“Factotum” first appeared in the Jack Black classic School of Rock. It since graduated to a movie of its own, starring Matt Dillon. That was the tipping point for me to look it up.

noun
1. a person, as a handyman or servant, employed to do all kinds of work around the house.
2. any employee or official having many different responsibilities.

I’ve been spending a lot of time in the chemistry library lately. There’s a dictionary there which apparently hasn’t been used in the last month. How do I know? Because “redingote” is the feature word every day.

If I didn’t learn anything else in the library, at least I’ve got redingote in my vocabulary.

Mel and I were talking about the word “whippersnapper” the other day. She thought the term was “whimpersnapper,” which apparently is a common mistake. After getting her straightened out on that point, I was wondering what the origin of this word is. It seems natural that “whippersnapper” would be derived from “whipsnapper”, but it’s unclear how that came to be used by elders referring to unruly youth.

There seem to be two opinions on the matter. Dictionary.com claims that it’s a derivative of “snipper-snapper,” but I haven’t found any mention of this term independent of whippersnapper. The Online Etymology Dictionary offers both snipper-snapper and whip-snapper as precursors, but their relationship to the meaning still doesn’t make sense to me.

Ok, this is something I probably should have been able to figure out without the help of the internets, but today, PBR said “niner,” and I started wondering why pilot types say nine that way. “Niner” is the pronunciation of nine in the unambiguous NATO phonetic alphabet (Alpha, Bravo, Charlie, etc.). Other numbers with designations other than their english pronunciations are three (“tree”) and five (“fife”).

The Wikipedia page has many more interesting facts about the NATO phonetic alphabet.

Everyone knows that soccer is football everywhere else in the world, but where did the word come from? It’s clearly not derived from “football.” According to the Online Etymology Dictionary, soccer was sometimes called association football to distinguish it from rugby football. The abbreviation “Assoc.” eventually transformed into “socca,” then “socker,” before “soccer” appeared in 1895, and it apparently stuck.

If you ask me, we should go back to “socca,” suckas!

Moe just described Edna Krabappel’s hair as “gossamer.” Here’s the definition from dictionary.com:

noun
soft sheer gauzy fabric; something delicate, light, or flimsy.

adjective
sheer, light, delicate, or tenuous

That’ll learn ya!

Most people think ‘trebuchet’ is only a font, and I was operating under the assumption that it was a word made up by Microsoft to describe something classic/old-worldy. However, it is a real word, as I discovered in Collapse.

noun
A medieval catapult for hurling heavy stones.

For more info on these catapults, including plans for building your own, see trebuchet.com.

We know what a Jim Dandy is and who Jim Dandy is. But where did the term come from?

Etymology Online suggests that is could be derived from the 1840s song “Dandy Jim of Caroline,” written by Silas Sexton Steel. I’m not sure what ol’ Silas’ was known for back in the day, but google reports 5 hits for the gentleman, four of which credit his writing of “Dandy Jim of Caroline” and the other providing the lyrics to another minstrel song, “Kiss Me Quick and Go.” Of course, JD was also featured musically in LaVern Baker & The Gliders’ 1956 classic “Jim Dandy.” The Virginian Quarterly Review and this message board thread offer more commentary on the term.

How’s that for some learning?