ErebusFact library / Trivia
8 words facts, each paired with a strange little scene and a hook for the hard word.
"Quarantine" comes from the Venetian Italian quaranta giorni, "forty days": how long ships waited before landing during plague outbreaks.
Picture it
Ships bob outside Venice's canals. A gondolier holds up a sign: QUARANTA. The sailors groan and count down 40 days, playing cards on deck until they're allowed ashore.
Memory hooks
The word "robot" was introduced by Karel Čapek's 1920 play R.U.R., from the Czech robota, meaning forced labour.
Picture it
A metal worker is CHOPPING wood (CHAH-pek) in a Czech forest, sweating and grumbling, "Robota, robota" (drudgery). A playwright scribbles the word down and puts it on stage.
Memory hooks
Say it: Čapek (CHAH·pek)
The word "muscle" comes from the Latin musculus, meaning "little mouse".
Picture it
A bodybuilder flexes his biceps, and the bulge rippling under his skin looks just like a little mouse scurrying up his arm. The Romans called it musculus: little mouse.
Memory hooks
The word "disaster" comes from the Italian disastro, meaning "ill-starred", from the Latin astrum, star.
Picture it
An astrologer looks up at the night sky and gasps: one star has gone wrong. "DIS-ASTER!" he cries, "a bad star!" Down below, a ship sinks and a castle burns.
Memory hooks
The sandwich is named after John Montagu, 4th Earl of Sandwich, after whom Captain Cook also named the Sandwich Islands, now Hawaii.
Picture it
An English earl, JOHN MONTAGU, refuses to leave his card game for dinner and asks for beef between two slices of bread. Decades later, Captain Cook names a group of Pacific islands after him: the Sandwich Islands, today's HAWAII, where a hula dancer MONTAGES sandwiches.
Memory hooks
Advertisement
The "mare" in nightmare was originally a goblin or evil spirit believed to sit on sleepers' chests, not a horse.
Picture it
You'd think a nightmare is a black horse galloping through your dreams. But the old "mare" was a goblin who crept into bedrooms and sat on sleepers' chests, squeezing the breath out of them.
Memory hooks
The word "clue" comes from "clew", a ball of thread, like the one Theseus used to escape the Labyrinth.
Picture it
A hero named THESEUS walks into the dark Labyrinth to fight the Minotaur, unrolling a ball of thread behind him so he can find his way out. In old English, that ball of thread was a "clew", and that's why a "clue" helps you find your way.
Memory hooks
"Berserk" comes from the Old Norse berserkr, probably meaning "bear-shirt", for warriors who fought in a frenzy.
Picture it
A Viking warrior pulls a bear skin over his shoulders, howls, and charges into battle in a wild trance, biting his shield. The Old Norse called him a "berserkr": a bear-shirt.
Memory hooks