... Buddy's Trivia Page 4 ...

Q.E.D means "quod erat demonstratum" ... which means "which was to be proven" ... and it was appended to all theorems which one had to prove in Euclidian geometry ... provided it was proven, otherwise, forget it, nothing erat demonstratum.
Quarantine, from the French quarante, means forty, and it was originally the forty days that a ship, even suspected of being infected with some contagious disorder, was obliged to lie off port ... and they waited and they waited and they waited ... free meals?
Quiz really means to banter or chaff another, and originally had no meaning at all ... Daly, manager of the Dublin theater, laid a wager that he would introduce into the language, within twenty-four hours, a new word that has no meaning. Accordingly, on every wall, or all places accessible, were chalked up the four mystic letters, and all Dublin was inquiring what they meant ... The wager was won, and the word remains current in our language ... Anyone care for a glyzic?
R is called the dog-letter, because a dog in snarling utters the sound: r-r-r-r, etc. - sometimes preceded by a "g" ... so you don't like this trivia? - grrrrrrrr.
R.I.P is the abbreviation of "Requiescat in pace" ... rest in peace.
Racehorses ... according to regulations, a racehorse's name can be no longer than 18 letters.
Raining cats and dogs stems from an early myth that the cat symbolizes the down-pouring rain, and the dog the strong gusts of wind which accompany a rainstorm; and a "rain of cats and dogs" is a heavy rain with wind.
Rats can last longer without water than camels.
Ray Tomlinson, an engineer, put the @ simbol into e-mail addresses.
Re ... is not, as often thought, an abbreviation for "regard" or "reference" when used in a business letter. It's the ablative of the Latin res, meaning "thing" or "matter."
Red is the color of magic in every country, and has been so from the very earliest times.
Red Tape is so called because lawyers and government officials used to tie their papers together with red tape. Charles Dickens introduced the phrase ... "There is a good deal of red tape at Scotland Yard, as anyone may find to his cost who has any business to transact there."
An example of the danger in "red tape" is what happened in England in 1887 ... There was this escape of gas at Cambridge Barracks, and what follows was the chain of events ... A private reported it to his corporal; the corporal reported it to the quartermaster, and the quartermaster to the colonel commanding the regiment. The colonel had to report it to the officer in charge of the barracks, and the that officer to the barrack-sergeant, who had to report it to the divisional officer of engineers. This officer had to report it to the district officer of engineers, and he to the clerk of works, Royal Engineers, who sends for a gasman to see if there is an escape, and report back again. While the reporting is going on the barracks were burnt down ... I suppose this happens in my government every day.
Reductio ad Absurdum is a proof of inference arising from the demonstration that every other hypothesis involves an absurdity.
Reduplicated or Ricochet Words are word combinations that create intensifying force, for example ... chit-chat, click-clack, clitter-clatter, dilly-dally, ding-dong, drip-drop, flim-flam, fiddle-faddle, flip-flop, fliffy-fluffy, flippity-floppity, handy-pandy, harum-scarum, helter-skelter, hibbledy-hobbledy, higgledy-piggledy, hob-nob, hodge-podge, hoity-toity, hurly-burly, mish-mash, namby-pamby, niddy-noddy, niminy-piminy, nosy-posy, pell-mell, pit-pat, pitter-patter, randem-tandem, randy-dandy, ribble-rabble, riff-raff, roly-poly, rusty-fusty-crusty, see-saw, shilly-shally, slip-slop, slish-slosh, snick-snack, spitter-spatter, splitter-splutter, squish-squash, teeny-tiny, tick-tack, tilly-valley, tiny-totty, tip-top, tittle-tattle, wee-wee, wiggle-waggle, widdy-waddy, widdle-waddle, wibble-wobble, wish-wash, wishy-washy; besides a host of rhyming synonyms, as bawling-squawling, mewling-pewling, whisky-frisky, musty-fusty, gawky-pawky, slippy-sloppy, rosy-posy, right and tight, wear and tear, high and mighty, etc. ... and many more with the Anglo-Saxon letter-rhyme, as safe and sound, etc.
Reindeer like to eat bananas.
Rich as a Jew ... is an expression which arose in the Middle Ages, when Jews were almost the only merchants, and were probably the wealthiest group in the community (there were good reasons for that) ... anyway, the resulting jealousy coupled with the hatred the Church had for the Jews led to great injustices. This requires lots of study of this period, and an understanding of the conflict between the Church and the Jews ... briefly it seems the Jews wanted to be left alone, but throughout history, the Church wanted them to convert (called “spreading the faith”) ... truth is, the Jews must have had something the Church wanted ... if not, you explain it to me.
