The Answerbag writes that arn makers found that dying wool before spinning it into yarn caused the fibers to better retain the color.  A popular comparison was to teaching children early to influence them in ways that would stay with them throughout their lives. The expression found its way into politics when Daniel Webster accused some Democrats of having attitudes as unyielding as the dye in wool. Of course, Democrats began to use the term to brand their opponents as unreasonably stubborn.

I am well aware of the tooth fairy tradition, because we have grandchildren ranging in age from five to twelve. Straight Dope observes that teething rituals date to ancient times when witches were thought to use pieces of the body to cast curses. There were differing methods of preventing this. Some cultures threw the tooth up to the sun, threw it over a roof, or it could be fed to an animal such as a mouse. The tooth  sometimes also could be buried, hidden, swallowed or burned. The reason a mouse (or perhaps a rat) was fed the tooth was the belief that the new teeth coming in would resemble those of the animal, and the teeth of mice were considered to strong and sharp. There was a French fairy tale about a “tooth mouse,” and that might have been the origin. The tooth fairy exchanging the lost tooth for something of value didn’t become fashionable until the early 1900s. Esther Arnold wrote a play called The Tooth Fairy in 1927 and Lee Rogow published a children’s story called The Tooth Fairy in 1949. The tooth fairy typically left a dime in the 1950s and two dollars by the 1990s. In my experience inflation must have really kicked in since then.

I think my favorite part of the write up in Straight Dope (proving, I expect, how easily I am entertained) is the ending. “And that’s the tooth, the whole tooth, and nothing but the tooth.”

A grandson asked about the origin of this expression, because he apparently has heard it often on the Military Channel. The Word Detective appeals that the phase not be shouted as a silly prank and the serious history of the expression begs that it only be used when appropriate. Underground coal miners have used the expression as a warning of a planned detonation since early in the twentieth century, and mining laws of several states require the warning. Military bomb disposal teams adopted the expression in the 1940s, and it continues to be used by the military to warn that a detonation is about to occur.

This is the second time that I will post an acronym that isn’t really an acronym (the first being “TIP”). The story commonly told is that wealthy passengers would book ship berths “Port Out, Starboard Home.” I’ve heard and read that the advantage to changing sides of the ship was to be in the shade both directions or because the views were better in some circumstances. Regardless, the word was being used long before the acronym craze began. There are several competing ideas as to the origin of the word. It apparently is thought to have been used as English slang. I decided the most interesting possible origin was that Edward FitzGerald had a fisherman friend named Murray Posh, and he was described as a “swell in an 1892 novel.” Apparently posh then began to be substituted for swell.

Our son had a semester of college in New Zealand, and he was taught there that the word was an acronym for “To Insure Prompt Service.” There are two problems with that. The first is that the practice of using initials to form acronyms didn’t predate the 20th century, and records of using the word goes back to 1610. The other problem is that “ensure” and not “insure” would be grammatically correct. (I’ve never seen “teps.”) There’s evidence that tipping with money goes back at least the Romans it could just as easily date to the invention of money. Records of employers giving tips to servants dates to the 1700s. Snopes declares that the description of the word as an acronym is false.

I just posted an article titled “Economic Recovery versus Red Tape” on the blog link on this site, and it brought this expression to mind. Expressing astonishment about absurdity by saying “Great Scott!” is a logical reaction to reading how government regulations impede projects that create jobs while the government is saying private enterprises need to create more jobs. The origin of the expression is apparently not certain, but there are several hints that it refers to an actual person from the Civil War era. World Wide Words concludes that the person was probably General Winfield Scott, who was too large in his later years (300 pounds) to ride a horse.