Well I didn't know that (one for the Kids)

[OZCUBAN]

There is an old Hotel/Pub in Marble Arch, London , which used to have a gallows adjacent to it. Prisoners were taken to the gallows (after a fair trial of course) to be hanged.

The horse-drawn dray, carting the prisoner, was accompanied by an armed guard, who would stop the dray outside the pub and ask the prisoner if he would like ''ONE LAST DRINK''.

If he said YES, it was referred to as ONE FOR THE ROAD.

If he declined, that prisoner was ON THE WAGON.

So there you go.. More bleeding history. They used to use urine to tan animal skins, so families used to all pee in a pot and then once a day it was taken and sold to the tannery. If you had to do this to survive you were "piss poor", but worse than that were the really poor folk, who couldn't even afford to buy a pot, they "Didn't have a pot to piss in" and were the lowest of the low.

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be.

Here are some facts about the 1500s:

Most people got married in June, because they took their yearly bath in May and they still smelled pretty good by June. However, since they were starting to smell, brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odour. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water. The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women and finally the children. Last of all the babies. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water!"

Houses had thatched roofs, thick straw piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof. When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof. Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."

There was nothing to stop things from falling into the house. This posed a real problem in the bedroom, where bugs and other droppings could mess up your nice clean bed. Hence, a bed with big posts and a sheet hung over the top afforded some protection. That's how canopy beds came into existence.

The floor was dirt. Only the wealthy had something other than dirt. Hence the saying, "dirt poor." The wealthy had slate floors that would get slippery in the winter when wet, so they spread thresh (straw) on floor to help keep their footing.

As the winter wore on they added more thresh until, when you opened the door, it would all start slipping outside. A piece of wood was placed in the entrance-way. Hence: a thresh hold.

(Getting quite an education, aren't you?)

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot. They ate mostly vegetables and did not get much meat. They would eat the stew for dinner, leaving leftovers in the pot to get cold overnight, then start over the next day. Sometimes stew had food in it that had been there for quite a while. Hence the rhyme: ''Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot, nine days old''.

Sometimes they could obtain pork, which made them feel quite special. When visitors came over they would hang up their bacon, to show off. It was a sign of wealth that a man could, "Bring home the bacon." They would cut off a little to share with guests and would all sit around talking and ''chew the fat''.

Those with money had plates made of pewter. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning and death. This happened most often with tomatoes, so for the next 400 years or so, tomatoes were considered poisonous.

Bread was divided according to status. Workers got the burnt bottom of the loaf, the family got the middle, and guests got the top, or ''The Upper Crust''

Lead cups were used to drink ale or whisky. The combination would sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up. Hence the custom of ''Holding a Wake''.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people, so they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house and reuse the grave. When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realised they had been burying people alive. So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, thread it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift) to listen for the bell; thus someone could be, ''Saved by the Bell ''or was considered a ''Dead Ringer''

And that's the truth.

Now, whoever said history was boring ! ! !

So .. . .. get out there and educate someone! Share these facts with a friend, like I just did

[HarveyBoulevard]

Great way to start my Monday morning at work. Already learnt my sumphing for the day!

[LordAnubis]

Are you saying you were around when all these terms were being coined?

[...]

Great stuff, thanks for sharing

[Rye]

I learndid sumpin today!

Cool post!

[OZCUBAN]

Are you saying you were around when all these terms were being coined?

Don't you start ?????

[Lasabar]

I'm digging these big informative posts lately!

The CCW interviews, this little gem... Keep it coming FOH!

[Tedrickson8]

Great read, much informative, wow!!

[NJP]

Very cool. Thanks.

[Joker]

FOH - a fountain of knowledge !

Thanks for sharing

[MIKA27]

Here are some facts about the 1500s:

You'd know, you were there!

When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realised they had been burying people alive.

Kind of like looking through a box of cigars hey?

Seriously though, awesome post Steve, POST OF THE YEAR so far IMO I love stuff like this.

[partriar]

Brilliant, what a great way to start work this morning.

Thanks very much

[Fuzz AI]

Ahh, hate to burst everyone's bubble, but those are fake. It has been going around (in different incarnations and with fewer or more sayings) the internet since the late 90's.

[OZCUBAN]

Ahh,I Like to burst everyone's/peoples bubbles, but those are fake. It has been going around (in different incarnations and with fewer or more sayings) the internet since the late 90's.

[NJP]

U suck Steve. My BS detector needs a Tune.

