Comments on: Whence ‘Dork’?

By: Jay bell

Jay bell — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 17:53:07 +0000

I just happen to know the people who invented the word Dork
Martin Bell and a school partner were assigned o invent a word and definition.
They came up with dork as meaning a dumb or dense person ie a dolt.
It was mid 50s in American Fork Utah. The class thought the word funny and used it all over.
Both were astonished when the word showed up on a tv show many years later.

By: rbeard

rbeard — Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:33:57 +0000

“Rule of thumb” is easy. I live in a house built with a “rule of thumb”, i.e. carpenters who had no real rule and so sighted a straight line by aliging the end of a wall with their thumb while squinting with one eye. “Rule” originally was a mearuring rule, i.e. ruler.

By: TootsNYC

TootsNYC — Wed, 13 Aug 2008 19:52:55 +0000

if “dork” once referred to the make member, is it not possible that it arrived from a heavily accented version of “dick”?

But no, usually what happens is the “r” is *removed* (Worcestershire sauce, as an example).

Sorry.

As for word-origin myths, or term-origin myths, I have always loved the plethora of ideas for “rule of thumb.”

By: rbeard

rbeard — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 02:43:38 +0000

There are at least a few more related to words–the origin of the word “gaudy”, for example. I’ve never collected them. There is at least one website out there devoted to urban myths and it probably has most of them. I was thinking of doing “gaudy”, anyhow.

By: Daisy

Daisy — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 03:15:57 +0000

Linguistic myths are my favorite tales to collect. One of the best I heard was the origin of the Castilian accent in Spain. The myth stated that a prince of the region had a lisp, and to avoid offending his highness, the people instead began to imitate his manner of speech. The implausability of this tale gave me great gales of laughter. Are there other less notorious myths that you could explore?