Go ahead. Look at the word and try not to sing the children’s song. I dare you. 😉

And interestingly, the song about the farmer’s dog is the oldest attest use of the word bingo, which I never knew. There aren’t really any theories about where it came from otherwise, but the song is referenced in a play from 1854, so it must have been commonplace well before then. Although, ahem, that reference was actually a story of using the song as a drinking game. Each person had to do a letter and if they made a mistake, they had to drink.

There is some uncertain connection to bingo being a slang word for brandy, actually, dating to the 1690s…so perhaps the idea of using the song as a drinking game has some history to it. Certainly, it became a euphemism for “liquor” by the 1860s, and one must wonder how much that popular play, “The Americans at Home” had to do with it.

The game of chance is from 1924…presumably because a year earlier, shouting out “Bingo!” as an exclamation of surprise or sudden realization became popular.

Word Nerds Merch!

If someone were to call you a brat, you’d know exactly what they mean, right? They’d be calling you a bad-mannered, annoying child. Or perhaps the child of someone in a very specific career (like an “army brat”). There’s often a connotation of being spoiled.

But did you know that the original meaning of brat, while still applied to children, was the exact opposite of “spoiled”?

Brat dates back to the 1500s and is thought to have come from some English dialects…and it’s from the word for “a makeshift, ragged garment.” Um…huh? Yep. When someone didn’t have proper clothes and made do with whatever they could find, it was called a brat, from the Old English word for “cloak,” bratt. So then the word began to be applied to the homeless or ragged children who were often forced to wear these makeshift clothes–beggar children.

How it evolved into what we know it as today is a bit murky. The suggestion is that perhaps it began to also be used as a word for a child’s apron…and the children who wore aprons were not beggars, of course. By 1788 the word brattery was being used for a nursery, so clearly it had evolved away from beggars by that time. And we know that by the 1920, bratty meant spoiled.

Definitely a word with some evolution!

Word Nerds Merch!