Category Words
The first record of the phrase is a 1921 essay about racing superstitions. The first clear theater use is from 1948, and the John Wilkes Booth story has no evidence behind it.
Fall began as the fall of the leaf in 16th-century England. The British later switched to autumn; Americans kept the older home-grown word.
Roger means the message was received. R stood for received, and from 1927 the US military spelled R as Roger. The alphabet moved on to Romeo, the word stayed.
The usual story says early Christians crossed fingers as a secret sign. Folklorists call that unfounded: the earliest written record of the gesture dates from 1912, and it is mostly British.
Dozen comes from the Latin for two plus ten. Twelve stuck because it splits into halves, thirds, quarters and sixths, and because you can count to it on the finger joints of one hand.
The oldest record of the sundae is an 1892 Ithaca advert for a Cherry Sunday, named after the day it was made. Two Rivers, Wisconsin, claims 1881. Where the spelling came from, nobody can show.
In 1858 a cricketer took three wickets with three balls and was given a new hat. The phrase came from stage magic, reached print in 1865, and hockey later got a hat story of its own.
The name comes from 19th-century jokes about dog meat in sausages. It was in print by 1892, years before the cartoonist TAD Dorgan, who is usually credited with it, drew his first hot dog cartoon in 1906.
Eburnean is a warm off-white, hex #FFFFEE. It comes from the Latin ebur, ivory, the same root as the word ivory itself, which reached English through French.
Sarcoline is a pale peach, hex #FFDDAA. The 1913 Webster’s defines it as flesh-coloured, from the Greek sarx, the same root behind sarcophagus and sarcasm.
Skobeloff is a dark teal, hex #007474. It carries the name of Mikhail Skobelev, the Russian ‘White General’ who rode into battle in a white uniform on a white horse.
For five years an American dictionary defined a word no one had ever used. It got there because an editor misread a note about the letter D.
