This year? I’ve found something better.
Ahem.
Do you know where the word bracket comes from? (Yeah, I know. This is as close as I can get to caring about college sports.)
The way March Madness diehards use bracket comes from the fact that round robin-type tournament maps look like the typographical symbols [ and ]. And those got their name from the fact that they look like the two-sided supports used in carpentry. And those brackets got their name from the architectural brackets that, back in the day, weren’t just lines at right angles. They had, um, bulges. See?
This fancy gentleman probably wasn’t packing a weapon of quite so high a caliber as what his packaging would indicate. Thank the magic of the codpiece. Even more appropriate to this discussion of manly, dangling showiness? The word braggart, “an excessively boastful person,” comes from the Middle French brauguer, “to flaunt, brag,” which might come from the same word that gave English bragget: brague, “knee pants.”
So the next time you hear your coworker marvel at the fearsomeness of his brackets or inviting others to check out his brackets, I hope you think of what I think of: peens.
(Sources: Etymonline, The Inky Fool, The Lavender Linguist.)
Peen > penis. Always.
ReplyDeletePeen => penis, I think you meant to say.
DeleteTony Hancock, the British comic from the 50s/60s, had a catchphrase along the lines of "Are you looking for a punch up the bracket?" I always assumed he was threatening somewhere higher on the anatomy.
ReplyDeleteYeah, knowing the history of the word, I'd guess that would have to mean either the pants generally or the peen specifically.
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