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Easel
The word easel, to denote the wooden frame which painters use to hold the canvas, is of Dutch origin. The Dutch word ezel literally means ‘donkey´, and the idea is that of a donkey carrying a load. (Flavell & Flavell 3 2005: 179 )
Eat humble pie
If you eat humble pie, you must admit that you were wrong or perhaps even humiliate yourself: “If you've made a fool of yourself, you must eat humble pie.” This idiom has a curious origin. Actually, is was not humble pie, but umble pie, i.e. a pie which was filled with the entrails of a deer, and one which was considered appropriate for the common people, while the finer folks ate venison proper. As those who ate the umble were humble , i.e. not so refined, the idiom gradually acquired a new form. (Flavell & Flavell 3 2000: 79-80)
Egg
An episode retold time and again in histories of English is Caxton's anecdote of a sailor who enters a kind of inn near the Thames Estuary and asks the landlady for some "egges" The landlady says she does not know what he is talking about, she does not speak any French. The sailor gets angry saying he does not speak French either. It takes another man to intervene and explain that the sailor means "eyren". Then the woman understands him. The episode is to illustrate the difference between the landlady's southern and the sailor's northern speech, although the misunderstanding should perhaps not be taken too seriously. Both words were still in use, and it is not very likely that the landlady was not familiar with the northern form. It is more probable that Caxton, the printer, wanted to point out how difficult it was for him to choose one form and not another (cf. Crystal 2005: 207-8). Two words only mentioned in passing are equally important in this episode: the landlady is referred to as the goodwife (good wyfe), and the sailor asks for some mete (meat ), especially eggs.
Electricity
The ancient Greeks used to collect amber, for purely decorative purposes. They noticed that, when the amber was rubbed, it had the power to attract light material such as feathers. In his groundbreaking work De Magnate, the English scientist William Gilbert, physician to Elizabeth I. and James I., demonstrated that substances other than amber had the same quality. He coined the word electricus, and he derived it form electrum , the Latin word for – amber! (Flavell & Flavell 3 2005: 166-7)
Entrepreneur
As George W. Bush, brilliant as ever, once said to Tony Blair on the topic of the decline of the French economy: “The problem with the French is that they don’t have a word for “entrepreneur”." (Ward 2003: 87)
