Here’s where I become Mr. Nitpicky again, because I love stuff like this.

It’s beck and call, not beckon call, schitzophrenic does NOT mean split personalities, it means split from reality, and Xmas isn’t an attempt to remove Christ from Christmas, X is the Greek letter for chi.

Study up, so that you can always be right in those grammatical arguments.

Common Errors in English

FLHurricane.com has a Google Map tracking the exploits of hurricane Katrina across Florida right now. It seems to update every two hours, and shows the wind speed and other measurements in the pointer pop-ups.

FLHurricane.com (via Google Maps Mania)

R Todd King is currently blogging about his experiences at the sixth annual Ice & Snow World event in Harbin, China. Some of the pictures he has been taking are quite incredible, and I urge you to take a look if you have a free moment.

Ice & Snow World 2005 [via BoingBoing]

The marvellously-named Flagrant Disregard have a variety of fun Flickr-based web applications, including this magazine cover maker.

Above, you will see my effort - odd headlines from the depths of my troubled mind and all - click the image for a bigger version. Their website tells me that as of right now the generator is churning out just under 430 covers every hour, and have done 10,000 altogether, which is pretty impressive.

The website also offer other Flickr tools, as mentioned above, and they can be found here. These include a badge maker, a Konfabulator uploader widget, and a mosaic maker. Good stuff.

Finishing off my post from Friday (I lied when I said I’d do the next 5 yesterday), here are the top 5 interesting meanings of everyday phrases.

5. Brand spanking new

Doctors have traditionally spanked babies immediately after delivery to start them crying, and breathing.

4. Close but no cigar

In old America, carnival games used to give out cigars as prizes, particularly shooting stalls. So when somebody was close, but didn’t manage to scoop the top prize, they were close, but they didn’t get a cigar.

3. Above board

As in ‘all above board’, meaning legitimate and legal. This originates from early trading ships, where illegal cargo was kept below deck. All legal cargo was kept in plain view on the top deck - or ‘above board’.

2. Bite the bullet

Meaning to be brave and ‘go for it’, the phrase comes from very early surgery, before the invention of ether (the first anaesthetic). Having surgery was a majorly painful process, as patients were fully conscious and feeling every little hack. ‘Victims’ were given a stiff whisky, as well as a hard piece of metal, usually a bullet, to bite on while they went through surgery.

1. Mind your Ps and Qs

My favourite one, this one. This phrase originates from the early days of pubs, when beer and ale were served in pint and quart measurements. The pub landlord kept a tab of each drinker’s amount consumed on the chalkboard - watching your Ps and Qs was controlling your alcohol intake and making sure the patrons didn’t have too much and cause trouble.

However, another use for the phrase, was to do with the tabs the landlord kept for regular customers, especially sailors. Being friendly (arr!) with the landlord, the ship’s captain would pay the publican straight out of the sailor’s pay packets, thus leaving the seamen open to a bit of a fiddle going on. The captain would, unsurprisingly, often jack up the price a bit, and share the profit with the landlord.

Thus, sailors would be careful to watch their own ‘Ps and Qs’ to make sure they weren’t being ripped off.

I’ve always pondered some of the phrases we use in every day conversation - and I’ve found the answers to quite a few of them (10 to be exact), which I will go into here. One that I have not been able to find the origin of is when you “catch the sun”, meaning to get sunburn, or get a tan - so if anyone knows, maybe they could let me know. I’m sure it’s as simple as it sounds, but some have an unexpected interesting history.

Right, here we go..

10. Raining cats and dogs

In 16th century London, dogs and cats used to hunt on the connected rooftops, high above the streets. Occasionally, however, heavy downpours of rain would wash them away, sending them sprawling down to the ground. Thus, it seriously was raining cats and dogs.

9. Pull the wool over (somebody’s) eyes

Interesting one, this. It all started in the 1600s, when wealthy Brits took a liking to long grey wigs - the same you see atop high court judges today. Highwaymen would make use of that fact, and tug them down over their face, to make it easier to steal all of their gold, or whatever rich people carried with them in those days. A mobile, perhaps.

8. Bring home the bacon

At old fairs in England, they’d have competitions to see who could catch a greased pig first, the prize being tonight’s dinner.

7. Red-light district

I always thought this came from the red lights in brothel windows, but apparently that is a result of this phrase being coined. (Ooh, where did ‘coining a phrase’ come from?!). In reality, early railway workers would take with them, into the prostitute-filled areas of the city, train caution lights. You guessed it, they were red, and they hung around outside brothels with them. Still don’t understand why they needed to take lights with them, but apparently so.

6. Put my two cents in

In the UK it’s “my two penneth” but whatever. It originates, unsurprisingly, from games of poker, where players have to put in their “ante”, in this case two cents, to be able to participate. It therefore means putting your ante in so that you can take part in the conversation.

I’ll do the final five tomorrow - this post is getting a bit long.