[greymule]

One of the most interesting origins is that of the word umpire itself. It derives from an erroneous misdivision of the Middle English 'noumpere' (not equal). I guess people would say, "a noumpere," and others thought they were saying, "an oumpere," the way my high school students used to write, "That's a whole nother situation." So the term "oumpere" stuck.

In another misdivision, one of my ninth-graders pronounced the word "yemp," as in "the yemp missed the call, but a whole nother yemp changed it."

I'm going to get ahold of that book, Marty. I keep forgetting where terms like "southpaw" and "bull pen" came from. I assume the book also covers the phrases that have crept from baseball into everyday use: "couldn't get to first base," "out in left field," "step up to the plate," and so forth.

When I was doing writing and communications training for some large companies, some activists were claiming that women were at a communications disadvantage on the job because men expressed themselves through sports analogies that women were not familiar with. So I made up a list of expressions that derive from sports, and we went over them in class. Funny how some people knew exactly what they meant and others had no idea.



[Edited by greymule on Sep 13th, 2002 at 02:47 PM]