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tsuwm over in Q & A,posted about turkey's-- had me thinking about all the miss named things we have in english.
Turkey's (the bird) got there name in europe-- where all new and exotic things were associated with Turkey, the country. No matter were things might have originated, Turkey was often the last port of call, before western europe, so Turkey became the place of exotic things. some others include:
Turkey red-- a dye
turkish taffy-- a fruit candy
turkish toweling-- fabric
but there are many other things that inherit names from far away places that have nothing to do with there origins.. an other example is the all purpose excuse for bad language is "please excuse my french".
can you think of other things with place names that have nothing to do with what they are named for?
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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French letters.
English muffins.
Dutch treats.
Irish mail (only fairly certain on this one!)
Pennsylvania Dutch.
Mexican standoff.
Long Island Iced tea
TEd
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Ted-- great list-- are there trends?
Turkey for exotic stuff--
French for sexy stuff- (french letters, french kisses)
english for food stuff- (English tea, english muffins)
dutch--the poor dutch, end up as cheap and drunken--Dutch courage=a stiff drink, dutch treat
chinese wall-- used as a legal term.. to show a complete division..
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Carpal Tunnel
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Carpal Tunnel
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Quite old - aircraft "Chinese three point landing" - nose and two wheels.
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Carpal Tunnel
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Italian spaghetti; though British folks seem to call this spaghetti Bolognese, I think--I have no idea of how accurate that might be.
Polish sausage?
Vienna sausages? [barf e]
You do learn something every day: I tried Googling to see if the Australian Crawl (the swimming stroke) was conceived in Australia, and found that there is or was a rock band of that name; portrayed as fun-loving, sun-worshipping, playboy musicians radiating a healthy aura and rebellious charm...
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Carpal Tunnel
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I understand that in many languages, a slang term for venereal disease refers to a despised neighboring country. E.g. (hypothetically), the french referring to it as "German disease".
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From the subject line -- all I can think of now is Dairy Queen.
(singing) From the land of Dairy Queen....we treat you right!
been a lonnnnnnng day........
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