Origin of Words and Phrases.
A tailor of Samarcand, a city of the East, chanced to live near a gate that led to the public burying-place; and, being a fanciful fellow, he hung up by his shopboard a little earthen pot, into which he dropped a small stone, whenever a corpse was carried by. At the end of every moon, he counted the contents of the pot, and so knew the number of the deceased. At length, the tailor died himself, and, some time after, a person unacquainted with his decease, observing his shop to be deserted, inquired what had become of him. “Oh,” said a neighbor, “the tailor has gone to pot, as well as the rest!” And this is the origin of the phrase, “to go to pot.”
Few words have so remarkable a history as the familiar word “bankrupt.” The money-changers of Italy had, it is said, benches or stalls in the burse or exchange, in former times, and at these they conducted their ordinary business. When any of them fell back in the world, and became insolvent, his bench was broken, and the name of broken bench, or banco rotto, was given him. When the word was first adopted into the English, it was nearer the Italian than it now is; being bankerout, instead of bankrupt.
Though any man can put his pony to the canter, few are able, in general, to explain the word by which they designate the animal’s pace. The term canter is a corruption, or rather an abbreviation, of a Canterbury gallop, which signifies the hand-gallop of an ambling horse. The origin of the phrase is as old as the days of the Canterbury pilgrims, when votaries came at certain seasons to the shrine of Thomas à Becket in that city, from all parts of the nation. Mail-coaches and railroads being then unknown, the pilgrims travelled on horseback, and from their generally using easy, ambling nags, the pace at which they got over the ground came to be called a Canterbury gallop, and afterwards a canter.
The word dun first came in use, it is said, during the reign of Henry the Seventh of England. It owes its birth to an English bailiff, by the name of Joe Dun, who was so indefatigable and skilful at his business of collecting debts, that it became a proverb when a person did not pay his debts, “Why don’t you Dun him?” that is, “Why don’t you send Dun after him?” Hence originated the word, which has so long been in universal use.
