The Hindu Business Line : `Make ends meet' is from book-keeping

Do you know why arm's length love is called Platonic? Because "the Italian Renaissance scholar Marsilio Ficino used the term amor platonicus to describe a form of love described in Plato's Symposium where, rather than cultivating sexual passion, a union of souls was formed through pure intellectual pursuit."

Thus, explains Harry Oliver in March Hares and Monkeys' Uncles, from Metro (www.blake.co.uk) . The phrase is "a substitute for saying `just good friends'," adds Oliver, and doubts if "many modern Platonic friends could be bothered to aim quite as high as Plato would have done". Remember, however, that such pure intellectual pursuit may find a legal challenge; for, a recent apex court ruling said that non-consummation of marriage could be a ground for divorce!

Oliver's book is about `origins of the words and phrases we use every day'. So, you can pause and think about the phrases you'd never cared to probe where they came from. The author helps by arranging the usages in chapters ranging from food and drink to work, from sports and games to law and (dis)order.

Begin with `biscuit'. It comes from "Latin panis biscoctus meaning `bread baked twice'." Nibble at `Caesar salad', a dish that was invented in 1924 by Caesar Gardini of Mexico when his restaurant "had pretty much run out of food" over a July 4 weekend. "He constructed the salad from what was left: romaine lettuce, garlic, olive oil, croutons, eggs and parmesan cheese."

You probably know that `know your onions' means `to be an expert on a particular subject'. But why onion, and not the humble tomato or the ubiquitous potato? Oliver traces the origin to "one CT Onions, a venerated 20th century lexicographer". His work on the OED (Oxford English Dictionary) "led him to be so highly thought of that his name became a byword for his subject".

The phrase `Ground Zero' brings to memory the WTC attack. "The term originally describes the point closest to the impact of a blast, and was first used to refer to the effect of the two devastating atomic bombs that were dropped on Japan at the end of the Second World War," informs the book.

Okay, why are minutes of a meeting so called? Because they detail a meeting minute by minute? No, says Oliver. "The phrase refers to how minutes were first written. The word is from the Latin minutia, meaning smallness. The events of a meeting were written in small script at the meeting." Before you protest that the minutes are too tiny to read, the author adds: "When copies were distributed to relevant parties, the small minutes were `engrossed' - written out in a larger, more legible script."

You may be stumped to know that `stumped' owes its beginnings to ploughing a cleared land. When not cleared properly, the land had a number of tree stumps. Ploughing activity was `stumped' when tree stumps got in the way of the plough.

I can hear you say `keep mum'; be quiet. But why mum and not dad, who keeps mum, anyway? "Mum is merely the spelling chosen to represent the only sound it is possible for a person to make if their mouth is tightly shut - the unintelligible `Mmmm'. It has been around in various forms for over 500 years and its meaning has not changed." More surprisingly, the word has nothing to do with mothers! Mum as a substitute for mummy or mother "did not exist until the nineteenth century."

The `at work' chapter ends with `make ends meet', a phrase that is about ensuring income is sufficient to cover expenses. "A person who is making ends meet is merely living in an acceptable level of poverty," notes Oliver.

"The phrase dates from at least the seventeenth century, and finds its origins in bookkeeping." How? "The end of the income column on a bookkeeper's ledger contains a figure, and for the books to balance this must match or exceed the corresponding figure at the bottom of the expenditure column."

Fun read!

SayCheek@TheHindu.co.in