Daily globe. [volume] (St. Paul, Minn.) 1878-1884, 1881-11-06
Familiar Words The Origin Of Some
Ancient Expreaiona


Troy Times.
The word "Hurrah'' is pure Slavon-
ian and is commonly heard from the
coast Dalmatia to Behring's Strait when
any one of the population living within
those limits is called Oh to give proof of
courage or valor. The origin of the
word belongs to the primitive idea that
every man who dies heroically for his
country goes straight to heaven-hu-
ray-(to paradise) and to the shock
and ardor of battle the combatants utter
the cry, as the Turks do that of "AllahI'
each animating himself by the gertrude
OF immediate recompense to forget
earth and contemn death.
"Shebang," which sometimes means
hut, sometimes low place of resort,
originated with the pupils of Yale
College, New Haven, who used it to in
dictate their rooms or hall fitted up for
some theatrical or other performance.
It never was English.
"a little bird told me- comes from
Ecclesiastes x. 20-'.For bird in the
air shall carry the voice, and that which
hath wings shall tell the matter"
Such phrases as HE was beset with
duns," "He was dunned for money
that he owed" etc., are often in use.
Horne Tooke says that dun came from
the Anglo-Saxon dynan and the Ice
landic dyn, and that ga dun is one who
has dinned another for money or any
thing else.''
Another idea is that dun comes from
the French, where ''donny" means
"give me-" and that it is demand for
something due.
Another derivation, palmer and more
matter of fact, is that in the reign of
Henry XIII, there was a noted bailiff in
the city of London named Joseph Dunn,
so extremely active, so dextrous in the
management of his rough business that
it became saying when man refused
or neglected to pay his debts, "Why
don't you Dunn him?"-that is, "Why
don't you send Dunn to arrest him?"
In due time the word came to have q
general rather than local acceptation.
Francis Bacon used it about a century
after it originated in London, as follows:
81 shall be dunning thee every day."
And Phillips said.''
"a dun, horrible master, hated by
gods and menu
Count their chickens ere (not be-
fore) they're hatched'' is taken from
Samuel Buffers "Hudibras," an anus
ing satirical poem aimed at the Puritans
of the time of Charles I. by whom was
founded the Britis! Republic of which
Oliver Cro,nwei. was lord protector for
several yea. 5 until his death in 1855
Not much (none) the worse for
weal'' was written by William Cowper.
an English poet, who was born in 1871
and died in 1900.
Though this may be play to you.
It's death to u.s. was written by Rodger
L'Estrange in 1904.
''No new thing under the sum- can
be found in Ecclesiastes 4, s.
Escaped with the skin of my teeth
is in Job 10, 20.
"Whom God wishes to destroy he
first makes mad'' is a translation from
g fragment of Euripides, the Greek po-
ct, and was first brought into notice by
being left on the table of an undergrad
nate, who shot himself in his room
nearly two centuries ago.
Coming events cast their shadows
before was literally dreamed by Thorn
as Campbell, author of 1.-The Pleasures
of Hope" who woke up one night re-
peating it and introduced it into ''Lo.
chiefs Warning" one of the most strik.
ing of his minor poems.