Origins/Myths

Kangaroo
Word myths often come with great stories, such as this one: When Captain Cook traveled to Australia a few hundred years ago, he saw funny looking animals jumping around and asked the Aborigines what the animal was called. He heard what sounded like "kangaroo." He later
asked another group of Aborigines and heard "kangaroo" once again. So, he named the animal the kangaroo. Later on, other settlers discovered that "kangaroo" actually meant "I don't understand you." So, the Aborigines were not giving the name of the animal; they were actually
saying "I don't understand you."
Well, this theory stood for the next few hundred years until 1970, when a scholar finally found the original Aboriginal tribe and discovered that the animal name was, in fact, kangaroo.
Pub. 10/23/08

SOS
SOS is the universal distress code in Morse code. It is three short stops followed by three long stops and three short stops once again, and it looks like this: ...---... It spells out SOS, so people believe that it stands for "save our ship" or "save our souls," but in all actuality, it stands for
nothing. The Germans came up with the code as it sounded very different from normal messages and it was also easy to remember.

R.I.P.
R.I.P. is commonly believed to stand for "Rest in Peace," but in the initials stand for requiescat in pace, which is Latin for: "May he (or she) rest in peace." It's just a coincidence that the English translation also has the same initials.

Hooker
Many people believe that hookers got their name from General Fighting Joe Hooker, who made sure that there were plenty of prostitutes around to keep his men happy during the U.S. Civil War. As a result, people started calling these women "hookers." The problem with this theory is
that the women were already called hookers long before Hooker's time.
In old England, thieves would steal things from open windows using hooks and were therefore called hookers; because the women of the night were also good at "hooking" their men in, they were also called hookers.

OK
You certainly use this term all the time, but do you have any idea what it stands for? The most common theories are that it stands for "Oll Korrect," where President Andrew Jackson was a bad speller and would abbreviate "All Correct" on papers as OK, thinking it was spelled that way. Another theory is that it stands for "zero killed" from the first World War. It actually comes from the O.K. Club, who were supporters of the Democratic president Martin Van Buren's 1840
re-election bid. Their club was called "Old Kinderhook," which was shortened to the "O.K. Club." They chanted that "O.K. is all right, all correct." And that's how OK made it to the mainstream.

F***
The "F" word is one of the most useful words in the English language and it also has one of the most commonly mistaken origins. Many people think that in old England, in order to control population growth, the king issued an order that required couples to have his permission to
fornicate. Once a couple received permission, they would hang a sign on their door with the letters F.U.C.K., which was an acronym for "Fornication Under Consent of the King," then they would go at it. This is completely false, as people never had to get permission from the king to have sex.
Another theory is that criminals convicted of sexual crimes were forced to wear signs on their clothing with the letters F.U.C.K., which was an acronym for "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge." As it turns out, acronyms didn't even exist before the 20th century, so you can pretty much dismiss any acronym theory you ever hear. The "F" word simply comes from the German word ficken/fucken, which means to "strike."

Even with these word origin myths, there are many more fun word origins to discover, such as that of the word "heroin," which was actually a brand name for a children's cough syrup. And "lesbian" actually comes from an island called Lesbos, where a Greek poet once wrote about womanly love.