DAILY BRIEFING

[Jackie-boy]

Did you know ?

"Keep your hand on your ha'penny".



In earlier times in the UK, elderly ladies used to warn the young girls to keep their sanctity safe from boys while going on dates. Half penny or ha'penny was symbolic use for their privates.

Also girls, keep one tucked in their knickers for the bus ride home, if their boyfriend were getting a bit too frisk 

Yorkshire lads are mucky bastards
Dirty, mucky bastards all.
Keep your hand upon your ha'penny
Else you're riding for a fall.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sfmYIjojkMg

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UNDERMINE
    
Weaken or bring to ruin.    
The main objective of any besieging force attacking a castle or walled    
city was to breach the walls, but there was often a moat in place to    
make it impossible for sappers to place mines against the wall. Thus    
they had to start their tunnels some way distant from the walls and    
burrow under the foundations to try to weaken or breach the walls    
from below.    

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DOODLEBUG
   
Flying bomb.    
American servicemen stationed in the UK gave this nickname to the    
German V1 bombs that were fired at London from within occupied    
Europe during World War 11.    
Based on "doodle," "to play about," "doodlebug" had already been    
used in America to describe many things, including flying insects    
and the mini racing cars that became so popular there in the 1930s.    
Both these associations seem to have been in mind when naming the    
V1, which flew with a rasping anclpulsating note similar to that of    
the straight-through exhaust system of the mini racers.    

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FLAP
    
State of worry,fuss, or excitement.    
At the turn of the 20th century, a "flap meant any state of agitation    
on board a Royal Navy ship. The inspiration for this meaning was    
the flurry of semaphore signals that preceded any significant event or    
visit, which required plenty of flags flapping in the breeze. The term    
then moved into general use.    

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WALTZING MATILDA
    
Australia's unofficial anthem.    
It is something of a mystery how this innocuous little ditty came    
to such prominence in Australia; a song about a sheep-thief    
drowning himself to escape justice is hardly a rousing cornerstone    
of national fortitude.    
The title derives from 18th- or 19th-century German soldiers    
nicknaming their greatcoats "Mathilde," after the archetypical girl-    
next-door who kept a man warm at night. If not required, the coat    
was rolled up and carried like a bedroll on a cord slung across    
the back, resulting in "Mathilde" bouncing from side to side as the    
owner marched along. This usage leaked back into general German    
usage, also producing auf der Walz, "to trek about looking for work."    
German migrants to Australia took both expressions with them,    
"waltzing matilda" being the major survivor. This was most likely for    
its serving as a parallel to the Irish contribution of "Sheila," which is    
far too crude to explore here.    

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UPSHOT
    
Verdict or outcome.    
To a medieval archer the "upshot" was the final arrow fired in a    
competition, specifically the single-arrow shoot-off between two    
tied parties. The umpire's decision to call for such a tie-breaker was    
proclaimed with the cry of "leuparti!" "game divided," which evolved    
into "jeopardy" because at this point both archers were in danger of    
losing. "Jeopardy" moved into general speech towards the end of the    
14th century, with "upshot" following in the mid-16th century.    

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RUSSIAN ROULETTE
   
Pointless or high-cost risk.    
There is nothing to suggest that the Russians, more than any other    
race, went in for this kind of pointless bravado. In all likelihood it    
is just a racial tag implying stupidity or poverty: they can't afford    
a proper roulette wheel so they have to use a revolver. English is    
littered with parallels: "Dutch courage" is gin; "Bombay duck" is fish;    
"Welsh rabbit" (never rarebit) is cheese on toast; a "Jew's harp" is a    
primitive instrument.    
No reference to the 'be" of Russian roulette can be found before    
January 30,1937. In the hugely successful American weekly, Collier's,    
a major foundation stone of the modern publishing company,    
there appears a short story by Georges Surdez in which two of    
the characters discuss such a game being played by Russian troops    
deployed to Romania in 1917. In Surdez's story and in all other    
early references, the gun holds five rounds with just the one empty    
chamber allocated to fate. One other theory holds that the game was    
"invented" by disillusioned Tsarist officers, but this is disproved by    
the time line.    
The version of Russian roulette played with one bullet and five    
empty chambers became the "norm" in the more safety-conscious    
1950s; the theory maintaining that the weight of the single round    
always carries it to the six 0' clock position when the chamber is spun    
has no foundation in fact.    

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BRAILLE
    
Writing system for the blind.    
In 1819, a young French artillery officer called Captain Charles    
Barbier de la Sierra became frustrated by the difficulty and dangers    
of trying to read orders at night without lighting a lantern and    
attracting enemy fire. He devised a code of embossed night-writing,    
which failed to attract any interest in military circles. However, Louis    
Braille (1809-52), a young teacher at the French National Institute    
for Blind Children, saw the potential for Barbier's system of coded    
dot-clusters to revolutionize texts for the blind, which until then had    
been presented as rather clumsy raised letters.    

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RIDE ROUGHSHOD OVER SOMEONE
   
Disregard someone's feelings or opinion.    
The main objective of the 15th-century battlefield was to inflict    
injury by every means possible, so knights always rode with their    
horses "roughshod." This required the blacksmith to leave every    
second nail projecting to inflict maximum damage to any soldier the    
horse stood on.    