[Jeremy Festa]

My favourite one, that is supposedly real, is the old school English law, that said a husband can beat his wife, so long as the stick is no thicker than his thumb. Hence the saying, rule of thumb.

[khamy]

Next your going to tell me a $10 Hoe is an inexpensive implement used to dig holes.

[joeboxer]

Even though it appears to be untrue, I still think those stories are interesting and witty. I imagine someone spent a good deal of time thinking those up and I have to give them credit! This article has some (possibly) more factual explanations which I also find interesting although somewhat less entertaining: http://m.mentalfloss.com/article.php?id=55688

[CaptainQuintero]

Ahh, hate to burst everyone's bubble, but those are fake. It has been going around (in different incarnations and with fewer or more sayings) the internet since the late 90's.

Most are pretty much along the right lines? Which ones do you press the buzzer on?

The one for the road/on the wagon one is something I've never heard and sounds dubious. Same with the pewter/tomato one.

Raining cats and dogs I think is a result of a translation from saxon/norse version of thunder and lightning or some similar phrase.

The rest, from memory, are pretty much right, in essence at least eg

The bread one is nearly there, its more that in the 15 hundreds it was popular for meals to be served on the bottom hard baked part of loaves to keep the gravy etc in, these were then given to the poor by the rich.

It's a history off!

[Fuzz AI]

All of them.

The tomato one is kinda true, as tomatoes are acidic and will leach lead from pewter, but over a long period of time. You'd need to eat a lot of tomatoes on pewter plates to get a significant amount of lead poisoning.

The bridal bouquet was a sign of fertility, not to hide body odour.

Dirt poor is apparently and American expression. And nobody calls reeds or straw, "thresh".

The stew one possibly has some bit of authenticity, but the rhyme itself is a Mother Goose rhyme from the 1700s.

There are a lot of explanations for the origin of raining cats and dogs, but nothing to do with them being in your roof. Ditto for the bread one. There's no real evidence to relate the phrase to the story.

[CaptainQuintero]

Thresh is used in the UK still, its used when threshing wheat etc, farms use mechanical threshers now to bundle any cereals, its used when thatching roofs too. The big country here have straw down in the Scully to stop you slipping on the slate or stone floors, same in carriage stables to stop the horses skidding.

Pease (real spelling) pudding is still made and its traditionally whatever is left over from breakfasts and lunch the previous days.

Normally porridge oats or peas and ham/bacon

http://britishfood.about.com/od/psrecipes/r/Pease-Pudding-Recipe.htm

Not having a pot to piss in was about chamber pots in the Victorian times, if you were well off you had pots to piss in, in your bedroom, if not you had to go outside and use the outside loo

The bathwater one is just sarcasm but people right up to the 50s bathed like that, my dad who was born in 54 still had a family bath that was in the main room and you went in in that order. His dad and older brother working in the steel works, you can imagine the water colour

Some are obviously not all from the 1500s but a fair chunk are right or there abouts, some are a load of rubbish though.

The bread crust thing is factual, disc shaped loaves were used to put your dinner on in Tudor times and the bottoms were given to the beggers, as inedible as they were. Not sure why it says there is no evidence as it's talked about as a matter of fact when you learn about the age at school here.

[Fuzz AI]

Never heard of anyone using the word thresh to refer to straw. Albeit, I'm not from the UK, but I can't find anything online using the word thresh in that way. The word thresh is derived from:

Middle English - thresshen, threshen, threscan

Old English - threscan,

Proto-Germanic - dreschen

And going back even further, all meaning to stamp or beat. The word threshold is thought to come from a wooden block or stone where you stamp your foot to remove mud/dirt before coming into the house.

Couldn't be bothered re-typing the upper crust explanation, so here's copy/paste:

Meaning

Aristocratic; society superior.

Origin

'Upper crust' is one of those phrases that people, and especially those people who make a living as tour guides, will gladly explain the etymology of. Advance within twenty yards of any English manor house that has mediaeval kitchens and you can't avoid hearing that 'upper crust was the superior, unburnt part of a loaf that was served to the gentry'. Nice idea, but that's all it is, an idea; it may be true but there's no documentary evidence to support it. This piece of folk wisdom is part of the collection of twaddle that has done more to spread false phrase etymologies than anything else. This is circulated by email on the Internet, under the name of 'Life in the 1500s'. For those that persist in believing the above story, its place on that list of falsehoods isn't exactly encouraging, but let's not judge a book by its cover and look at the evidence.

