A long-running column on word and phrase origins, answering reader questions about etymology and everyday usage.
HN commenters link its entries to explain the history of words like holiday, optics and harebrained, and use them to date usage.
Until now, I had been unaware of the earliest usage shown below, and I had always understood the boxing reference to be the origin. Live and Learn!
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To be “thrown for a loop” or “knocked for a loop” refers to being bewildered, dazzled, disoriented and shocked by some event (“AT&T and T-Mobile were thrown for a loop last week when the Department of Justice sued to block AT&T’s planned acquisition of T-Mobile,” CNET, 9/5/11). The phrase first appeared in print in the 1920s, and comes from what the Oxford English Dictionary terms “a centrifugal railway,” but which is, no doubt, better known as a “roller coaster.” The “loop” on roller coaster runs is the point where the coaster arcs upward through a complete circle, leaving passengers upside down at its apex. The term was initially used in the literal roller coaster sense and then to describe aerobatic maneuvers by pilots “looping the loop,” and finally in boxing to mean a powerful punch that downed an opponent, before acquiring its modern “OMG!” usage.
http://www.word-detective.com/2012/04/knock-for-a-loop-knock-someones-socks-off/
Quote:
"Mushfake" is a very interesting word. It seems to have first appeared in underworld slang back in the early 19th century in England. "Mush" by itself was, in that period, slang for an umbrella, from its similarity in shape to a mushroom. The verb "to fake" during the same period was criminal slang for "putting something in shape to sell by covering its defects." So a "mushroom faker" or "mushfake" was a con artist who repaired discarded umbrellas just enough to make them briefly functional and then sold them on the street, preferably during a downpour.
http://www.word-detective.com/111703.html#mushfake
That's incorrect. A number of other sources say that it also means exactly what I mean: "to pursue an unrealistic, impractical, or impossible goal". E.g.:
http://www.word-detective.com/2009/03/10/tilting-at-windmills/
A quick peek at Google News also shows plenty of people using it that way:
E.g.:
http://articles.mcall.com/2012-03-08/news/mc-pat-toomey-jobs-bill-20120308_1_jobs-bill-small-companies-shareholders
http://jurist.org/forum/2012/02/brian-landsberg-affirmative-action.php
http://www.idahoreporter.com/2012/barbieri-wont-run-anti-tsa-pat-down-bill-this-year/
Back in the early '60s (or late '50s) I had a thing called a Brainiac kit[0] - a minor league version of an IBM wire panel: I wired it up to play tic-tac-toe.
[0] http://www.word-detective.com/2007/07/brainiac/
Except that this usage of the word "optics" in popular lexicon predates the U.S. election by at least 4 years. See this "word detective" entry from 2012:
http://www.word-detective.com/2012/01/optics/
Great story and it made me realize that usage of "holiday" is more general than how I thought of it (missing a spot when painting). Which led me to http://www.word-detective.com/2010/12/holiday/