Richard Milhouse Nixon was the first US President whose name contains all the letters from the word "criminal." William Jefferson Clinton is the second. Kinda makes you think.
Right-handed people live, on average, nine years longer than left-handed people.
Rigoletto is an opera describing the agony of a father obliged to witness the prostitution of his own child. The libretto is borrowed from the drama called Le Roi s'Amuse, by Victor Hugo; the music is by Guiseppe Verdi.
Ring given in marriage stems from a very ancient tradition: a ring was originally used as a seal, by which orders were signed (Gen. xxxviii. 18; Esther iii.10-12); and the delivery of a ring was a sign that the giver was endowing the person who received it with all the power he himself possessed (Gen. xli. 42) ... The woman who had the ring could then issue commands as her husband, and was in every respect his representative ... In the Roman espousals, the man gave the woman a ring by way of pledge, and the woman put it on the third finger of her left hand, because it was believed that a nerve ran from that finger to the heart. Hence the Greeks and Romans used to call it the medical finger, and used it for stirring mixtures, under the notion that nothing noxious could touch it without its giving instant warning to the heart. It is still a very general notion in England that it is bad to rub on salve or scratch the skin with any but the ring finger. The fact that there was no such intimacy between the finger and the heart was not discovered till after the notion was deeply rooted.
River lengths in miles ... the Nile, 2,578, the longest river in Africa ... the Volga, 2,762, the longest river in Europe ... the Yang-tze-Kiang, 3,314, the longest river in Asia ... the Mississippi, 3,716, the longest river in America.
Robin ... in the June 29, 1940 edition of Batman Comics, some mobsters rubbed out a circus highwire team known as the Flying Graysons, leaving their son Dick (Robin) an orphan. He, Dick Grayson, then became a ward of millionaire, Bruce Wayne.
Roman Emperor Caligula made his horse a senator.
Roman numbers were "digits" (Latin, digiti, fingers) where the first four were simply i, ii, iii, iiii; five was the outline of the hand simplified into a V ... the next four figures were the two combined, thus, vi, vii, viii, viiii; and ten was a double v, thus, x ... At a later period iiii and viiii were expressed by one less than five (i-v) and one less than ten (i-x) ... Nineteen was ten-plus-nine (x + ix), etc. - a most clumsy way of keeping records ... imagine doing arithmetic that way.
ROY G BIV … the oft-memorized acronymic fellow who reminds us that the colors of the visible spectrum, from longest wavelength to shortest wavelength are Red - Orange - Yellow - Green - Blue - Indigo - and Violet.
Rubber bands last longer when refrigerated.
Russia has the most movie theaters in the world.
Rx is really an R with a slash through the tail of the R and was originally a symbol for the word "recipe" ... Latin for "take" ... referring to "a medicinal prescription" ... only later did it come to mean ... "a formula for cooking."
Sabbatical Year was one year in seven, when all land with the ancient Jews was to lie fallow for twelve months. This law was founded on Exodus xxiii. 10, etc.; Leviticus xxv. 2-7; and Deuteronomy xv. 1-11.
Sack, meaning a bag, was according to tradition the last word uttered before the tongues were confounded at tower of Babel. (Saxon-saec, German-sack, Welsh-sach, Irish-sac, French-sac, Latin-saccus, Italian-sacco, Spanish-sáco, Greek-sakkos, Hebrew-sak, Swedish-sáck, etc.) ... and "getting the sack" means to get discharged by one's employer ... Mechanics traveling in quest of work carried their implements in a bag or sack; and when discharged, they received back the bag to replace in it their tools, and seek a job elsewhere.
Safety matches came in approximately 1847 when Schrötter, an Austrian chemist, discovered that red phosphorus gives off no fumes, and is virtually inert; but being mixed with chlorate of potash and under slight pressure, it explodes with violence. Then in 1855 Herr Böttger, of Sweden, put the red phosphorus on the box and the phosphorus on the match, so that the match must be rubbed on the box to bring the two together.
Sahara Desert ... only one fifth of this desert is sand. The rest of the world's largest desert is barren rock and rubble.
Salad Days ... days of inexperience, when you were very green ... remember?
Salary, an interesting word coming from the Latin ... seems the Romans served out rations of salt and other necessaries to their soldiers and civil servants. These rations were called by the general name of salt (sal), and when money was substituted for these rations, the stipend went by the name of sal-arium.
Salmon in the 17th century was so plentiful that it was a penny a pound, and instead of being considered a delicacy ... it was considered "poor man's food" and generally used for feeding the servants.