As I've said there's no real evidence in favour of the 'top of the bread' derivation. The nearest we can come to that is the earliest known example of the term in print, which does make an oblique connection between the top part of a loaf and the nobility. This is from John Russell's The boke of nurture, folowyng Englondis gise, circa 1460:

Kutt ye vpper crust for youre souerayne. (that is, Cut the upper crust [of the loaf] for your sovereign)

There's a wide gulf between that citation and the idea that only the aristocracy were given the upper crust of loaves to eat.

The term 'upper crust' didn't in fact come to be used figuratively to refer to the aristocrary until the 19th century. The earliest citation that I can find of the term with that meaning is in Slang: A Dictionary of the Turf, by John Badcock, 1823:

"Upper-crust - one who lords it over others, is Mister Upper- crust."

The term had previously been used to refer to the outer crust of the Earth's surface and, more frequently, a person's head or hat. That latter use was still in use when the 'aristocracy' meaning was coined, as is shown by this entry from an edition of Grose's Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, which was published in the same year as the above reference, 1823:

...but to hear it from the chaffer [mouth] of a rough and ready costard-monger, ogling his POLL from her walker [feet] to her upper crust [head].

Same thing for piss poor:

However, the expression piss-poor is recent and has nothing to do with tanning. The current state of research suggests that it may have been invented during the Second World War, because the first examples in print date from 1946. Though it is still classed as low slang by dictionaries, its mildly unpleasant associations have become blunted by time and familiarity.

The origin is straightforward. Piss began to be attached to other words during the twentieth century to intensify their meaning. Ezra Pound invented piss-rotten in 1940 (distasteful or unpleasant, the first example on record) and we’ve since had piss-easy (very easy), piss-weak (cowardly or pathetic), piss-elegant (affectedly refined, pretentious), piss-awful (very unpleasant) and other forms.

Piss-poor began life in a similar figurative sense for something that's third-rate, incompetent or useless, as it does in this recent example:

Larkin’s letters, wrote Philippe Auclair, writer and broadcaster, were “very funny, very beautiful, and very sad; the grace of an angel, the precision of a geometer, and the short-sighted, intolerant piss-poor idées fixes of a provincial buffoon”.

The Spectator, 27 Nov. 2010.

Americans who know the idiom so poor he didn’t have a pot to piss in, sometimes in the fuller form ... or a window to throw it out of, might wonder if this is the origin. The idiom appears in Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, published in 1936, so it does predate piss-poor. However, it’s a graphic literal reference to poverty; as piss-poor was first used in a figurative sense, it's unlikely to have been influenced by the older idiom. In fact, the literal sense of extreme poverty for piss-poor didn’t come along until a couple of decades later, which also provides another reason, if one were needed, that the story you quote is nonsense.

[CaptainQuintero]

Threshing

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/?title=Threshing_machine

Trenchers

http://tudorhistory.org/topics/food/utensils.html

http://tudortimes.co.uk/daily-life/bread-oats

Pisspot 1400-1450

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/pisspot

http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=piss-pot&allowed_in_frame=0

Victorian safety coffins

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Safety_coffin

Obviously some of the explanations in the article are off but a good few are nearly there, it was probably written by someone who didn't have first hand experience of the meanings and cobbled together story. Like the straw on scullery floors, pease pudding, trenchers etc it sounds like the writer heard half truths at a bar and hashed then into an article, but there is a reality in some of them, the writer just got the wrong end of the stick (I don't know where that one came from )

[Ryan]

There's a restaurant near me called "Matt the Thresher" after threshing.

It's a commonly understood word in these parts.

I've never heard of "thresh" as a noun. Although the verb must have come from somewhere.

[Fuzz AI]

From an etymology website:

thresh (v.) Old English þrescan, þerscan, "to beat, sift grain by trampling or beating," from Proto-Germanic *threskan "to thresh," originally "to tread, to stamp noisily" (cognates: Middle Dutch derschen, Dutch dorschen, Old High German dreskan, German dreschen, Old Norse þreskja, Swedish tröska, Gothic þriskan), from PIE root *tere- (1) "to rub, turn" (see throw (v.)).

The basic notion is of men or oxen treading out wheat; later, with the advent of the flail, the word acquired its modern extended sense of "to knock, beat, strike." The original Germanic sense is suggested by the use of the word in Romanic languages that borrowed it, such as Italian trescare "to prance," Old French treschier "to dance," Spanish triscar "to stamp the feet."