You can’t make these up

Did you know how Charles Boycott's name became a synonym for “ruin”?

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When words appear disconnected from the object they refer to, it’s usually a case of namesakes: The term may refer to their inventor, as in the case of the "Ferris wheel" and "diesel;" to early discoverers, like the case of "nicotine;" or to victims of communal bullying, like "boycott" or "silhouette." Let’s dive into the stories of surnames that made it through the centuries and into our dictionaries.

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That little symbol on your phone? It's actually a wink at a 10th-century Viking king. Harald "Bluetooth" Gormsson earned his nickname possibly from a dead tooth that appeared darkened. He was best remembered for uniting parts of Norway and Denmark into one country.

When Swedish comms company Ericsson developed its new wireless technology, they named it Bluetooth after him. The logo we know so well combines the Nordic runes for H and B.

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What is a silhouette but a vague, lean outline of something richer? The reason why Étienne de Silhouette’s name became entwined with the art form is in the history of France.

He was the country’s finance minister during part of its turbulent 18th century. His policies to promote austerity were so heavily mocked that his name became forever linked to anything that was reductive, cheap, and lacking personality.

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Isn’t "Ferris Wheel" a rather whimsical name for the ride? That’s because it carries the name of its inventor. Named after George Washington Gale Ferris Jr., the American engineer who designed the first Ferris wheel for the 1893 Chicago World's Fair.

Organizers demanded something to rival the Eiffel Tower, and Ferris answered with a 264-foot steel observation wheel that carried 60 passengers per car.

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Charles Boycott was an English veteran and land agent living in Ireland. He chose the wrong community in which to enforce high rent prices and suggest evictions. When he did, the entire town united to give him the silent treatment: no shops, no mail; even workers walked out on him.

The isolation strategy was so effective that he fled the country, and his name became synonymous with the treatment he had received.

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Jean Nicot never smoked a cigarette in his life. As France's ambassador to Portugal in 1560, he sent tobacco leaves to Catherine de' Medici as a headache remedy. The "medicinal herb" became wildly popular, and Linnaeus later named the plant Nicotiana tabacum in his honor.

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Franz Mesmer had 18th-century Europe spellbound with his "animal magnetism" treatments. He is considered the father of hypnosis! His patients would sit around magnetic tubs holding iron rods, convinced that it was a way to absorb invisible, healing energy.

His theory was eventually debunked, but the trance-like states he induced were real enough to give us the verb "mesmerize."

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Louis Pasteur revolutionized food safety. In the 1860s, when the French chemist discovered that heating liquids destroyed microorganisms and enzymes, he forever transformed the process of extending the shelf life of food, like milk and wine.

Ironically, Pasteur initially focused on saving France's wine industry. Today, his process prevents millions of foodborne illnesses annually.

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Luigi Galvani was an Italian scientist who studied the effects of electricity on frog legs. His method became synonymous with stimulating or spurring something into action, much like a jolt of electricity does.

His experiments with animal electricity not only gave us "galvanize," but also inspired Mary Shelley's Frankenstein!

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You would never guess that this now popular chic garment is named after a British officer. But woolen, button-front military jackets were a symbol of the brigade led by James Brudenell, the 7th Earl of Cardigan.

During the Crimean War, he led the Charge of the Light Brigade. History has widely marked him as incompetent and accused him of splurging on costly uniforms. But at least his legacy in the world of comfortable fashion is undeniable.

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Rudolf Diesel's 1893 combustion engine was supposed to empower small businesses against industrial monopolies. Instead, it became the workhorse of global industry.

The German inventor mysteriously vanished at sea in 1913, but his name came to refer to the fuel used to power his engines, which originally ran on peanut oil.

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Poor John Duns Scotus! Although his name became a symbol of dumbness, he wasn’t dumb at all. A Scottish philosopher, linguist, and theologian in the early 14th century, he taught a group of followers who were called Dunsmen or Duns.

They wore pointed hats because they thought they served to "funnel wisdom." Scotus was once one of the sharpest minds of the Middle Ages, but eventually the ideas fell out of fashion, and the hats became symbols of stupidity.

Western words

Saddle up, partner, and learn some cowboy jargon!

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Tarnation! I better get to the jaw cracker before I end up in the bone orchard! If you don’t know what this all means, don’t worry—we’re here to help! Cowboys in the Old West not only tamed the inhospitable land, but they also forged their own language. They created unrefined similes and metaphors, broke the rules of grammar, flooded figures of speech with humor, and made a verb out of anything. In this article, we review 12 expressions we inherited from the men and women who populated the American frontier—many of which we still use today. Giddyup!

