"club-shaped instrument used for pounding and breaking materials in a mortar," mid-14c. pestel, (as a surname late 13c.), from Old French pestel and directly from Latin pistillum (Medieval Latin pestellum) "pounder, pestle," related to pinsere "to pound," from PIE *pis-to-, suffixed form of root *peis- "to crush" (source also of Sanskrit pinasti "pounds, crushes," pistah "anything ground, meal," Greek ptissein "to winnow," Old Church Slavonic pišo, pichati "to push, thrust, strike," pišenica "wheat," Russian pseno "millet").
Also in old use "the leg of certain animals used for food" (14c.), hence pestle of a lark "a trifle, an unimportant matter" (1590s).
"to dance in a way that simulates the body's action in copulation," by 2005, alteration of twurk, which seems to have originated in the Atlanta, Georgia, strip club and hip-hop scene and first came to wide attention in the Ying Yang Twins' 2000 song "Whistle While You Twurk," described as "an ode to strippers" ["Country Fried Soul, Adventures in Dirty South Hip-Hop"]. Probably ultimately imitative of something. Related: Twerked; twerking. There is a verb twirk from 1599, "to pull, tug, twirl," what a man does with his mustache, but OED regards this as possibly a misprint of twirl.
"instrument for loosening soil in digging, shaped like a pickaxe but with broad instead of pointed ends," Middle English mattok, from Old English mttoc, formerly said to be probably from Vulgar Latin *matteuca "club," which is related to Latin mateola, a kind of mallet (see mace (n.1)), but this is not certain, and synonymous Russian motyka, Polish motyka, Lithuanian matikas, as well as Old High German medela "plow," Middle High German metz "knife" suggest rather a PIE *mat- as source of the Latin, Germanic, and Slavic words. OED says similar words in Welsh and Gaelic are from English.
"limited, confined," 1830, past-participle adjective from restrict. Of government documents, etc., "secret, not for public release" it is recorded from 1944. Related: Restrictedly. The older adjective was simply restrict. In mid-20c. U.S., restricted was a euphemism for "off-limits to Jews" (1947).
Manager: "I'm sorry, Mr. Marx, but we can't let you use the pool; this country club is restricted."
Groucho: "Well, my daughter's only half-Jewish; could she go in up to her knees?" [there are many versions and variations of this story in print, some referencing a son instead, dating to his obituaries in 1977]
"grumble, chatter aimlessly, nag," 1829, northern England dialect variant of gnatter "to chatter, grumble," earlier (18c.) "to nibble away," probably of echoic origin. Related: Nattered; nattering. As a noun, 1866, from the verb.
In the United States today, we have more than our share of the nattering nabobs of negativism. They have formed their own 4-H Club — the ‘hopeless, hysterical hypochondriacs of history.' [U.S. Vice President Spiro Agnew (in reference to the media), address to the California Republican state convention, Sept. 11, 1970 (the speech was written by then-White House speechwriter William Safire)]
deformity in which a bone or joint is twisted outward from the center of the body; form of club-foot, 1800, from Latin valgus "bandy-legged, bow-legged, having the legs bent outward." Said to be probably related to Sanskrit valgati "to move up and down," Old English wealcan "to roll, move to and fro" (see walk (v.)), perhaps on the notion of "go irregularly or to and fro" [Tucker]. "Yet the main characteristic of 'bow-legged' is the crookedness of the legs, not 'going up and down' or 'to and fro'" [de Vaan] and there are phonetic difficulties. A classical word used in a different sense in modern medicine; also see varus.
"one who communicates with another by letters," 1620s, from correspondent (adj.). The newspaper sense "one who sends regular communications in the form of letters from a distant location" is from 1711.
THE life of a newspaper correspondent, as may naturally be supposed, is one of alternate cloud and sunshine—one day basking in an Andalusian balcony, playing a rubber at the club on the off-nights of the Opera, being very musical when the handsome Prima Donna sings, and very light fantastic toeish when the lively Prima Ballerina dances; another day roughing it over the Balkan, amid sleet and snow, or starving at the tail of an ill-conditioned army, and receiving bullets instead of billets-doux. [New Monthly Magazine, vol. xci, 1852, p.284]
as in the real McCoy, "the real thing; the genuine article," by 1881, said to be from Scottish the real Mackay (1883), which is of uncertain origin, though there are many candidates, the most likely of which is that it refers to whiskey distilled by A. and M. Mackay of Glasgow (the phrase the real McCoy became popular during Prohibition to describe liquor). Other stories credit it to Charles S. "Kid" McCoy (1872-1940), former welterweight boxing champ; and to a claimant for chief of the northern branch of the clan Mackay.
"By jingo! yes; so it will be. It's the 'real McCoy,' as Jim Hicks says. Nobody but a devil can find us there." [James S. Bond, "The Rise and Fall of the Union Club," Yorkville, Canada, 1881]
1560s, "one who dodges or evades" in any sense, especially "one practiced in artful shifts," agent noun from the literal or figurative (especially underworld) senses of dodge (v.).
The U.S. meaning "corn cake" is recorded from 1831 (usually as corn-dodger) and is perhaps a different word: Compare Northern English dialectal dodge "lump, large piece" (1560s).
The Artful Dodger (Jack Dawkins), so called for his skill in picking pockets, leader of a gang of child criminals, is from Dickens' "Oliver Twist" (1837-39).
The U.S. baseball club the Dodgers, originally based in Brooklyn, N.Y., was so called from 1900, from trolley dodgers, a Manhattanites' nickname for Brooklyn residents, in reference to the streetcar lines that then crisscrossed the borough.
1530s, "companionship, friendly association with others," from Old French societe "company" (12c., Modern French société), from Latin societatem (nominative societas) "fellowship, association, alliance, union, community," from socius "companion, ally," from PIE *sokw-yo-, suffixed form of root *sekw- (1) "to follow."
The meaning "group, club" is from 1540s, originally of associations of persons for some specific purpose. The meaning "people bound by neighborhood and intercourse aware of living together in an ordered community" is from 1630s. The sense of "the more cultivated part of any community" is recorded by 1823, hence "fashionable people and their doings."
The Society Islands were named 1769 by Cook on his third Pacific voyage in honor of the Royal Society, which financed his travels across the world to observe the transit of Venus.
