The following is from John Ciardi's "A Browser's Dictionary: A Compendium of Curious Expressions & Intriguing Facts".
Gossip. Originally, either of the two godparents who served as baptismal sponsors. In late Old English
godsibb, godsibbe (sibling). Middle English forms:
godsip, gossyp. The sense shift from
god-parent to
tittle-tattler took place late in the sixteenth century.
Historic: A man and a woman sponsored an infant at its baptism, taking a vow to oversee its religious development. So sacred was this vow that
godsibbes were forbidden to marry, they being already joined in a sacramental obligation. That vow, when conscientiously fulfilled, would require regular intimate discussions between the godparents, whence the sense shift to "people often seen with their heads together in intimate conversation about someone else."
Jerkwater town. The most primitive of small towns. Originally, a town on the railroad line, but too backward to have even a water tower. Early steam engines had an insatiable appetite for water. When they ran out at a town without a water tower, the train crew had to "jerk" water in buckets from the local wells and haul it laboriously to the locomotive. Needless to say, jerking water was not their most popular sport, whence the contempt with which they labeled the place a
jerkwater town.
Mutual admiration society. A company
of friends in which every member praises every other. . . [F]rom
Society of Mutual Admiration, coined by Oliver Wendell Holmes in
Autocrat of the Breakfast Table, two chapters of which were written for the
New England Magazine in 1731-1832; the rest for the
Atlantic Monthly starting in 1857. After the 25-year interim, Holmes began again with the calmly underplayed, "I was just going to say when I was interrupted . . ."]
Pipsqueak. An insignificant runt. Echoic. In World War I, a name given to a small German shell, because it exploded with a
pip after giving off a
squeak in flight -- or so rendered by British and American troops by comparison with the shrill whistle and boom of heavy artillery. Then, by extension, any insignificant thing; and then the original reference fading from memory.
Rascal. A scamp. Certainly something less than a villain. No one, for example, has ever thought to call Hitler a
rascal. And in fact, the term is often used affectionately for one who has misbehaved in an endearing way. But at root: "one of the cruddy rabble," and specifically "one with a filthy skin disease" (a crud-scratcher), possibly with reference to the lesions of advanced syphilis, assumed by aristocrats to be the price the rabble paid for its depraved life-style (but ask Henry VII, who died of the royal form of the same crud). [
red, rad, to scrape, scratch, gnaw . . . Latin,
radere, with same senses; Provencal:
rasca, rash, crud; and finally to Middle English:
rascaille, the cruddy rabble.]
