Eavesdrop

Eavesdrop- To listen secretly to the private conversation of others.

An eave is the edge of a roof which usually projects beyond the side of the building to offer weather protection. In Old English, eavesdrop (or eavesdrip) referred to the ground of the house on which water falls from the eaves. By the 15th century, the word eavesdropper came to mean someone who stood within the eavesdrop of a house to overhear what is going on inside. This lead to the verb eavesdrop and is first recorded in the seventeenth century.

Sources: The Merriam-Webster Book of Word Histories, www.answers.com
Pic: Painting by William Powell Frith.

Hobson's Choice

Hobson's Choice - An apparently free choice that actually offers no alternative or is no choice at all. In other words, the choice of taking what is offered or nothing at all.

How some people get immortalized by just being plain eccentric is proved by the origin of this phrase. Thomas Hobson (1544-1630) was the keeper of a livery stable who ran a thriving carrier and horse rental business in Cambridge, England and in order to rotate the use of his horses, allowed customers to take only the horse nearest the stable door. It's like, the horse nearest the stable door or none. Take it or leave it???

The first known written usage of this phrase is in Joseph Addison's paper "The Spectator" (1712) though it also appears in Thomas Ward's 1688 poem "England's Reformation", not published until after Ward's death (1708). Ward wrote,
"Where to elect there is but one,
'tis Hobson's choice—take that, or none."

Trivia: Henry Ford was said to have sold the Ford Model T with the famous Hobson's choice of "... any colour ... so long as it is black"

Sources: www.answers.com, http://www.phrases.org.uk/

Utopia

Utopia - An ideally perfect place, especially in its social, political, and moral aspects.

The trivia that this word comes along with is more fascinating than its etymology which is quite simple, really. Etymologically Utopia = no place as it comes from the Greek "ou" that means "not" and "topos" that means "place". It was the title of a 1516 Latin book by an English scholar and eventual saint, Sir Thoma More wherein he described an ideal state where all is ordered for the best for humanity as a whole and where the evils of society, such as poverty and misery, have been eliminated. He called this ideal imaginary island "Utopia" - nowhere, as it seemed unattainable.

The title carries a pun that may be a consequence of mis-translations or propagated by More himself where "u" in Utopia is mistaken as "eu" that means good in Greek.
Dystopia is the anti-utopia.

Trivia 1 :More is listed in Red Square as one of the heroes of the Russian Revolution because his Utopia was supposedly a primitive communist state of justice and perfect social conditions. This while Utopia was an imaginary place and Thomas More a lawyer himself was a capitalist.

Trivia 2: More opposed King Henry VIII's divorce from Catherine of Aragon, which ultimately led to the separation of the Church of England from the Roman Catholic Church. This cost him his head, but gained him sainthood as a Catholic martyr.

Sources: http://www.answers.com, http://www.hellskitchen.com/

Grapevine

Grapevine - Informal/Unofficial path of verbal communication (by means of gossip and rumor)

Some wise man claimed, "Gossip is nature's telephone." ....and we'll soon discover, how!!! :)
The term comes from the expression, "grapevine telegraph", and was supposedly invented in US during the early 1850's, after the invention of telegraph in 1840's. Samuel Morse's first line was opened between Washington and Baltimore on 24th May 1844 and was an immediate success. The straight copper wires of electric telegraph were supposed to carry truthful information. The term "grapevine telegraph" came into being to accentuate the idea of distorted information that travels by word of mouth and drew its inspiration from the twisted stems of the grapevine (but like real telegraph is capable of transmitting vital messages quickly over long distances).

The first recorded usage, according to John Lighter in The Random House Historical Dictionary of American Slang, was in a political dictionary of 1852, which included the sentence "By the Grape Vine Telegraph Line .......we have received the following ". There are various early references that suggest that it was associated with clandestine communication among Southern blacks, especially the slaves and gained high popularity and acceptance during the American Civil War period.

Trivia: It was widely acknowledged that the blacks' communications network was extremely useful to the Union cause, as John G. Nicolay and John Hay reported in "Abraham Lincoln: A History" in 1888, calling it "one of the most important and reliable sources of knowledge to the Union commanders in the various fields, which later in the war came to be jocosely designated as the 'grape-vine telegraph'".

Sources: www.answers.com, http://www.phrases.org.uk/
Pic : Neighborly gossips in the Altstadt in Sindelfingen, Germany (Sourced form : http://en.wikipedia.org/)

Assassin

Assassin - One who murders by surprise attack, especially one who carries out a plot to kill a prominent person.

From "Go Postal" to "assassin", I seem to be getting away with murder. Stop me, someone, before I go shooting from the hip. Awlright, enough of pretentious play of words, it's time for some history lessons, now :)

During the time of the Crusades, the members of a certain secret Muslim sect terrorized their enemies by performing murders as a religious duty. Active in Persia and Syria from the 8th to 14th centuries, the original Assassins were members of the Nizaris, a Muslim group who opposed the Abbasid caliphate with threats of sudden assassination by their secret agents. Other populations of the area regarded the Nizaris as unorthodox outcasts. Because these acts were supposedly carried out under the influence of hashish, the killers came to be known as hashshashin - eaters or smokers of hashish. It appeared in its anglicized form in the 17th century.


Trivia: Marco Polo tells a tale of how young Assassins were given a potion and made to yearn for paradise—their reward for dying in action—by being given a life of pleasure.

* End of History class*

Sources: The Merriam-Webster Book of Word Histories, http://www.answers.com/

True Blue

True Blue - Loyal and unwavering in one's opinions or support for a cause.

'True blue' is supposed to derive from the blue cloth that was made at Coventry, England in the late middle ages. The town's dyers had a reputation for producing material that didn't fade with washing, i.e. it remained 'fast' or 'true'. The phrase 'as true as Coventry blue' originated then and is still used (in Coventry at least).

There are other theories as to the origin of 'true blue'. For example, the representation in paintings of the Virgin Mary in blue clothing, the purity of lineage of the Spanish nobility, or the blue aprons worn by butchers. These derivations are unlikely as they aren't supported by documentary evidence that link them to 'true blue'.

Source: www.phrasefinder.co.uk