NOW YOU KNOW
large container for heating liquids. It was called a “hob.” Near the fire was a table where the hob was placed for convenient serving. They called this table a “nob.” When friends gathered by the warmth of the fire, they drank warm beer from the hob, which was served on the nob, and so they called it “hobnobbing.”
Why are notes taken at a business meeting called “minutes”? The reason the written records of a meeting are called the minutes is because, in order to keep up, the minute-taker wrote in a shorthand or abbreviation. The word used to describe this condensed writing was minute (my-noot), meaning “small,” and because the spelling is the same, the minutes (my-noots) became minutes. The same circumstances apply to Frederick Chopin’s Minute Waltz: It’s really his small or minute (my-noot) waltz.
Why is extortion money called “blackmail”? If there is “blackmail” then there must be “white mail.” Mail was a Scottish word for rent or tax, and during the reign of James I, taxes or mail were paid in silver, which, because of its colour, was called “white mail.” During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, bandits along the Scottish border demanded protection money from the farmers. Because black signified evil, this cruel extortion was called a black tax, or “blackmail.”
Why after a foolish error do we call someone a “laughingstock”? In early English, a stock was a tree trunk, and by the fourteenth century it figuratively meant the family tree or the consequences of breeding. For example someone might be from “farming stock” or “good stock,” while an animal’s breeding line was traced through their “livestock.” If someone calls you a laughingstock, they are insulting your family tree as being one filled with fools from which you are the current crop. 124
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