Thursday, October 19, 2006

inner dork: falling off the wagon

Did you know....

The term, 'on the wagon' comes from a time when the streets were watered down by a horse drawn carriage or wagon. A person who swore to give up alcohol thus had then, 'climbed onto the water wagon.' So, when a person went back to alcohol they had, 'fallen off the water wagon.'


I know. Fascinating, isn't it?

3 comments:

Jay Adkins said...

Did YOU know...


The phrase, "dead ringer" as in, "He's a dead ringer for Dick Cheney! Isn't that scary?! Now close the trunk." originally came from an earlier used definition of "ringer" to mean "substituted racehorse."

Unscrupulous racehorse owners would have a fast horse and a slow horse that are nearly identical in appearance. They'd run the slow horse until the betting odds reached the desired level, then they would substitute the ringer, who can run much faster. Dead, in this case means abrupt or exact, like in dead stop, or dead shot.

Neat, huh?

puerileuwaite said...

Jay, that was a COOL comment. I did not know. Thanks.

PG, So by extrapolation, when someone tells me they're going to "fix my wagon", are they REALLY saying that I should give up drinking? Because if that's the case, they can go screw themselves.

Party Girl said...

Jay: I did not know that one.

This is funny because I was actually going to post about the other kind of dead ringer. Where many people use to be buried alive and the whole, bell from the grave thing.

Good one!

P: I'm with you on that one. I would never make it.

I like my booze.

I'm a boozey kinda gal.