Why Viet Cong were Called "Charlie", What the "Bee" in "Spelling Bee" Means, Nerds, Geeks, and a Tip

have you ever wonder why the Vietcong we're called Charlie in Vietnam well why don't know more first because I suspect there are at least a few people curious and it pertains to how the name Charlie ultimately came about let's discuss the origin of the term Vietcong this derives from Vietnam con son maybe on the pronunciation they're not sure which just means Vietnamese communists this was in turn shortened to just Viet Cong with the first documented instances of such appearing in various Saigon newspapers in 1956 from here Viet Cong was commonly further shortened to VC which in the NATO phonetic alphabet is pronounced Victor Charlie which gave rise to the further shortened Charlie designation speaking of letters in Words have you ever wondered what the B in spelling D actually means well essentially means something to the effect of gathering or get-together the earliest documented case of this word appearing with this meaning was in 1769 referring to a spinning B where people would gather to protest purchasing goods from Britain due to high taxes on those items other gatherings that were commonly enabled with B were Apple B logging the quilting bee Bondi hanging the sewing bee field bee and corn husking B among others basically any sort of major competition or work gathering with a specific task in mind tended to get the B label added on the ends with many of these bees being tedious work events it was also customary to serve refreshments and provide entertainment at the end of the task the first documented case of a spelling bee called such was in 1825 however it is likely that there were spelling bees before they State this was simply the first time it was written down in prints that has survived to today there are a variety of hypotheses as to where this word derives from it was long thought that it simply came from the similarity between insect bees working together towards a specific task and a gathering of people to accomplish some task however this etymology has no specific documents at evidence to support it and rather it's just speculation the slightly more popular hypothesis among etymologists is that the actual origin of B in this sense of gathering derives from the old english yen meaning a prayer or favor this in turn gave rise to the Middle English bene which has more or less the same meaning as been except now adding an extra service by a tenant to his Lord finally this resulted in beam meaning help given by neighbors the British dialectic version of this word is then B speaking of word nerds who are of course geeks the first documented case of geek dates all the way back to 1916 at the time the term was used to describe sideshow freaks in circuses typically attributed to those circus performance who were known for doing crazy things like biting the heads off of various small live animals or eating live insects and things like that these performances were often called geek shows the word geek comes from the word gak which was originally a low german word which meant someone who is a fool a freak or a simpleton moving on to the first documented case of nerd this was in dr. Seuss's if I ran the zoo in 1950 the specific text was a knuckle a nerd and a seersucker - it was just one year after the dr. Seuss book in 1951 in a Newsweek article that we finds the first documented case of nerd being used similarly to how we use it today specifically they use it as being synonymous with someone who is a drip or a square there are two popular hypotheses as to where the word derived from the first is that it was perhaps derived from drunk spelled backwards so convert this was fitting to describe people who studied instead of going out with friends and partying of course there isn't actually any good evidence to support this idea as somewhat more popular hypothesis suggests that it came from a modification of not specifically nurse which meant stupid or crazy person and was common in the 1940s directly before the term nerd showed up the word nerd ended up becoming fairly popular in the 1960s and by the 1970s was hugely popular eyes by the TV show happy days where it was used frequently and if you're now wondering before geek nerd dork etc the proper terms for these same ragamuffins were due droppers Waldo's and slackers other common old slang words that were somewhat similar in meaning are pantywaist oil can drip stinkeroo mullet Roach nuchal kook DIMP Dorf squid auger square Joe zilch and dud finally have you ever wondered where the tip as in to leave a tip comes wrong well we hope so because we'd like your help appeasing the YouTube algorithmic gods lest they smite us and our channel and by far the best way to do that is for you to watch our videos all the way to the end when you click on them so if you'd like to leave us a little viral tip keep watching to the ends of this video and all of our videos it really does help so you might have heard that the few hundred year old definition of tip as referring to gratuity comes from to ensure promptness or similar backronym but this is not correct in fact pretty much any time you've ever heard of a word that originated before the 20th century coming from an acronym you can be almost certain that it isn't true as linguist David Wilson states there is only