Uncle John's Ahh-Inspiring Bathroom Reader (76 page)

Ever wonder where words come from?
Here are some more interesting stories.

Meaning:
A complete and humiliating failure

Origin:
“The making of a fine Venetian glass bottle is a difficult process—it must be perfect. If the slightest flaw is detected the glassblower turns the bottle into a common flask—called in Italian,
fiasco
.” (From
Why Do We Say It?,
by Frank Oppel)

Meaning:
One who carries out a plot to kill a prominent person

Origin:
“In the 11th and 12th centuries, the
Hashashin
(“hashish eaters”) were a secret murder cult of the Ismaili sect of Muslims. Their leader, Hasan ben Sabah, offered them sensual pleasures, including beautiful maidens and hashish, so that they supposed they were in heaven. He then sent them on gangland-style missions to rub out prominent targets, assuring them of a quick trip to paradise if things went sour. The Hashashin survived in our word
assassin
.” (From
Remarkable Words with Astonishing Origins,
by John Train)

Meaning:
Somewhat disreputable; squalid

Origin:
“During the seasons when rye, barley, oats, and other grains were being planted, a fellow who spent his days in the fields was likely to be covered with seeds. Once the derisive title entered common usage, it came to mean anything run-down—from shacks to individuals.” (From
Why You Say It,
by Webb Garrison)

Meaning:
An exclamation used to frighten or surprise someone

Origin:
“The word
boh!,
used to frighten children, was the name of Boh, a great general, the son of the Norse god, Odin, whose very appellation struck immediate panic in his enemies.” (From
Pulleyn's Etymological Compendium,
by M. A. Thomas)

Meaning:
Of little or no consequence/value

Origin:
“The Latin
triviu—
from
tri
(three) and
via
(way)—means ‘a place where three roads meet.' In Medieval schools the
trivium
were three roads of learning—grammar, logic, rhetoric. With the passage of time the ‘academic'
trivium
was forgotten but not the ‘inconsequential'
trivial
. It has long been felt that gossips and idlers gather where roads intersect. What was usually discussed at these congregations was the commonplace, matters of little value, the gosssip that one might expect to hear at
tri-viae
—the trivial.” (From
The Story Behind the Word
, by Morton S. Freeman)

Meaning:
A great deal of something

Origin:
“The term was brought into our speech by sailors. It is from the Irish
go leor
(‘in abundance').” (From
War Slang,
by Paul Dickson)

Meaning:
A permanent mark on the skin made by ingraining an indelible pigment

Origin:
“When Captain Cook sailed to Tahiti in 1769, he unwittingly introduced tattoos to sailors. Upon studying the island's inhabitants, Cook described how ‘
both sexes paint their bodys.'
Cook called it ‘
tattow,'
his rendition of the Tahitian term
tatau
. The word was derived from the Polynesian
ta
, ‘to strike,' a reference to the puncturing of the skin ‘
with small instruments made of bone, cut into short teeth
.'” (From
The Chronology of Words and Phrases,
by Linda and Roger Flavell)

Meaning:
The sound you make when you sneeze

Origin:
“Excluded from dictionaries, this imitative word corresponds oddly with the French
a tes souhaits
(pronounced ‘a tay soo-eh'
),
their version of ‘God bless.' It even sounds like it, though
à tes souhaits
follows the sneeze. Is this overlap a mere fluke, or has somebody really been listening?” (From
The Secret Lives of Words,
by Paul West)

All those advertising gimmicks that clutter our lives didn't simply materialize out of thin air. There's a story behind each one…

M
EMORABLE MOMENT:
First mail solicitation

THE PRODUCT:
National Cash Register

THE STORY:
In the late 1800s, John Patterson's store had a problem with employee theft. There was no reliable method of making sure clerks didn't simply help themselves to the cash that came in. When Patterson heard about a saloonkeeper in Dayton named James Ritty who had solved the problem, he investigated.

Ritty had invented a “cash register,” a machine that kept a running tab of all the money received during the day. Patterson ordered two, and they ended his employee theft problem. Patterson was so impressed that he bought the cash register company for $6,500 in 1884 and renamed it National Cash Register.

Convinced that cash registers would make him rich, he mailed out 90,000 brochures—one to every major retailer in the Midwest. It was the nation's first serious direct-mail campaign—and it was a complete failure. Patterson discovered that the brochures had been intercepted by the same salesclerks who were stealing cash. The brochures were destroyed before they could be seen by the business owners.

He changed his strategy and sent out hand-addressed envelopes marked “highly confidential.” Inside, store owners found fancy invitations asking them to come to the best hotel in town for a demonstration of a foolproof method of ending employee theft. That year he sold over 15,000 machines. By 1922 he had sold two million cash registers. Today National Cash Register (NCR) is still a thriving corporation, all because of America's very first junk mail campaign.

