ENGLISH CORNER

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  • A Mickey Finn

    This phrase is not often heard nowadays, which is quite surprising in some ways, given how often you hear reports of people being afflicted by the effects of what it means, which is a sedative (or sometimes in the US a purgative) drug surreptitiously slipped into someone’s drink. It has very likely been supplanted by the more modern words ‘spiked’ or ‘roofied’, but it is a shame that the practice continues, even if the original phrase does not.

    It has the same kind of feeling that goes along with rhyming slang, but it’s roots are nowhere near that particular method of communication; instead it has it’s somewhat unsavoury origin in an actual person, as follows; Mickey Finn was, apparently, an Irish pickpocket who in 1896 opened the Lone Star Saloon and Palm Garden on Chicago’s Whiskey Row. About 1898 he started making a white powder, which was said to contain chloral hydrate, and would slip it into the drinks of patrons. People who imbibed it would pass out and be dragged into a back room. They would be stripped of all valuables, sometimes including their clothing, and be dumped into an alley. When they awakened they would remember nothing.

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English Corner Archive

  • Names Of Elements

  • Clutching At Straws

  • Mind your P’s and Q’s

  • One Man Went To Mow, Went To Mow A Meadow

    Sorry to disappoint you but the title might suggest that we were going to reveal the long lost origin of the nursery rhyme, but sadly this will remain lost in the mists of time; however, we are going to examine the word meadow, and it’s origin, as it leads on to a series of interesting…

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  • High Tea

    Dinner is, for most English speakers, the main meal of the day. When the word was first used (in the 12th century) it referred to a midday meal, but it did not remain so for long. By the early 16th century it had become the first meal of the day, what we would call breakfast.…

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  • Names Of Elements

    A slightly different English Corner this time, where we look at a type of name rather than a specific phrase. The Periodic Table, or table of elements, is a chart that organizes all known chemical elements by their atomic number, with rows called periods and columns called groups. This arrangement is based on the number…

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  • Names Of Elements

    A slightly different English Corner this time, where we look at a type of name rather than a specific phrase. The Periodic Table, or table of elements, is a chart that organizes all known chemical elements by their atomic number, with rows called periods and columns called groups. This arrangement is based on the number…

    Read more: Names Of Elements

  • Clutching At Straws

    It is only since the mid-19th century that we have been clutching at straws. Even more recently, the ‘grasp at straws’ version has become commonplace, especially in the USA. Prior to that, desperate people would ‘catch at a straw’. That usage of ‘catch’ was commonly used in medieval England, by which was meant ‘obtain/achieve’; for…

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  • AWOL

    As this is the first English Corner to appear in the Hua Hin Citizen Journal, we thought it quite appropriate to give a brief history and etymology of the phrase that was the name of our printed predecessor, along with the thought process and the other possibility that was considered back in the heady days…

WEIRD NEWS

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  • It’s a Gas

    Try not to laugh but scientists at the University of Maryland have developed a device that they hope will clear the air on a delicate topic – flatulence. Previous research has more often than not fallen a bit flat because of relying on self reporting by volunteers of their flatus (the scientific name for passing wind, farts or one of the many other names used for this expelling of intestinal gas), but the creation of “Smart Underwear” looks to have allowed the researchers to let rip in this field of study.

    The wearable device snaps discreetly onto any underwear and tracks intestinal gas production around the clock using electrochemical sensors, says Brantley Hall, an assistant professor at UMD who’s leading the research. “Think of it like a continuous glucose monitor, but for intestinal gas,” Hall said. The device tracks hydrogen in flatus in a much more comfortable and reliable way than previously available, and doesn’t allow anyone to “blame it on the dog”!

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Weird News Archive

  • Striped Cows, Drunk Bats and Smelly Shoes

  • “I am the Ambassador of Westarctica”

  • Danish Zoo causes outrage among small pet owners

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  • When is a bone not a bone?

    Apparently, in Ohio, when it is in a “boneless chicken wing”, according to the state’s Supreme Court. They recently ruled in a case where a diner sued a restaurant, Wings on Brookwood, after ordering boneless wings with parmesan garlic sauce, which then led to serious medical complications, and doctors found a long, thin bone had…