Straight dope.com explains that ancient Saxons called the clay used to make household items, including jars used for storing money, “pygg,” which was pronounced “pig.” By the 18th Century it became common for the “pygg jars” to be cast in the form of a pig. The bank part of the term is not as simple as it seems. Bank originally meant “bench,” and money lenders worked at benches.

This expression is used to describe anything or anyone who has declined with the passage of time. The term originated in the Middle Ages when table scraps were tossed in a big pot to make stew. Main courses from a big meal were thus demoted to leftovers, and gone to pot means going downhill.

This expression is a companion to a review about Homage to Catalonia written by George Orwell. Orwellian describes situations or conditions destructive to a free society. It refers to control of society by propaganda, surveillance, misinformation, and lies. His ideas about personal freedom were developed when he was a British administrator in Burma, and he was fascinated with the effect of colonialism on individuals. Orwellian can mean many things, to include invasion of personal privacy, government control of daily life, and revising history in favor of the government’s interpretation. My favorite is the use of a euphemism to describe an agency that is the opposite of the actual purpose of the agency. For example, the department overseeing the waging of war is called “Ministry of Peace” or “Ministry of Defense.”

There is speculation in straightdope.com that the word “buck” was used in poker games where a token was placed in front of the dealer, and the token was often a knife made of buck horn. It was said, perhaps tongue in cheek, that when it came time for the dealer to surrender the duty to the next player “the buck was passed.” It is plausible that the term was short for buckskin, which was a common medium of exchange. It was written in 1748 that a cask of whiskey was sold to Indians for 5 bucks. “The transition to dollars seems only natural.” The term “sawbuck” for the ten dollar bill has no relation. The old ten dollar bills were denominated with the Roman numeral Xs. “The Xs looked like the X-shaped arms of benches sawyers used to hold up logs for cutting.”

Charles Earle Funk’s book, “A Hog on Ice & Other Curious Expressions,” attributes the expression to royalty or other dignitaries being mounted on the heavy charger horses used in battle or tournaments. The term was first recorded in the fourteenth century, and referred to a person selecting a large horse for a pageant as evidence of their high rank. The expression remains, and means someone is pretentiously and arrogantly demonstrating superiority.

Urbandictionary.com defines the term to mean alcohol illegally made, sold, or transported. Several sources describe that the term originated with cowboys concealing a bottle of liquor in their tall boots. There was a show titled “Whiskey” on the History channel that had an example of a different method of “bootlegging” alcohol in the Prohibition era. Bottles were made with a rounded back, which allowed then to be strapped onto women’s legs and concealed under their long and billowing dresses.