MEMORABLE MOMENT:
First service contract

THE PRODUCT:
Coleman lanterns

THE STORY:
William (W. C.) Coleman was a typewriter salesman
in 1900 who was partially blind. One evening he walked into a drugstore in Alabama that was illuminated by a pressurized gas lantern. It was so much brighter than the standard wick-burning oil lamps that for the first time Coleman could see well at night. He immediately quit his job selling typewriters so he could sell the gas lamps instead. Sixty sales calls later, he'd sold only two lanterns. He discovered people were so used to inferior lamps that they refused to believe Coleman's were better.

So he decided to
rent
the lanterns for $1 per month, promising that any lamps that quit working would be immediately repaired free of charge. “No light, no pay,” he said. Four days later, he had sold every lantern he had. In 1901 he bought the patents for the lamp and named it after himself. Today Coleman products are available worldwide, all because of a bright idea: the first service contract.

MEMORABLE MOMENT:
First use of the phrase “new and improved”

THE PRODUCT:
Toni Home Permanent

THE STORY:
The “permanent wave” style of curling hair was invented in 1906. And for close to 40 years, the only way a woman could get a “perm” was to go to a beauty salon and sit underneath a large, cumbersome machine. In 1943 Richard Harris became the first person to offer a “home permanent.” His product, called Noma (because it used No Machines) used chemicals to curl hair. Unfortunately, it also
damaged
hair. Harris reformulated the product and changed the name to Toni (“tony” was slang for “classy”). He came up with the slogan “new and improved” and was back in business again. Ten years after his disastrous Noma experience, Harris sold Toni to Gillette for $20 million, and his slogan went down in advertising history.

MEMORABLE MOMENT:
First premium

THE PRODUCT:
Quaker Oats

THE STORY:
As we told you in
Uncle John's All-Purpose Extra Strength Bathroom Reader
, in 1881 Henry Parsons Crowell bought a small bankrupt oat mill called the Quaker Mill in Ravenna, Ohio. In those days oats were sold in 180-pound barrels, which were kept in the back of store. Crowell decided to sell his oats in two-pound packages, advertising that his resealable cartons kept his
oats free from dirt, disease, animals, and insects. Crowell also added another new gimmick: premiums. Each box contained a free spoon or a dish. Boxtops could be redeemed for kitchen items or a radio. In 1888 Crowell, Schumacher, and five other oatmeal processors merged their companies to form the American Cereal Company, later renamed Quaker Oats. When Crowell died in 1943, he was one of the wealthiest men in Chicago, due in large measure to the fact that he was the first person to put a free prize in the bottom of a box of cereal.

MEMORABLE MOMENT:
First money-back guarantee

THE PRODUCT:
Sherwin-Williams paint

THE STORY:
Henry Sherwin and Edward Williams formed a paint company in 1866. Their paint was so cheap that it washed off in the rain and peeled in the sun. Dissatisfied customers refused to buy any more paint from them.

So they reformulated the product, improving the quality. But they couldn't convince people to buy it because of their bad reputation. So to overcome this resistance, Sherwin-Williams offered to refund cusomers' money if they weren't completely satisfied with the paint. It worked. Today Sherwin-Williams is the largest producer and distributor of paints and varnishes in the United States, and the third largest worldwide, thanks to the invention of the money-back guarantee.

In February 2000, an accountant named John Brady was using a restroom in East Memphis, Tennessee, when a man reached under the stall, grabbed his pants leg, and demanded that Brady hand over his wallet. When Brady, 55, refused, the robber, 29-year-old Oscar Reynolds, grabbed Brady's ankles and tried to pull him out of the stall. All he managed to do was tear off half of Brady's pants—the half that contained his wallet. Luckily, though, Brady's screams alerted security guards, who nabbed the thief and held him until police arrived. It took a jury just 15 minutes to convict Reynolds of robbery; a judge later gave him the maximum sentence: 10 years…in the can.

Call it doublespeak, call it spin, call it “a different version of the facts.” The truth is—it's still a lie.

T
RUST ME…
“All the waste in a year from a nuclear power plant can fit under a desk.”

SAID BY:
Presidential candidate Ronald Reagan, 1980

THE FACT:
It would have to be a pretty big desk—the average nuclear plant yields 30 tons of waste per year.

TRUST ME…
“If you don't start crying right now, I'm gonna have that dog shot!”

SAID BY:
Director Norman Taurog. Taurog said this to his 10-year-old nephew Jackie Cooper, while filming the movie
Skippy
in 1931. Cooper was having trouble crying on cue, so his dog was removed from the set and a gunshot rang out. Cooper started sobbing profusely while the cameras rolled.

THE FACT:
After Taurog was satisfied with the footage he brought the un-shot dog back on the set. He won an Oscar for best director.