Do You Know What It Really Means to Be Piss-poor? by Brook

It’s been a while since I’ve seen the old email hoaxLife in the 1500sfloating about. A series of false etymologies of common terms, the hoax dates back to 1999, and I spent an entire chapter debunking it inWord Myths. But yesterday my brother sent me a link to a version that popped up on an internet site recently. (I’m not providing the link because I don’t want to drive traffic to the site.) For the most part, it’s a word-for-word repetition of the old hoax, but it does add one new termpiss poor. The site claims the phrase comes from the practice of poor people collecting and selling their urine for use in tanning animal hides, and that those who were really, really poor,didn’t have a pot to piss in. One out of 25 coffins were that way and they realized they had still been burying people alive.

Today, a dead ringer is a “look-alike.” Saved by the bellmeans “Whew, you narrowly missed some nastiness! ” And, the graveyard shift is the red-eye, overnight work schedule that flips your day on its head. Open ox carts were used to transport convicts to this site from Newgate Prison, and, according to the e-mailed piece, condemned prisoners making this journey were offered one last drink as the cart stopped at a pub along the way. Since there was nothing to stop things from falling into the house they would just try to clean up a lot. But this posed a real problem in the bedroom where bugs and other droppings from animals could really mess up your nice clean bed, so they found if they would make beds with big posts and hang a sheet over the top it would prevent that problem. That’s where those beautiful big 4 poster beds with canopies came from.

The etymologies of the phrases ‘One for the road’ and ‘On the wagon.’

Tomatoes are not native to Europe and thus were not spread to that continent until after the Spanish colonization of the Americas. Although tomatoes were first cultivated in Britain in the late 16th century, it wasn’t until about the mid-18th century that they became common fare in that region. The slowness of their adoption as a staple food was not due to discovery that tomatoes were acidic and that lead from pewter plates therefore leached into them, however. The six Ps had been drilled into him over and over again. Houses had thatched roofs-thick straw-piled high, with no wood underneath. It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals lived in the roof.

In those old days, they cooked in the kitchen with a big kettle that always hung over the fire. By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it.

The current state of research suggests that it may have been invented during the Second World War, because the first examples in print date from 1946. Though it is still classed as low slang by dictionaries, its mildly unpleasant associations have become blunted by accounting equation and familiarity. It certainly might be a folk etymology, except that the piece is in its intention merely a mischievous attempt to deceive its readers.

Top Piss Poor Planning Quotes

Some surmise that people in humble circumstances often had to eat umble pie, thus suggesting an explanation for the word-swap. The most popular origin rumor for this one is that American Civil War soldiers literally chewed on bullets while army doctors cut off badly wounded, unsalvageable body parts. However, documents don’t exist to back this up, and in all likelihood, early forms of anesthesia would’ve probably been used. This explanation smacks of an improbable attempt to derive an explanation after the fact. Likewise, people who quit drinking hooch don’t limit themselves to only water, so the saying could just as easily have been about milk or lemonade. “They started opening these coffins and found some had scratch marks on the inside. One out of 25 coffins were that way …”

Sentence of death opportunity to escape as well as to indulge in one last tipple. Precious little by way of kindness was bestowed upon those under sentence of death; they were jeered at by the crowd on their way to the scaffold, and their hangings were a source of entertainment to the thousands who gathered to watch them die. The Royal Navy has a derivative of this phrase, “One for the gangway.” A later version of this piece was prefaced with a putative explanation of origins of the term “piss poor,” which we have covered in a separate article. The earliest documented uses of the phrase “graveyard shift” dates from the late 1800s, not the 1500s, and simply references work shifts that took place in the middle of the night and early morning hours, a time of day when work environments could be dark, quiet, and a bit spooky.

Where Did “Piss Poor” and Other Phrases Come From?

Translation Office 3000 is an advanced accounting tool for freelance translators and small agencies. TO3000 easily and seamlessly integrates with the business life of professional freelance translators. Cash on-hand – non-liquid, tied-up in the land/crops/livestock. Otherwise it’s hard to distinguish between the likely origin and “facts” of the type “Eskimo has 400 words for snow”…

A list purported to offer the origins of numerous common English-language sayings dating to the 1500s. Enjoy reading and share 16 famous quotes about Piss Poor Planning with everyone. The only thing they had on set to eat were some piss-poor sandwiches and jugs of tap water. Food with high acid content caused some of the lead to leach onto the food, causing lead poisoning and death. They “didn’t have a pot to piss in” and were the lowest of the low. When my wife first came to the USA, we first visited my mom in Ohio.

