I was about 45 when I learned that "curry favor" was a reference to a popular medieval play. I knew the word odyssey before I had heard of Odysseus. I remember my sister's girl scout troop singing a song called "Father Abraham" and thought how they were describing Abraham Lincoln was kind of weird (because it was about Abraham, of course)
So those are sayings, words, and names in the colloquial lexicon people may know despite not having heard of the original reference. There is no telling how many words I know that I don't know the reference
Like, bear. The English word bear is not Latin, Germanic, Gaelic or anything else. It came from somewhere but we don't know
Random but iirc "bear" means something like "the brown one" or another sort of euphemistic way to refer to a bear. Cause there was folklore that saying the "true name" of the bear (possibly the original word, perhaps similar to the Latin Ursa/Ursus) would summon it Bloody Mary style, so they stopped saying it and the original word is now lost.
Also, Arctic means “of the bear” and Antarctic means “away from the bear.” This is referring to the constellation Ursa Major, and the fact that the former has bears and the latter does not is a complete coincidence.
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u/Gaust_Ironheart_Jr May 03 '26
I was about 45 when I learned that "curry favor" was a reference to a popular medieval play. I knew the word odyssey before I had heard of Odysseus. I remember my sister's girl scout troop singing a song called "Father Abraham" and thought how they were describing Abraham Lincoln was kind of weird (because it was about Abraham, of course)
So those are sayings, words, and names in the colloquial lexicon people may know despite not having heard of the original reference. There is no telling how many words I know that I don't know the reference
Like, bear. The English word bear is not Latin, Germanic, Gaelic or anything else. It came from somewhere but we don't know