American idle…

I feel as though I should apologise.

I won’t of course, I rarely do, but if I was the type to do so, this would be the time at which I’d be doing it.

Right, that’s that out of the way, now let’s move on to what I’m definitely not apologising for.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I am slightly hooked on Facebook (although I’m having so much fun doing this, I’m neglecting my fb duties more and more of late), and one of the things I enjoy about it most is the ability to make friends with people that you would never have met in normal life.
In my case, this, for the most part, seems to mean Americans.

In my dealings with our US cousins, I have frequently found myself with the opportunity to say things like “I’ve heard of those on American TV shows, what exactly are they?”
For instance, how many times have you seen people in US TV shows order “biscuits and gravy” in a diner? Always puzzled me, that one. Then it occurs to me to ask one of my new friends across the water, and I find “biscuits” are in fact a type of heavy savoury scone mix, often eaten with sausage meat. With gravy.
For breakfast.

Now, I know that I could look all this sort of stuff up on the net, but when I see one of my friends, Max – a maple syrup producer, homesteader, and fixer of pretty much anything mechanical from what I gather – post, "Sloppy Joe is actually pretty good for breakfast.” then you just have to ask don’t you?
Turns out that it’s almost exactly what we would call a Bolognese sauce.

Once again, two countries separated by a common language.

Anyway, my point is, I may have been slightly unfair when I accused the Americans of having stolen acquired most of their language from the various settlers to the New World, instead of relying on the native dialects of the indigenous population.
For a start, the very word we use to describe them, Yankees, derives from the native American word yengees or yanghis, which was used to describe English and French colonists. Dutch settlers picked up on the word as soon as they arrived, and used it to describe all Americans.

They have also given us several common phrases that we use today, and to avoid being collared by a Lynch mob for not giving credit for their contribution, and being forced to Eat crow, before I Knock off work for the day, and this post Peters out, I will attempt to explain.

“That’ll teach the limey bastard to complain about our spelling”

Back in the 1780’s, two US military men, both called Lynch, were having trouble with outlaws and bandits in their respective, neighbouring states. So they made an agreement that they should form a group of men – dubbed “Lynch’s mob” – who would bring these law-breakers to justice.
Corporal (Corporeal in those days), not capital punishment, would then be administered, such as beatings, floggings or horsewhippings etc.
The term to “lynch” somebody, or to have a “lynching” were only applied later on, usually to the mass hangings, by mobs, of mostly black, innocent victims.

(In fifty years, between 1880-1930, ten states alone recorded 2,805 lynchings. 2500 victims were black)

I had always assumed that the American term “Eating crow” was similar in origin to the british “Humble pie” (Literally, a pie made from the left-overs and offal, by the cooks in kitchens of large houses, to feed the staff)
But it is far more amusing than that.

Now serving at Heston’s Little Chef

During a temporary armistice in the Anglo-American war of the early 19th century, a US soldier inadvertently crossed the English lines whilst out hunting crows.
Some smartass English officer heard about this and went to confront the man. He approached him unarmed, and in a friendly, conversational way, congratulated him on his haul of birds.
Having gained his trust, the officer asked to try shooting for himself with the American’s rifle.
Of course, immediately he got hold of the unfortunate soldier’s weapon, he turned it on him, forcing him to take a bite out of a dead crow, as a punishment for trespassing on british territory.

The story does, however, continue. Once he was satisfied that the US soldier was sufficiently defeated, the typically arrogant English officer gave him back his rifle, at which point the amazed American forced him, at gunpoint, to eat the rest of the crow.

“Knocking off for the day” is another phrase with it’s roots in a dark period of US history. During the days of slavery in the Deep South, the slave workers were transported between plantations on river boats. When it was time for the man beating out the rowing rhythm to change shifts, he would include a particular beat, to indicate it was time for the next man to take over.

And finally, a saying that is due to our friends across the pond’s propensity for creative spelling.

In the 1800’s, during the Californian gold rush, gunpowder was commonly used to blast out seams of gold ore.
One of the constituent compounds of gunpowder is saltpetre, but the Americans spell it SaltPETER. So when a gold mine had come to the end of it’s useful life, it was said to have “Petered out”

Much like this post…

Incidentally, should you wish to try biscuits and gravy, go here.