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What is the origin of the saying "carte blanche"? According to the author of www.Word-Detective.com , a second-generation professional etymologist & newspaper columnist, "As one of the theories you heard implies, "carte blanche" is originally from the French, where it literally means "blank paper." The term "carte blanche" was probably of military origin, meaning an agreement of unconditional...

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Are there any websites dedicated to the origin of common phrases or expressions? Yes, several. My favorite 3 are 1) www.etymonline.com (very comprehensive, but a little dry) 2) word-detective.com (not nearly complete, but fun & well-written.) Search the left-middle for a link to "column archives". 3) wordOrigins.org

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Where does the expression "jerry-rigged" come from? It's unclear whether you're asking about "jerry-built" or "jury-rigged", so I'll give the etymology (word history) for both. from WordOrigins.org : Jerry-built, meaning to temporary or shoddy construction, dates to 1869. The OED2 hazards a guess that it may derive from the name of a builder who was notorious for poor construction. An 1884 source...

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I've seen Japanese flags with the red sun on a white background but also ones with "red" shafts of what appear to be sunlight streaking out from the sun. Why are there two versions? The one with rays of light emanating from the sun is most commonly associated with Japan AT WAR, while the simpler red-circle-on-plain-white-background is more commonly associated with peacetime Japan. Interestingly, both flags are somewhat unpopular within Japan. In fact, some public schools even refuse to fly either version, on the grounds that the national flag somehow promotes...

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Why is Japan called "the land of the rising sun"? China's name, in Chinese, is "center country", and due to its huge size, it dominated Asian culture for thousands of years. In the Chinese/asian world-view, Japan was simply "the land of the Sun's origin". That is, the easternmost country in Asia. This is, in fact, where the names "Japan" (English/Chinese version) and "Nihon/Nippon"...

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How and when did Japan receive its name? The name "Japan" is actually the Chinese pronunciation of "land of the sun's origin". The Japanese word for this is "Nippon"/"Nihon". I'm sure you can see a vague similarity in the 3 pronunciations. Today, the ideographic symbols for Japan are the symbol for a sun (or day), and the symbol for book (or truth). The symbol for book/truth may...

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Are there dolphins that live in fresh water? Yes. For example, there is the remarkable dolphin species in China's Yangtze river. It's known variously as the Wuhan Baiji Dolphin, and the Chinese River Dolphin. It's particularly interesting because it's NEARLY BLIND, with eyes that protrude a bit and seem to face upward a bit. It's thought to have come to its current river habitat roughly 20,000 years ago....

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How can I transfer data from an old Win 95 computer (with a USB Zip Disk drive) to a new computer that only has a CD and DVD drive? An old Win95 system will probably not have a USB port. Support for USB ports was very rare in even the later versions of Win95, and wasn't standard until WIn98. However, a neat solution may be a MINI NETWORK. See if you can grab a null-modem cable (which connects both computers through their comm (serial) ports) or a cable that will connect the PCs through their parallel ports. ...

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I have set up a dual boot system (Win 98/2000) with two HDs. I have the 98 HD as master on primary IDE with the 2000 HD as slave. On the secondary IDE, my DVD burner is master and my DVD-ROM is slave. Is there anything wrong with this config? It's important that you haven't mentioned FATs and FILE FORMATs. Win98 very likely uses an older file-format like Fat16, whereas Win 2000 might allow that, but might not make Fat16 or FAT32 the primary default setting when creating a hard disk partition. It may by default use the non-backwardly-compatible, more-mysterious, less-accessible, more-stable type of FAT, which I think is...

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The keyboard for my PC has a health warning sticker on the bottom of it warning of serious injury and even death? Why is this? Another source of serious injury can come from CD- and DVD-drives. These components employ small red lasers, which can do damage to your retina if you are so incautious as to have the PC on while these drives' cover is off. These drives generally have large yellow warning labels on them, in addition to any labels that might be on the outside of the PC.

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The keyboard for my PC has a health warning sticker on the bottom of it warning of serious injury and even death? Why is this? While the other post is humorous and contains a great deal of truth about litigation in America, there's more to it than mere lawyering & cynicism about the stupidity of the average human. Even if your PC is turned off, a phone modem is still be drawing power from your phone-line, and this can give you a nasty shock. Also, even if your PC is not connected to any cables at all,...

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What are vest-pocket parks? The key here is to realize that "vest pocket" is simply a way of indicating that the parks, like the pockets in a man's vest, are extremely small. A vest-pocket park may be as small as the space occupied by a single building in the surrounding community, and is often a converted vacant lot.

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Was there some significance to the World Trade Center attacks being on the date "9/11"? I'd like to build a little on the previous answer. While Americans' emergency services telephone number is 911, it's 119 in most other countries. While Americans tend to write the date as month-day-year (e.g., 9/11/2004), most of the rest of the world writes the date in descending size: year-month-day. So, even outside the USA (where 9/11 sounds like 911), the date and...

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Is it true that a passenger on board a plane shortly after 9/11 was detained and imprisoned as a terrorist because he left his seat to use the lavatory on final descent into Washington DC? Yes. In fact, it's now common practice (pronounced "paranoia") to prohibit passengers from standing up and moving about during some parts of American flights, even more so than before 9/11. Of course, before 9/11, these precautions happened for very practical reasons involving turbulence, and the impact of landing, which might very possibly have an impact on the...

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How are fonts named? Aside from the rules mentioned by another post, there are other rules as well. For example, anything with "times", "roman", "century", "Helvetica", or "schoolbook" in the title is going to look like the font commonly used in newspapers, especially the New York Times' main font, and the font will be "proportionally spaced" (so...

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