When we talk about dying, we sometimes refer to it as to "kick the bucket". In old times when a pig was killed and butchered,
there was a regular process. The pig was whacked on the head, then skewered through the hind legs between the Achilles
tendons and leg bones, and hung upside down, dangling from the skewer. Then its neck was slit so it would bleed to death,
and the dismemberment proceeded. The beam it was skewered on was called a bucket. I haven't found where the skewer beam got
the bucket name. A more modern meaning of the word means a curved shape, as a scoop. Only in recent times has it come to
mean a pail or container. The curved shaped blades of an undershot water wheel were more efficient than flat blades to
produce water power. They were called buckets. Jet engine designers today still call the turbine blades of their jet engines
"buckets".
All too often the pig would recover from being whacked on the head before dying, and start kicking and squealing.
Kicking at the skewer through its hind legs, the bucket. Thus our phase to "kick the bucket." I'm serious folks, I'm not
making this up.
An acre is 43,560 square feet. In more understandable terms, it is about a football field, the gold standard of area measure for most Americans. The snooty upper class might say it in tennis or squash courts, measures I'll forgo. (A football field is in fact about 10% larger than an acre.) The original definition of an acre was the amount of land that a man could plow in one day with a team of oxen. "Acre" comes from the Greek word agros, meaning "field", from where we also get the word "agriculture". The metric measure is the hector, 10,000 square meters, two and a half acres, about two and a quarter football fields. In the US and Canada that is. Otherwise in the rest of the world, football means soccer.
The game of football originated in England about a thousand years ago. (A variation, rugby, is a more recent derivation
from a school for boys in Rugby, England.)
A game of football was played between two villages that might be five miles apart. All able bodied men might participate.
The ball was often the head of a recently defeated enemy. The only objective was to get the head (ball) into the opponent's
village square, it did not matter how. There were no rules. A game might last for days. Many people were killed. At one
point the King of England outlawed football, because it interfered with what he considered a more important activity,
archery practice.
Jesus Christ is known for throwing the money changers out of the temple. It never seems to be mentioned that money changers provided an important service. But even in ancient times to no surprise, a money changer would sometimes cheat a customer. If a money changer was found to be dishonest, their short legged table, their place of business, would be smashed apart. He was then jailed and possibly executed. The short legged table they worked from was called a "bancus", literally a bench. "Ruptis" means "to break". Thus our term "bankrupt", to 'break the bench.'.....The word 'bench' literally means a barrier. A judge in a court of law might tell the defendant not to lean on the bench. The next time you order a beer at a tavern, you might consider that the "bar" you are served over is short for "barrier".
From my earlier life I remember automobiles that we called station wagons. These were cars with elongated passenger compartments. They had a lot more internal space, but significantly had additional seats, including fold up ones. In my youth I never had a clue why they were called station wagons, but I always wondered why. We might as well have called them stage coaches. Such always made so little sense to me as a kid. But recently I was watching the Antiques Road Show on Public Television, and after a near lifetime stumbled onto the answer. It was the extra seats.
In the 1800s the new steam powered railroad trains picked up and delivered passengers at the train stations. Another service arose to fill a further need. A horse drawn wagon like a buckboard, with seats in the back instead of cargo space, would go to the railroad station, pick up de-training passengers and take them to their final destination, like their homes. As well as take passengers from their homes to the train station for their "flight", as we might say today. The vehicles* were thus called "station wagons". The early new fangled automobiles that had extra seats in the back, originally used for the same purpose, were thus also called "station wagons". The term has persisted until we shortened it to just "wagon" today, whether it has rear fold up seats or not.
About stage coaches. These were a staple of western movies, and they lasted into the 1900s until replaced by autos and busses. The first automobile to cross the US was a 1903 Winton. It had a rough time. There were no gas stations or car repair shops. They bought whatever fuel the engine would burn from hardware stores, farmers, or anywhere they could; naphtha, benzene, cleaning fluid, alcohol, etc., and only sometimes gasoline. Gasoline was much a waste product of petroleum then. It was too volatile and dangerous to use as a heating or illuminating fuel, and was not even a very good solvent.
When the Winton had its first major breakdown, it had fractured some engine piston rod bolts. It got replacement parts by a daily stage coach service in only a few days. The Winton auto company, realizing the marketing value of this traveler to complete its journey, offered its support to directly help it complete the trip. The Winton owner, having done well so far, and not wanting to become a client, declined. He still relied on the stage coach lines to deliver parts as needed, which the Winton Company would mostly have had to do anyway.
The stage coach was the Federal Express or UPS of the day. In many places it was a regular daily service. The Post Office relied on it, as did many businesses and financial institutions, moving money, documents, and goods, as well as people. As a regular service it could be said to be 'staged', that is regularly scheduled. And horses did pull the coach. Thus "stage coach". One reason they lasted so long, was that they ran on six horsepower, and the free fuel, grass, grew everywhere. I believe that history does not do justice for this early service. We still rely several more modern forms of it. Our country does it rather well, a major reason the US is a world power.
"Testimony" is an interesting word. You may not believe how we got it.
It should be noted that for most of human history, it was only the men that engaged in civic and governing activities.
The men did plenty of un-civic activities too. But the women mostly did kids and families, and gathering and fixing food
and stuff. The men did all the governing activities until recently. Women were not previously allowed in the men's
activities.
There originated a standard in a court of law in Rome, that when a witness took the stand to give testimony, he took an
oath to tell the truth. In later Rome he swore the oath by raising one hand while placing the other on the Bible.
These were only the men of course. But this was only after the Bible existed and Christianity had become the state religion.
Before that the Romans swore to tell the truth by raising one hand and grabbing their testicles with the other. We don't
quite do it this way today.
It was a long time after Jesus Christ, before the Bible in near its present form, even existed. (Bible, from an ancient word meaning "book".) The Romans distrusted and often persecuted Christians until 325 AD, when Emperor Constantine declared that Christianity would be tolerated. Christianity wasn't formally adopted by the Roman Empire as the state religion until 390 AD, thus the Roman Catholic Church, the term we still use today (catholic means universal). It was only sometime after 390 AD that when swearing to tell the truth, the practice of placing one hand on the Bible rather than one's testicles was adopted.
Roman law extends from their twelve tables of 409 BC. It is a major source of our present law, as well as the word "testimony". Until sometime after 390 AD, when a Roman was to give evidence in a court of law, he swore to tell the truth by raising one hand, and grabbing his testicles with the other. This is where we get the word "testimony". The New Testament. The Old Testament. To testify. To give testimony. You grabbed your balls and swore to tell the truth, the whole truth, or anybody that does. They never tell you about this in school, but this is where we get the words 'testament', "testify', 'testimony', etc. Much of history you were taught, that you think you know, is trash. ("Trash", a Scandinavian word meaning "to tear".)