one known pre-twentieth century english word with an acronym ik origin and it was in vogue for only a short time in 1886 the word is calendar e's or calendar an acronym for the colonial and indian exposition held in london that yeah the real origin of the word tip is a bit more obscure than that in terms of the gratuity definition it most likely comes from a popular form of speech among thieves beggers and hustlers called the thieves can't also sometimes called rogues cans which arose in Great Britain several hundred years ago with the primary aim of keeping non thieves and the like from being able to fully understand what the thieves were talking about an example of this kind of talk taken from the vulgar tongue in 1857 is as follows I buzzed a bloke and a shake stir of a reader and ask in my Joma stalled a cross Cove who had his regulars called out copper bung so as a pig was marking I spilled to the crib where I found Jim and had been pulling down sore knee for grub he cracked a case last night and fenced the swag he told me as bill had flipped to yak and pinched a swell of a fawn II he since the act at church and got three fin of sand a cooter for the saw knee that took a lot of takes and let's just do a translation that shall we I picked the pocket of a gentleman and lady of a pocketbook into purse my fancy girl stood near me and screened me from observation a fellow thief who shared with me my plunder called out to me to hand over the stolen property so as someone was observing my manoeuvres I'm ran away to the house where I found James had provided something to eat by stealing some bacon from a shop door he committed a burglary last night and disposed of the property plundered he told me that bill at hustled a person and obtained a wash it also robbed a well-dressed gentleman of a ring the watch he sent stamped the works taken out and put into another case to prevent detection and the ring realized him three or five pound notes and a sovereign in any events one such slang words in the thieves camp was tip meaning to give or share the first documented usage of tip this way dates back to 1610 at some points within the next century this sense of the word spread to being used by non thieves as referring to money given as a bonus for a service rendered with the first documented instance of this definition popping up in 1706 in the George Farquhar play the Bo stratagem it says then eisah tips me the Verger with half a crown as to the ultimate origin of the word tip in English meaning anything it first popped up in the 13th century meaning end point top probably from the middle dutch word tip meaning utmost point or extremity and now for a bonus fact if you ever wondered if a mandatory tip at an establishment is really mandatory as far as the law is concerned well we have the case of one humberto eight avarice who dined at the Sopranos italian-american Grill in New York if L two lives sufficient funds to cover the mandatory tip of eighteen percent instead leaving a tip of ten percent the original bill was seventy seven dollars and forty three cents Tavarez stated that his group didn't feel the food was very good so he didn't feel like leaving a large tip this eight percent discrepancy resulted in the owners of said restaurants Joe and Tina soprano calling the police and having Tavares arrested and charged with theft of service on Prince volt avarice went ahead and hired a lawyer rather than just paying the discrepancy and the fines he won without going to court as the district attorney threw out the case stating that tips can never be truly mandatory regardless of posted signs in a restaurant or the restaurants policy another case of someone being arrested in the United States for lack of paying a mandatory tip was the case of John and Pope Wagner or after dining with six friends at the lodge a pub in Bethlehem Pennsylvania there was a listed mandatory tip of 18 percent for a group that size but as they had to wait an hour before the food they ordered was served they had to go to the bar to get their drinks refilled as the waitress was nowhere to be found and they had to get their own silverware and napkins from other tables as the waitress never came back when they requested them they decided to leave and no tip and explain to the bartender why they were refusing to pay the mandatory tip the bartender didn't agree with them and just took the money for the bill 73 dollars and 87 cents and promptly called the police and had them arrested for not paying the 18% tip in this case within a week the Northampton County District Attorney saw to it that the criminal charges were dropped against the couple noting that this type of thing should be processed via civil court rather than criminal so I really hope you found that video interesting if you did please do hit that thumbs up button below do not forget to subscribe brand new videos just like this every day of the week for more from me why not check out another channel I do called highlight history unlinking to that below and as always thank you for watching

Channel: Today I Found Out

Views: 157,236

Keywords: today i found out, tifovidz12, tifo, awesome, facts, didn't know, language, etymology, words, word history, language history, educational language, language facts, words facts

Id: odwFb7Ii9Xk

Length: 9min 51sec (591 seconds)

Published: Wed Dec 18 2019