.. Ladies Forbidden .. and thus the word GOLF entered into the English language!

In the 1400's a law was set forth in England that a man was allowed to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb. Hence we have 'the rule of thumb'.

In Shakespeare's time, mattresses were secured on bed frames by ropes, the mattress tightened, making the bed firmer to sleep on. Hence the phrase.. 'Good night - sleep tight.'

It was the accepted practice in Babylon 4000 years ago that for a month after the wedding, the bride's father would supply his son-in-law with all the mead he could drink. Mead is a honey wine and because the calendar was lunar based, this period was called the honey month, which we know today as the honeymoon.

In English pubs ale is ordered by pints and quarts, so in old England, when customers got unruly, the bartender would yell at them 'Mind your pints and quarts and settle down.' It's where we get the phrase 'mind your P's and Q's.'

Many years ago in England pub frequenters had a whistle baked into the rim or handle of their ceramic cups. When they needed a refill, they used the whistle to get some service. 'Wet your whistle' is the phrase inspired by this practice.

Irritating Phrases

A fellow blogger at Working With Words recently linked to an Oxford University study about the Top 10 Most Irritating Phrases. Here's the list and then I'm going to list some of my own. What are yours? What are those words or phrases that you get so sick of hearing or being used incorrectly.

1. at the end of the day
2. fairly unique
3. I personally
4. at this moment in time
5. with all due respect
6. absolutely
7. it's a nightmare
8. shouldn't of
9. 24/7
10. It's not rocket science

These are mine:
1. YOU GUYS (How I hate this term! I always tell my husband that if the server at a restaurant calls me a "guy" I'm reducing their tip.)
2. I could care less (if you COULD care less that means you actually care.)
3. awesome ( very few things are awesome - maybe God, that's about it for me)
4. supposably ( I don't know how many adults I've heard say this - it's supposedly)
5. absolutely (I agree with this one - why is everything suddenly absolute?)

There are probably more I'm forgetting, but here are some new words or phrases in education that are used to sound progressive , but they are just new terms for old ideas.

1. short cycle assessments (aka - SCA)- this is what we call quizzes now.
2. summative assessments - this was formerly a test.
3. professional learning community (PLC) This is what we call a meeting now.
4. roll out - instead of introducing something, now we "roll it out"
5. front loading - this used to be called pre-teaching.
6. schema - instead of asking children how they learn the best, we tell them to discover their individual "schema".