Secrets of My Legacy

How did Clark Kent get his name?

When conceived in 1934, Superman was endowed with the strength of ten men, but he couldn’t fly. After being turned down by fifteen syndicators, the Man of Steel took to the air and acquired the needed strength to become a super legend. Some say Superman’s success is within the storyline of his secret identity, whose name was derived from two popular actors of the time: “Clark” Gable and “Kent” Taylor.

Who was Mortimer Mouse and whatever happened to him?

Mortimer was Walt Disney’s original name for a cartoon mouse in the historic 1928 cartoon “Plane Crazy.” When Walt came home and told his wife about the little mouse, she didn’t like the name “Mortimer” and suggested that “Mickey” was more pleasant-sounding. Walt thought about it for a while and then grudgingly gave in, and that’s how Mickey, and not Mortimer, went on to become the foundation of an entertainment empire.

How did the cartoon character Bugs Bunny get his name?

In 1940, Warner Bros. asked its illustrators for sketches of a “tall, lanky, mean rabbit” for a cartoon titled “Hare-um Scare-um.” Someone in the office labelled the submission from cartoonist “Bugs” Hardaway as “Bugs’ Bunny” and sent it on. Although his drawings weren’t used, the words that labelled them were given to the rabbit star of the 1940 cartoon “A Wild Hare,” which introduced “Bugs Bunny.”

How did the Wizard Of Oz get that name?

The classic tale of Dorothy in the land of Oz came from the imagination of L. Frank Baum, who made up the story for his son and a group of children one evening in 1899. When a little girl asked him the name of this magical land with the Scarecrow, Tinman, and Cowardly Lion, he looked around the room for inspiration. He happened to be sitting next to a filing cabinet with the drawers labelled “A-G,” “H-N,” and finally “O-Z,” which gave him a quick answer: “Oz.”

Why do we say that someone who inherited wealth was “born with a silver spoon in his mouth”?

If someone is “born with a silver spoon in his mouth,” it means that he was born into wealth rather than having had to earn it. The expression comes from an old custom of godparents giving the gift of a spoon to a child at its christening to signify their responsibility for its nourishment and well-being. If they were wealthy, the spoon was usually silver, and if not, it would be pewter or tin.

Why do we call a cowardly person “yellow”?

Yellow, meaning cowardly, is actually an abbreviation of yellow dog, an American insult that first appeared in the nineteenth century to describe a cowardly or worthless person. In the early twentieth century, when employers were fighting trade unions, they insisted that new employees sign a pledge never to join a union. This pledge was called a “yellow dog” contract by union members with the implication that anyone signing it was “yellow.”

Why is the word late used to describe the recently deceased?

To prefix a person’s name with “the late” certainly signifies that he or she is dead, although you would be correct in using it only with the name of someone who had died within the past twenty years. Its use began with medieval rulers, whose first name often had been passed down through generations of males. To avoid confusion with the living monarch, i.e., James II, his deceased father would be referred to as “the late King James.”

How did the word gay come to mean homosexual?

The word gay is from the Old French gai, meaning “merry.” It came to mean reckless self-indulgence in the seventeenth century, and it wasn’t until the 1930s that its homosexual connotation came out of the prison system, where the expression “gay-cat” meant a younger, inexperienced man who, in order to survive, traded his virtue for the protection and experience of an older convict.

When a man gifted with charm seizes an opportunity,why do we say,“He’s in like Flynn”?

The Australian actor Errol Flynn had an amazing prowess with the ladies, and of course the tabloids built this into a legend. During the Second World War, servicemen coined the phrase “in like Flynn” either to brag about their own conquests or to describe someone they envied. Flynn said he hated the expression, but his own boast that he had spent between twelve and fourteen thousand intimate nights ensured its survival.

Why is someone with a lot of nerve referred to as being “full of moxie”?

Today Moxie is a New England soft drink, but it began as a tonic invented by Dr. Augustine Thompson in 1884 as “Moxie Nerve Food.” Although the 1906 Pure Food and Drug Act put an end to its medicinal claims, there are still those who say Moxie gives them energy, and so to be “full of moxie” means to be full of false nerve.

What does the title esquire mean?

The British title esquire, like the magazine, has very masculine roots. An esquire was a young man who was a manservant to an armoured knight and whose job included holding his master’s shield. With the passing of the knights, esquire was applied to any young man of noble birth who hadn’t yet earned a proper title. Eventually the word became a term of respect for any promising young man.

Why do we call someone who continually takes the fall for someone else a “whipping boy”?

In the mid-seventeenth century, young princes and aristocrats were sent off to school with a young servant who would attend classes and receive an education while also attending to his master’s needs. If the master found himself in trouble, the servant would take the punishment for him, even if it were a whipping. He was his master’s “whipping boy.”

Why does a man refer to his wife as his “better half”?

Most men call their wives their “better half” because they believe it, but the expression comes from an ancient Middle Eastern legend. When a Bedouin man had been sentenced to death, his wife pleaded with the tribal leader that because they were married, she and her husband had become one, and that to punish one-half of the union would also punish the half who was innocent. The court agreed and the man’s life was saved by his “better half.” Read the rest of this entry »

Why is a college student in her second year referred to as a “sophomore”?

After her first, or “freshman,” year, a college student is called a “sophomore,” and has been since the description emerged at Cambridge in 1688. The word is constructed from the Greek sophos, meaning wise, and moros, meaning foolish. So a second-year student is somewhere between ignorance and wisdom. Similarly, when we say something is “sophomoric,” we mean it is pretentious or foolish. Read the rest of this entry »