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Yeehaw! Welcome to the rodeo! You probably know this one: "Yeehaw" is one of the most famous words in cowboy lingo. It’s an expression of excitement and celebration, usually pronounced by slurring the vowels in a loud shout of triumph. Have you ever used it?

"Yeehaw" is a combination of gee and haw, two words used to direct a horse to move. The term is believed to have originated in the southern United States and was later popularized by Western movies and television shows.

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Also thanks to Western movies, we all know what a saloon is. But where does the word come from? Saloons were the bars of the Old West, where cowboys, outlaws, gamblers, and miners went to have a drink, get a free lunch, catch some entertainment, and engage in a fight or two.

The word saloon appeared in America in the 1840s and derives from the French term salon, which in turn comes from the Italian salone, meaning "a large hall in a public place for entertainment or amusement."

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In its literal sense, the term _bellyache_—which has been in use in the English language since at least the mid-1500s—refers to a pain in the stomach. However, beginning in the 1880s, Americans gave it a figurative meaning.

As a slang word, bellyaching is used to describe someone who complains too often in an irrational or unjustified way to avoid responsibility. For instance, "Quit your bellyaching and take care of the horses once and for all" is a good example of how a cowboy might have used this term.

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This idiom is a Western variation of the popular expression "all bark and no bite." All hat and no cattle is used to describe a phony, pretentious person who talks a lot but does little. It can also refer to someone who has a way with words but can't deliver on their promises.

Its origin is probably related to people who wore cowboy hats as fashion, but who didn’t herd and tend cattle on a ranch for a living.

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Howdy is the quintessential cowboy greeting. Although it’s an expression characteristic of the Southern United States, howdy actually originated in late 16th-century England. It is a contraction of the phrase "How do ye?", which was commonly used to ask about someone’s health.

Today, howdy is used in many rural Southern and Western states—especially Texas—in casual contexts as a standard greeting instead of "hello."

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Do you have a friend or family member who talks and gossips non-stop? In the Wild Wild West, they would have said they are jawing.

The origin of this slang term is unclear, but since you need to open and close your jaw to speak, it makes sense that it became a verb used to describe someone who talks excessively. Have you ever used this term?

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And speaking of mouths—do you know what they used to call a dentist who traveled from place to place to relieve cowboys of their pain? Yeap, a jaw cracker!

We don’t know the exact origin of this slang term, but it’s pretty self-explanatory. It might sound a bit rowdy, but we can only imagine that Old West dentistry wasn’t for the faint of heart—especially since blacksmiths or barbers were often the ones tasked with pulling out a decaying tooth. No wonder frontier dentist Doc Holliday became a gunslinger!

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American slang is full of colorful phrases that help us express strong emotions without crossing the line into blasphemy. Heck, darn, gosh, and gee-whiz are just a few examples. Tarnation is another of these euphemistic expressions used to convey surprise or anger.

The term was coined in the late 18th century in America as a softened version of damnation, which was considered impolite at the time. Tarnation is a mix of darnation and tarnal, a shortened form of the word eternal.

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According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a tenderfoot is "an inexperienced beginner, a novice." Today, we use this term to describe someone who’s raw and unaccustomed to outdoor living or hard work. For example, a rookie starting a new job or a young football player might be called a tenderfoot.

Originally, a tenderfoot was an immigrant or newcomer who wasn’t used to the rugged pioneer lifestyle—especially the grueling labor of ranching and mining. It came into use in mid-19th century America as a pejorative way to describe newcomers to the West. Other colorful synonyms from the same period include pilgrim, Johnny-come-lately, mail-order cowboy, stringin’ a greener, and skim-milk cowboy, among others.

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In the Old West, desert canary was a slang term for a burro. But what exactly is a burro? A burro is a wild or feral donkey, valued for its sturdiness and reliability. These hardy animals were extensively used by miners and prospectors as pack animals, and by cowboys to guard livestock.

Burros played a vital role in frontier life, so why did they call them desert canaries? Simple, they are affectionately called this way because of their characteristic braying that could be heard all across the desert.

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The first thing most folks picture when they hear giddyup is a cowboy riding off into the sunset—and they wouldn’t be wrong. Giddyup originated in the Wild West during the 19th century as a command to instruct a horse to get going.

The term is likely a playful alteration of "get up," and it’s still used today in casual conversation to mean "let’s go" or "hurry up." Whether you're wrangling cattle or racing to catch a bus, giddyup gets the job done!

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Can you imagine what life was like in those lawless frontier towns? The Old West was surely a dangerous place where people experienced more than one way to die or get killed. So it’s no surprise that they had many colloquial ways of referring to the cemeteries.

Bone yard, boot hill, and grave patch were just a few of the grim nicknames for "cemetery" at that time. But our favorite is undoubtedly bone orchard. Pretty poetic for such a rough and hostile era, don't you think?