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1. British spellings like fibre or colour are older than American spellings like fiber or color.
The American spelling is older. Samuel Johnson, who wrote the first British dictionary, favoured Frenchified spellings that had been introduced in the 18th century. Noah Webster, who wrote the first American dictionary, stuck with older spellings Colonists brought from England in the 17th century.
2. Masochism comes from the name of novelist Leopold von Sacher-Masoch.
Sacher-Masoch (1836 – 1895) was an Austrian novelist and journalist who explored masochistic pleasure in his writing.
3. Nom de plume is a term made up by the British to sound French. It means “pen name.”
Nom de plume is a faux-french expression. The French equivalent is nom de guerre.
4. Inuit have dozens, maybe hundreds, of words for snow.
That’s a myth. Counting generously, Inuit have maybe a dozen words for snow, which is about the same as English.
5. “He” became a generic pronoun in the 18th century and this was a woman’s idea.
6. Originally “deadline” referred to a four-foot high fence that defined the no-man’s-land inside the walls of a prisoner of war camp during the American Civil War.
It's true!
7. SOS stands for Save Our Ship
In Morse code SOS (… – – – …) is used as a distress signal because it’s simple and distinctive. Save Our Ship is a reverse engineered acronym.
8. Winston Churchill said, “This is the kind of nonsense up with which I will not put.”
This quote was pinned on Churchill in 1944, but was first found in a 1942 Wall Street Journal article attributed to an unnamed writer in “a certain government department.”
9. The bra was created by Philippe de Brassière.
This is a hoax. The made-up story goes that Brassière sold the undergarments which were based on designs by German-born Otto Titzling.
10. Negligee is French for nightie.
A French woman wears a peignoir or a chemise de nuit
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