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BACKROOM BOYS
    
Unseen contributors.    
Although "the boys in the back room" has been used throughout    
North America since the turn of the 19th century, the usage    
indicated the "in-crowd," rather than a group of unsung boffins.    
"Backroom boys,'' which is a UK expression, derives from a    
speech made on the radio by Canadian-born Lord Beaverbrook    
on March 19, 1941 when, as Minister of Aircraft Production,    
he said: "Let me say that the credit belongs to the boys in the    
backrooms. It isn't the man in the limelight like me who should    
have the praise. It is not the men who sit in prominent places. It is    
the men in the backrooms." He later stated that his inspiration was    
none other than Marlene Dietrich. In Destry Rides Again (1939), she    
played the tart-with-a-heart owner of the Last Chance Saloon, in    
which she gives her famous rendition of "The Boys in the Back    
Room," which, according to Beaverbrook, was "a greater work of art    
than the Mona Lisa."    

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LIQUIDATE
   
Kill.    
After the Russian Revolution of 1917, quite a few terms that smacked    
of capitalism were used of the extreme measures implemented    
against the enemies of the new regime. The Russian term likvidirovat,    
which meant winding up a commercial enterprise and stripping it    
of all capital, became a euphemism for the wholesale murder of    
any group refusing to toe the line. As the term was extended to the    
assssination of foreign spies and agents provocateurs, it leached into    
Western spy-speak through the reports of Sidney Reilly (1874-1925),    
the so-called Ace of Spieg, himself liquidated by the Russians.    
It is said that Ian Fleming used Reilly as the basis for his character    
James Bond.    

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NOM DE GUERRE
    
Alias.    
Nom de guerre does mean "war name" but was never used in such    
a literal way by the French, to whom it meant something more    
like "pen-name." Failing to understand, the English adopted "nom    
de guerre" in the 1670s when they wrongly thought it denoted    
an assumed name of a combatant, and in the 1820s coined the    
tautological expression "nom de plume" for "pen-name." The English    
misunderstanding of "norn de guerre" and the unnecessary "nom    
de plume" became the accepted usages, forcing the French to adopt    
them to stay in tune with the rest of Europe and America.    
Noms de guerre are most associated with the French Foreign    
Legion, but it is a myth that joining up under a nom de guerre can    
place a barrier between a fleeing criminal and the law. So strong is the    
myth that any aspiring member has to remain a 'guest" of the Legion    
for a couple of days while a full search is made through Interpol    
to make sure there are no outstanding warrants. That done, the    
applicant is allowed to assume a nom de guerre, but his real details    
must be logged with the Legion.    

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OLD FOGEY
   
Old-fashioned man.    
Before "foggy" had any meteorological applications, the term was used    
of marshy wetlands and, by extension, anything or anyone bloated,    
flaccid, or unhealthy. In British Army slang of the mid-18th century    
a "foggy" or a "fogey" was an invalid soldier or one so old that he was    
restricted to garrison duties. By the 19th century, "fogey" was appearing    
in American forces' jargon to denote a supplement in pay which    
increased with service. In turn, this produced "old fogey" for the typical    
old soldier who kept telling the rookies what it was like in the old days.    

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LOOPHOLE
   
Escape clause.    
This modern use of the term rests on the misunderstanding that    
"loophole" is etymologically connected to "loop," as in "a small hole,"    
but in fact it denoted a ball-thermometer-shaped slit in a castle wall    
that afforded the archer inside a wide field of fire due to the angled    
profile of the stonework. The slit took its name from the Middle    
Dutch lupen, "to look slyly" ar "lie in ambush like a wolf," but by the    
1660sthe term was already being misused to describe an ambiguity    
or a get-out clause in a statute or contract, perhaps through confusion    
with loopgat, a Dutch term meaning "runway" or "escape route."    

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AMBULANCE
    
Conveyance for the incapacitated.    
Baron Dominique Jean Larrey (1766- 1842), personal physician to    
Napoleon and Surgeon-in-Chief of his armies, was responsible for    
the first form of ambulances. Larrey argued that medical back-up on    
the battlefield would improve morale and thus the fighting spirit, and    
was given permission to institute what he called the hopital ambulant,    
"walking hospital," a light, hooded litter equipped with basic first    
aid equipment. These litters were moved about the battlefield by    
men who provided what medical assistance they could for the    
walking wounded, and evacuated the more serious cases. By the    
Italian campaign of 1796 these litters had been augmented by a much    
faster and more comprehensive system of horse-drawn wagons called    
ambulants volantes, or "flying-walkers."    
The British Army instituted a similar system of stretcher-bearers,    
which adopted the French title in the form of "ambulance" (the term    
had arrived in English by 1809), but it was the Americans who,    
horrified by the carnage of their own Civil War (1861-65), first set    
up properly organized service with their 1864 Ambulance Corps    
Act. This Act made the movement and care of the wounded the    
responsibility of a wholly separate body and not just another duty    
imposed on the transport brigades, as had been the case at the First    
Battle of Bull Run. At that encounter the men detailed as stretcher-    
bearers allegedly ignored the wounded so they could stay back, out    
of the line of fire, and get drunk on the medicinal brandy.