Money Opportunity

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

Compile a dictionary of expressions that are incorrect.

TOO OLD TO CUT THE MUSTARDS is wrong, TOO OLD TO CUT THE MUSTER is correct.

BRAN NEW is the term you want. Bran husks were a common crate filler long ago, What was bran new had bran dust on it.

GENDER is the word that refers to masculine/feminine impersonation via costume and cosmetic action. But clothes don't make the man.

 

[ishtat]

There are at least 3 suggestions available as to the likely origin of the expression " to cut the mustard" Your preference is as plausible as any other but no more so.

"All things newe, brande newe" John Foxe 1570.

""Bran-new flaxen-smock." Charles Cotton 1668. In this case the dates seem to contradict you, but the various English regional dialects of the period could easily have used both spellings contemporaneously.

I'll leave gender to someone else.

 

[JAMESBJOHNSON]

There are at least 3 suggestions available as to the likely origin of the expression " to cut the mustard" Your preference is as plausible as any other but no more so.

"All things newe, brande newe" John Foxe 1570.

""Bran-new flaxen-smock." Charles Cotton 1668. In this case the dates seem to contradict you, but the various English regional dialects of the period could easily have used both spellings contemporaneously.

I'll leave gender to someone else.

Yesterday, I believe it was, I read an etymology of CRACKER in one of the liberal magazines; they say CRACKER is the term slaves affixed to white slave drivers.

There were no white slave drivers, overseers were white but an overseer and a driver were different jobs on a plantation. The whip-slinging construct came along after the 1895 Harpers article of Frederic Remington who tagged Florida cowboys CRACKERS for the whips they used to drive cattle. CRACKER is much older than 1895. In the 1820s CRACKERS were homeless, impoverished whites who lived hand to mouth by theft, begging, and subsistence off the land. A cracker was a small corn grinding appliance they used to make corn meal.