Tuesdays with Muerte

Image:  Dangling Shoes from Pixabay. The phrase "waiting for the other shoe to drop" originates from early 20th-century New York City tenements, where thin floors made it possible to hear upstairs neighbors preparing for bed by dropping one shoe, and then anxiously awaiting the second thud. Over time, the phrase evolved from this literal experience to its current idiomatic meaning: to anticipate an inevitable, often negative, event or outcome.

Hunky-Dory Hunky-dory  is a term that means things are safe, all good, or going well. E.g., "Everything is hunky-dory" But where did the phrase come from? Adobe Stock The  Online Etymology Dictionary  claims that the phrase  hunky-dory  may have originated from the Middle Dutch word  honc , meaning "place of refuge, hiding place." Honc  then evolved into the Dutch word  honk , which was used in a Frisian variant of the game of tag (as in guten tag ) to mean the “goal” or “homebase.” The Dutch took this word (and presumably the game, too) overseas from New Amsterdam to New York. The first recorded usage of the term was around the 1840s in New York. Once the children's game hit New York, honk  may have evolved into the slang term  hunk  ("in a safe position," 1847). Perhaps hunk evolved into the cutsie derivative  hunkey  ("safe, all right, satisfactory," 1861). In other words, to achieve ...

Winning after a clutch penalty kick, Adobe Stock I love the word clutch , especially when it describes a person winning a game or accomplishing a difficult activity (such as being the only remaining player on one's team against several opponents). When I hear the word "clutch," multiple meanings come to mind simultaneously: Etymologically, clutch  comes from the Middle English clitch , which means to "close the hand," or "grasp something tightly" which reminds me of cinching the win (like a horse saddle strap), leaving no room for escape. In Old English, clyccan  means "crook" or "bend," which adds a new dimension to the word's meaning. A clutch play can be illustrated by a shepherd's crook, illustrating a sudden 180-degree change in the momentum of the game. In the vernacular, I imagine a bird of prey's clawed clutch , unexpectedly (or luckily) swooping in and snatching victory away from one's opponents. Clutch migh...

The Itsy Bitsy Spider: A Fan Theory I just learned about water sprouts . These bad boys love to grow on fruit trees. They provide the perfect structural support for spiderwebs. Fruit farmers are all too familiar with them because they qualify as "deranged wood" and need to be regularly pruned. However, as we will explore later, they can also serve as powerful metaphors. It reminded me of the familiar nursery rhythm "The Itsy Bitsy Spider" (based on the original 1910 folksong, "Spider Song"). I wondered if the song included the lyric water spout at some point in its evolution . The first publication of the song involved a spider climbing and being washed from a web . "Oh, the blooming, bloody spider went up the spider web , The blooming, bloody rain came down and washed the spider out, The blooming, bloody sun came out and dried up all the rain, And the blooming, bloody spider came up the web again." Originating in Southern California during the...