Salt of youth - refers to that vigor and strong passion which predominates then. Shakespeare uses the term on several occasions for strong amorous passion. Thus Iago refers to it as "hot as monkeys, salt as wolves in pride."
Salting an Invoice is to put the extreme value upon each article, and even something more, to give it piquancy and raise its market value. The French have an expression ... vendre bien salé ... meaning, to sell very dear.
Salutations take many forms, mostly stemming from an effort to show peaceful intentions or deference to superiority ... examples are:
1. Shaking hands ... a relic of the ancient custom of adversaries, in treating of a truce, taking hold of the weapon-hand to ensure against treachery.
2. Lady's curtsey ... a relic of the ancient custom of women going on the knee to men of rank and power, originally to beg mercy, afterwards to acknowledge superiority.
3. Taking off the hat ... a relic of the ancient custom of taking off the helmet when no danger is present. A man takes off his hat to show that he dares stand unarmed in your presence.
4. Discharging guns as a salute. To show that no fear exists, and therefore no guns will be required ... This is like "burying the hatchet".
5. Presenting arms ... means offering to give them up, because one is convinced of the peaceful and friendly disposition of the person so honored.
6. Lowering swords ... is to express a willingness to put yourself unarmed in the power of the person saluted ... very similar to "presenting arms," meaning, it's a full persuasion of the other person's friendly and peaceful intentions.
Sancho Panza is the squire of Don Quixote in the great novel by Cervantes. He is described as a short, pot-bellied rustic peasant, and whose gross appetite (Panza, in Spanish, means paunch), common sense, and vulgar wit ... without a grain of "spirituality" served as a foil to the mad idealism of his master ... He was famous for his many pertinent proverbs. Cervantes used the psychological differences between the two characters to explore the conflict between the ideal and the real, and based much of his novel's narrative development on the personal relationship between the two. In the end, Sancho becomes more like Quixote, and Quixote more like Sancho ... an amazing role reversal.
Sanctum Sanctorum is a private room into which no one uninvited enters. The reference is to the Holy of Holies in the Jewish Temple, a small chamber into which none but the high priest might enter, and that only on the Great Day of Atonement (Yom Kippur) ... so a man's private house is his sanctuary; his own special private room in that house is the sanctuary of the sanctuary, or the sanctum sanctorum.
Sans Souci (French), means free and easy, void of care ... It comes from a place near Potsdam, where Frederick II (the Great) built his royal palace.
Saturnalia was a time of licensed disorder and misrule with the Romans ... It was the festival of Saturn, and was celebrated from December 17-24, and during its continuance no public business could be transacted, the law courts and schools were closed, no war could be commenced, and no criminal could be punished ... The next day, December 25, was then adopted by the church as Christmas, to counteract the effects of these festivals ... Regretfully, today some of the ribaldry and lawlessness still abides in our traditional New Years celebrations ... Note - most highway deaths occur during this holiday season.
Sauce originally meant "salted food," for giving a relish to meat, as pickled roots, herbs, and so on. (Latin, salsus) ... I wonder how much the restaurants really use sauces to cover up something they don't want customers to know. Therefore the expression: "The sauce was better than the fish" ... meaning the accessories were better than the main part.
Saxophone ... was patented on June 23, 1848 by Antoine Joseph Sax, hence the name, saxophone
Scapegoat ... the one in the family who was (and sometimes is), made to bear the blame of the rest of the family; the one always chidden and found fault with, regardless of who may be in the wrong ... The allusion is to this Jewish custom ... Two goats were brought to the altar of the tabernacle on the Day of Atonement, the high priest cast lots; one was for the Lord, and the other for Azazel ... (a demon or evil spirit, Lev. 16:8 ... who was the personification of uncleanness and in later rabbinic writings was sometimes described as a fallen angel) ... The goat on which the first lot fell was sacrificed, the other was the scapegoat ... and the high priest having, by confession, transferred his own sins and the sins of the people to it, the goat was taken to the wilderness and killed (some say freed) ... Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow" ... (Isaiah i. 18). The allusion is to the scarlet fillet tied round the head of the scapegoat. Though your sins be as scarlet as the fillet on the head of the goat to which the high priest has transferred the sins of the whole nation, yet shall they be forgiven and wiped out.
Scaphism is a form of punishment (torture) whereby a criminal is placed in the trunk of a tree, bored through so as just to admit the body ... Five holes were made- one for the head, and the others for the hands and legs ... These parts were anointed with honey to invite the wasps ... In this situation, the criminal would then linger in the burning sun for several days.
Sherlock Holmes NEVER said "Elementary, my dear Watson".

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