Wooden trenchers that could hold both solid and liquid foods came into vogue, with some having separate hollows to house diners’ salt. Wooden trenchers were typically washed after every use, though. Although today’s brides carry flowers simply because it is now the custom to do so, at one time bridal bouquets were symbols of sexuality and fertility. Covering up anyone’s bad smell played no part in why this custom came into being. Although the modern practice of full-immersion bathing was a long way off in the 1500s , people did still “bathe” in the sense of attempting to clean themselves as best they could with the resources at hand. “Most people got married in June. Why? They took their yearly bath in May, so they were till smelling pretty good by June, although they were starting to smell, so the brides would carry a bouquet of flowers to hide their b.o.”

Piss Poor Planning Quotes

This entry might claim a bit of legitimacy, as even some cooking practices of today call for tossing whatever’s on hand into the stewpot, with new ingredients added each day to whatever is left over. French bouillabaisse, for instance, is sometimes made this way, as are any number of “peasants’ stews.” “In the kitchen they would cook over the fire, they had a fireplace in the kitchen/parlor, that was seldom used and sometimes in the master bedroom. They had a big kettle that always hung over the fire and every day they would light the fire and start adding things to the pot.

• After eating off the trencher with worms they would get “trench mouth.” If you were going traveling and wanted to stay at an Inn they usually provided the bed but not the board.
• They realized if they were too slow about it, the person would wake up.
• One out of 25 coffins were that way and they realized they had still been burying people alive.
• Folk etymologists have widely circulated the rumor that the idiom piss-poor comes from a time in history when urine was used to tan leather.

“Most people married young, like at the age of 11 or 12.” Anne Hathaway’s home was a 3 bedroom house with a small parlor, which was seldom used , kitchen, and no bathroom. We were piss-poor growing up, so each one of my siblings and I understood the value of a hard-earned paycheck by the time we left school.

As the winter wore on they would just keep adding it and adding it until when you opened the door it would all start slipping outside. So they put a piece of wood at the entry way, a “thresh hold”. Sometimes knock the imbibers out for a couple of days. Someone walking along the road would take them for dead and prepare them for burial. They were laid out on the kitchen table for a couple of days and the family would gather around and eat and drink and wait and see if they would wake up.

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“They never washed their boards and a lot of times worms would get into the wood.” As stated above, the reeds used on floors were typically changed daily. Besides, who ever heard of calling reeds, rushes, or sheaves of grass “threshes”? One threshes plants to separate stalk from seed, but no part of the plant is called the “thresh.” The saying might have derived from the obsolete French word catadoupe, meaning waterfall or cataract. By evoking the image of cats and dogs fighting in a riotous, all-out manner, it expresses the fury of a sudden downpour.

The pendulum soon swung the other way, with the coming of a “little ice age” at the beginning of the 13th century. A perfect example of such a union was the 1499 marriage between Catherine of Aragon and Arthur, eldest son of Henry VII of England. They were married by proxy in their native lands when Arthur was 14 and Catherine was 15. Catherine did not arrive in England until 1501, when the young royals were wed again, this time in person. Although controversy exists as to whether they might have had sexual congress before Arthur’s death in 1502, if they had done so, they accomplished it by sneaking behind everybody’s back.

In the kitchen they would cook over the fire, they had a fireplace in the kitchen/parlor, that was seldom used and sometimes in the master bedroom. They had a big kettle that always hung over the fire and every day they would light the fire and start adding things to the pot. The combination and the alliteration of the two phrases probably helpedpiss poorsurvive while its other early counterparts have not become part of the lexicon. Every day they lit the fire and added things to the pot.

The long-gone French public pissoirs were given the name vespasiennes as a direct link to him. Vespasian’s son is said to have objected to the disgusting origin of the tax revenues, to which in legend his father replied pecunia non olet, money doesn’t smell, a tag that from time to time is still employed to argue that money isn’t tainted by its origins. Some so feared the possibility of live burial that they left instructions for special tests to be performed on their bodies to make sure they were actually dead. Surgical incisions, the application of boiling hot liquids, touching red-hot irons to their flesh, stabbing them through the heart, or even decapitation were all specified at different times as a way of making sure these people didn’t wake up six feet under. Although an admonition to “Kutt the upper crust for your soverayne” can be found in a 1460 work, the term ‘upper crust’ didn’t come to be used figuratively to refer to persons of the higher classes until the 19th century. Many have speculated that the phrase “upper crust” originated with a custom of slicing the choice top portion off a loaf and presenting it to the highest-ranking guests at the table, but there is no documentary evidence supporting this as the phrase’s actual origin.

The figurative expression refers to something undesirable or shameful that’s kept secret to avoid potentially ruining one’s respectability. The expression piss-poor, meaning of “extremely inferior or disappointing quality or rating,” is much more recent, dating to the 1940s. Piss began to be attached to other words during the twentieth century to intensify their meaning.

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people. Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married. Two Southern Ladies that will share tips, recipes, stories and even a few secrets. Review native language verification applications submitted by your peers. Reviewing applications can be fun and only takes a few minutes. You can request verification for native languages by completing a simple application that takes only a couple of minutes.