LANGUAGE MYTHS #6 -- Saved by the bell, Shit, Sincere, Skins, Sleep tight, Snob

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Saved by the bell (a last minute reprieve)

MYTH: In plague times, they often buried people alive because medical knowledge was limited. So they would tie a string on the “dead” person’s wrist and thread it through ahole in the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell. A watchman would have to sit out in the graveyard all night to listen for the bell. If the person were alive, he wouldbe saved by the bell. He was a “dead ringer.”

REALITY: Let’s lay this one to rest. This isn’t a case of the graveyard shift, the work shift that starts at midnight, which is a humorous reference to the hours when ghosts walk. This is a term from boxing. A pugilist who has been knocked down has until the count of 10 to get back up. If it’s right at the end of a round and the end-of-round bell rings, the countdown stops. He is saved by the bell.

 

Shit  (animal or human excrement)

MYTH: In the days of sailing ships [a red light should go on], manure wastransported as fertilizer. It was stored at the very bottom of the boat to act as ballast, and when it got wet, it fermented and produced methane, an explosive gas. One little spark could ignite the gas and blow the ship to smithereens. So companies started marking the crates with the letters S.H.I.T. They stood for Ship High In Transit—don’t put this where it will get wet.

REALITY: This is a very old word in English, and when it first appeared, it was notconsidered vulgar or indecent. In the year 1,000, for instance, it was used to refer to diarrhea in cattle. The Old English spelling for dung was scite, and it has its origin both in German and Dutch terms meaning the same thing.

 

Sincere (genuine; pure; true)

MYTH: In ancient Rome, unscrupulous sculptors would cover their mistakes and fill in any accidental holes with wax. It looked fine to the buyer, but a hot day would soon reveal the shoddy workmanship. Honest sculptors began to advertise their work as sine cera, Latin for “without wax.”

REALITY: The actual origin is much more prosaic. The word sincere came into the English language around 1536 as a mirror of the Latin word sincerus, which meant pure, sound, and genuine.

 

 

Skins (a betting procedure in golf; winning a hole and its pot is “winning a skin”)

MYTH: Fur trappers coming to Scotland from other countries, having spent monthssailing in boats under primitive conditions

would, instead of looking for female comfort, a bath, an alcoholic beverage, or a decent meal, opt for a round of golf before heading into town to sell their catch. As currency,they gambled their pelts or “skins” on golf, thus producing the term.

REALITY: No one has the definitive answer, but it’s certainly not that one. Oneexplanation says that skins derives from “skinning” an opponent. Golfers who lost a large amount of money were said to have been “skinned alive.” The USGA says that skins(along with cats and scats) is a shortened version of syndicates. Finally, The Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition, defines skin as American slang for a dollar.

 

Sleep tight (have a very satisfying and refreshing sleep)

MYTH: In medieval and colonial times, before modern box mattresses were invented, ropes were spread across the bed frame in a criss-cross pattern. The ropes would sag with use, so they had to be tightened periodically. If you didn’t sleep tight, you had a sagging, uncomfortable mattress.

REALITY: “Tight” as an adverb meant soundly. To sleep tight was to sleep soundly.There were also references to a tight sleep—a sound sleep. We also use" tight" to mean securely: shut the door or window tight.

 

Snob (one who ignores social inferiors and plays up to social superiors)

MYTH: Undergraduates entering British universities were required to state whether they came from nobility or not. If not, their records were marked SNOB, which stood forthe Latin phrase sine nobilitate, without nobility.

REALITY: It started out in the 18^th century as a word designating a cobbler (shoemaker), a person of lower rank and status. Later, it was applied by collegians to a townie, as opposed to a gownie, so that probably helped stoke that myth. But it developed in two stages: First, it referred to an arriviste, a middle-class person seeking to improve their new-found social status. Secondly, it evolved into someone excessively preoccupied with his alleged superior social status.