We live in a world where new slang is created every day, so we often aren’t surprised by silly stories behind words like “ratchet” and “twerk.” There are, however, a number of common words that have entertainingly bizarre explanations behind them.
10 Mullet
Almost everyone is familiar with the mullet, the “business in the front, party in the back” hairstyle that most people hoped would die with the career of Billy Ray Cyrus. What most people don’t know, though, is that our most [amazon asin=1611450535&template=*lrc ad (left)]common use of the word is actually the invention of The Beastie Boys.
Previously, “mullet” had been a 15th-century term for a type of fish with spiny fins, and the word is still used today to describe a fish whose head is large and flat. It wasn’t until The Beastie Boys released a song called “Mullet Head” that modern culture had a name for the hairstyle described in the lyrics as “Number one on the side and don’t touch the back / Number six on the top and don’t cut it wack.” We can add “masters of language” to the many contributions The Beastie Boys have made to society.[amazon asin=1892859661&template=*lrc ad (right)]
9 Snob
“Snob” is another word that has had something of a backward history. Everyone is familiar with the modern meaning, which is a person who believes they are too good to associate with certain groups or buy certain products. Long before you were decrying the beer snob in your group of friends, though, the original “snobs” were simply trying to get by.
[amazon asin=0192830988&template=*lrc ad (left)]The original meaning of “snob” was simply “shoemaker” or “apprentice shoemaker,” and it was used as slang by snooty Cambridge students in the early 18th century to describe non-students, much like modern students might call residents of their college town “townies.” By the 19th century, though, the intellectual ranks of Cambridge’s nobility were having to slum it up with the sons of wealthy merchants, and the term came to refer to these would-be social climbers. Eventually, it lost its classist connotation and became a word for anyone who acts superior regarding their position or tastes.
8 Nightmare
[amazon asin=1454907053&template=*lrc ad (right)]In a post-Freudian world, our view of nightmares is pretty tame. We think of them simply as a jumble of wacky images caused by random neurological misfires. While some, like Freud, might ascribe importance to those subconscious rumblings, we are still comforted with the knowledge that these bad dreams are far apart from the real world.
Of course, that wasn’t always the case. As early as the 13th century, the “mare” in “nightmare” referred to a goblin that was thought to come in the night and suffocate sleepers with evil thoughts. Three centuries later, the word no longer popularly referred to the goblin but to the suffocation itself. The word’s first known use as a reference to any unfortunate dreams wasn’t until 1829. Its first recorded use as a metaphor for any sufficiently distressing event or experience came two years later.
