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The origin story of slush funds features way more animal fat than you probably thought
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Nowadays the phrase typically describes a fund used to pay people off in underhanded
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political deals. But beginning in the 1700s, sailors used the word slush to describe the
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fat or grease leftover from cooking meat. The cook would save up all the slush produced
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during a voyage and sell it to manufacturers, who needed it to make candles and other products
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The money was used to buy things that weren't built into a ship's budget. Books, rugs
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cushions, musical instruments, and so on. By the 1800s, sailors had started calling this fund a slush fund
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From there, the definition broadened to cover any supplemental source of cash, specifically
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one used for government workers. It's not totally clear how slush fund got its modern connotation involving bribery and corruption
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But there was a lot of bribery and corruption in 19th century American government
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And honestly, probably in 19th century nautical trade deals, too. Hi, I'm Erin McCarthy, editor-in-chief of Mental Floss
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The English language is bursting with colorful expressions that come from strange and surprising
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places. Many of them, like Slush Fund, once had literal meanings that the general public
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has long since forgotten. So this episode of The List Show is all about why we say what we say
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From the poem that gave us albatross around your neck to the hands that gave us hands down
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Let's get started. If someone has an albatross around their neck, they're bogged down by a burden or source of
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guilt they can't shake. Either that or they're wearing a dead bird as a necklace, which actually
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is the case for the narrator is Samuel Taylor Coleridge's poem The Rime of the Ancient Mariner
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In the poem, an albatross brings good fortune to the crew of a ship. Then, after a sailor shoots
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it with a crossbow, the voyage is plagued by bad luck. As punishment, the sailor is forced to string
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the bird's carcass around his neck, so I suppose that everyone knows it's all his fault. Ah, well a
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day What evil looks had I from old and young Instead of the cross the albatross about my neck was hung And that how PETA was born Calling movies the Silver Screen gives the whole operation a glitzy old Hollywood vibe that seems fitting When the expression was coined in the early 20th century it was more
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than a vibe. Movie theater screens were often coated in silvery metallic paint that were
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supposed to help heighten the image contrast and cut down on blurriness. Silver-colored screens are
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mostly obsolete these days, but they do come in handy for 3D films. So, if like one Reddit user
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are on the subreddit NoStupidQuestions, you thought that silver screen meant it was second
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place and some other screen was gold, you can stop pondering what this magical first
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place screen is. Movies are still number one. Without the figurative silver screen, we might not have bucket lists. In 1999, screenwriter
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Justin Zacham wrote a list labeled Justin's list of things to do before he kicks the bucket
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He then shortened that to Justin's Bucket List, which inspired the title for his 2007
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Rob Reiner-directed film The Bucket List. In it, Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson play
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men with terminal cancer who try to complete their own bucket lists. Though Zacham wasn't the first person to ever put the words bucket and list together, he
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is generally credited with coining the phrase in its current sense. Yet another reason it's important for Hollywood to greenlight mid-budget comedies
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That story raises an interesting follow-up question. Why does kick the bucket mean die in the first place
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One of the theories floated over the years involves an alternate definition of bucket dating back to the 16th century
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A beam you can hang something on. slaughter, a pig or other livestock suspended on a beam by its feet could be said to kick the bucket
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either in struggling to free itself or twitching after death. Yeah, it's morbid, but what did you expect? We're talking about death here. And buckets
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Having any kind of food on your face can be embarrassing. So how did we land on eggs
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specifically to convey the feeling? Well, for one thing, chucking eggs at people
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be it talentless performers or prisoners in the town square, is a time-honored tradition that's
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been around since the Middle Ages, at least. Women in the 19th century and later were even
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known to fend off harassers by smashing eggs in their faces But not all egg on face scenarios involve two people and a well toss Sometimes a person just forgot to wipe their mouth after a meal
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In the early 20th century, this could cause shame beyond the normal there's something
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on your face variety. Back then, cold storage was still relatively new, and eggs weren't always cheap or easy
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to come by, especially in the winter. A little egg residue near your mouth might signify an unwisely lavish lifestyle
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A 1911 issue of Kansas' Atchison Weekly Globe reported that an Atchison young man
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was upbraided this morning for being extravagant. Why, you had egg on your face this morning when
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you came to work, he was told. According to the young man himself, it was just mustard from a
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five-cent ham sandwich. But I have my doubts. While we're on eggs, let's just quickly cover
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what the deal is with egg on, meaning to incite or urge on. Like, the crowd kept egging me on to
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sing My Heart Will Go On at karaoke, and I eventually gave in and tore the house down
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True story. Anyway, weirdly, the expression has nothing to do with literal eggs. It's from the
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Old Norse word eggja, meaning edge, and it's been around since the 1200s. Egg, as in pelt
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someone with eggs, didn't pop up until the mid-19th century. If you egg someone on to
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egg someone though, then that clearly does involve some literal eggs, and hundreds of
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years of etymological history. Let's jump to another roundish food item. Apple in my eye doesn't derive from eyeing
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the most delicious apple at the farmer's market. Ever since the days of Old English
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the word apple has been used to describe any kind of fruit, or various spherical objects
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This included the pupil of the eye, once believed to be its own separate orb inside your eyeball
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The apple of your eye was viewed as an especially cherished part of the body, seeing as it allowed
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you to, well, see. Eventually people started using the phrase metaphorically to describe an especially cherished
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anything, especially people. It's been around for more than a thousand years
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The earliest known reference is from the 9th century work of Saxon king Alfred the Great
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It also comes up in the King James Bible. Which brings us to The Writing on the Wall originally from the story of Belshazzar feast in the Bible Book of Daniel In the story the Babylonian ruler Belshazzar throws a lavish feast at which he and his lords drink from holy chalices taken from a temple in Jerusalem During the feast a hand appears and writes an
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unintelligible message on the wall. A spiritual man named Daniel eventually translates the words
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revealing that Belshazzar is fated to lose his kingdom. He's murdered that very night
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Okay, so it's not the most comprehensive retelling of the story, but it's enough to explain how the
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writing on the wall got its current meaning—warning signs of disaster or misfortune. Also, a great
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cautionary tale against throwing a rager that features items looted from a church
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Ah, the classic whimsical way to describe going to sleep. We have the Bible to thank for the
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land of Nod, too. In the book of Genesis, it's the region east of Eden where Cain heads after
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he kills his brother Abel. Nod comes from a Hebrew word meaning wandering. Jonathan Swift is probably
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the most famous example to recognize the pun potential of the place. In his 1738 book A
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Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation, a character says he's going to
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the land of Nod. He means he's going to sleep—presumably a nod, sorry, to nod off. The land of
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carnivals, meanwhile, gave us close but no cigar. In the early 20th century, cigars were a common
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prize at carnival games, like those where players aimed at targets. If he fell a little short of
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of winning one, the carnival barker might shout, close, but no cigar. By the late 1920s, people had
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started using the expression figuratively in reference to any near miss. If you win one of
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those games by a large margin, on the other hand, you might call it a hands-down victory. These days
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hands-down can describe anything effortless or indisputable. Initially, though, 19th century English speakers invoked it for a certain kind of horse race, one in which a horse wins by such a
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large margin that the jockey slackens the reins and crosses the finish line with hands-down
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It's hands down my favorite phrase that came from horse racing
