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Fluke Hap-hazard. In billiards it means playing for one thing and getting another.
Hence an advantage gained by luck more than by skill or judgment.
(German, glück, chance, our luck.)
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Flunkey A livery servant. (Old French, flanquier, a henchman.)
H:enchman interests me. I believe, but have not been able to confirm,
that it derives from "hengist" meaning a knight's horse. When a knight
was in a street crowded with people, he had to have a trusted
servant, lead his horse by holding the side of the bridal, so knight
could that both hands free to defend himself from possible assassination
attempt.
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Fogie or Fogey. An old fogey. Properly an old military pensioner. This term is derived
from the old pensioners of Edinburgh Castle, whose chief occupation was to fire the
guns, or assist in quelling street riots. (Allied to fogat, phogot, voget, foged, fogde, etc.)
Spelled fogy, an old fogy is an old man out of touch with progress. In WWII, a captain
in grade for several years was entitled to wear small dark elevated emblems called fogies
on his bars that indicated his length of time in that grade, and seniority over other captains.
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Font in printing, sometimes called Fount, a complete set of type of any one size,
with all the usual points and accents; a font consists of about 100,000 characters.
The word is French, fonte, from fondre (to melt or cast).
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Foolscap A corruption of the Italian foglio-capo (folio-sized sheet). The error must have been very ancient, as the water-mark
of this sort of paper from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century was a fool's head, with cap and bells.
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Foot-lights To appear before the foot-lights. On the stage, where a row of lights is
placed in front along the floor to lighten it up.
I still remember the Christmas play in highschool, when one of the teachers thought
the footlights were not sufficient illuminaton, and turned a bright spotlite from
backstage onto a girl in angel costume, making it very clear that she had no
underwear on.
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Fourth Estate of the Realm (The). The daily press. The most powerful of all.
Burke, referring to the Reporters' Gallery, said,
"Yonder sits the Fourth Estate, more important than them all."
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Frangipani A powerful Roman family. So called from their benevolent distribution of bread during a famine.
Frangipani. A delicious perfume, made of spices, orris-root, and musk, in imitation of real Frangipani. Mutio Frangipani, the
famous Italian botanist, visited the West Indies in 1493. The sailors perceived a delicious fragrance as they neared Antigua, and
Mutio told them it proceeded from the Plumeria Alba. The plant was re-named Frangipani, and the distilled essence received
the same name.
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Frantic Brain-struck (Greek, phren, the heart as the seat of reason), madness being a disorder of the understanding.
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Friar's Heel The outstanding upright stone at Stonehenge is so called. Geoffrey of Monmouth says the devil bought the stones
of an old woman in Ireland, wrapped them up in a wyth, and brought them to Salisbury plain. Just before he got to Mount
Ambre the wyth broke, and one of the stones fell into the Avon, the rest were carried to the plain. After the fiend had fixed
them in the ground, he cried out, "No man will ever find out how these stones came here." A friar replied, "That's more than
thee canst tell," whereupon the foul fiend threw one of the stones at him and struck him on the heel. The stone stuck in the
ground, and remains so to the present hour.
I have seen the "heel stone" in pictures by never knew how it got its name.
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