Never pride yourself on your knowledge. Always remember that a little knowledge is a dangerous thing — especially when you discover that Alexander Pope actually wrote that famous quotation as “A little learning is a dangerous thing.”
Let’s start with your knowledge of the animal world. The Canary Islands in the Atlantic got their name from what creature?
“Canaries, of course!” you chirp.
Wrong.
The answer is dogs, i.e. canines. The Latin name was Canaria Insula, “Isle of the Dogs.” Canaries got their name from the islands, not the other way around.
How many legs does a centipede have? Judging by the name (Latin: “100 feet”), you probably reply, “a hundred. ”
Wrong again.
The number of legs on a centipede varies from 30 to 354. Each segment has a pair of legs, but the number of segments is always odd. Hence, no centipede has exactly 100 legs.
Similarly, no millipede (Latin: “1,000 feet”) is equipped with more than 750 feet.
What’s in a name? More than you might think. In our humongous, ginormous but erratic English vocabulary, we discover that catgut is usually sheep, goat, cattle, hog, horse, mule or donkey intestines and that camel hair brushes are made from squirrel fur.
A ladybug is a beetle, and they’re not all female. A lightning bug is also a beetle. And a firefly is actually a lightning bug, which, as you now know, is a beetle. Wormwood is a European plant that yields a bitter-tasting oil but contains neither worm nor wood.
In fact, a whole menagerie of animals are not what their names indicate. Take the hedgehog. Light verse master Bob McKenty explains the truth about the spiny insectivore:
No matter what their name alleges,
Hedgehogs aren’t hogs or hedges
(Like kindred quadrupeds with spines
Who aren’t porks and aren’t pines).
The koala bear is a marsupial, not a bear. The guinea pig is a South American rodent. It is neither a pig nor from Guinea. A prairie dog is not a dog; it too is a rodent. The horned toad is a lizard, not a toad, while a silkworm is not a worm; it’s a caterpillar. Half of peacocks are actually peahens. A titmouse is neither mammaried nor mammal; it’s a bird. Crawfish, starfish, cuttlefish and jellyfish are not actually fish. The only thing they have in common with fish is their habitat. A jackrabbit is a hare, not a rabbit. Blindworms are actually legless lizards, and, of course, they can see.
What color are black boxes on commercial air flights? Turns out black boxes are bright orange so search and rescue teams can locate them at the scene of an airplane crash. What color is an immigrant’s green card? Pink, quite obviously. Which country is greener — Greenland or Iceland? Iceland, of course. Greenland is mostly covered by an ice sheet. The blackbird hen is brown, purple finches are distinctly raspberry red and many greyhounds come in colors other than gray.
Finally, here’s a brief history quiz. Answers follow.
- The sides of Old Ironsides were made from what material?
- In what month do Russians celebrate the October Revolution?
- What was George VI’s first name?
- How was the cesarean section named?
- How long did the Hundred Years War last?
- How long did the Thirty Years War last?
Answers
- wood. 2. November. 3. Albert. When he came to the throne in 1936, George respected the wish of Queen Victoria that no future king should ever be called Albert. 4. from the Roman caesus, “the cut one,” not from Julius Caesar. 5. One hundred and sixteen years, from 1337 to 1453. 6. Thirty years, of course, 1618-1648. Hey, you didn’t think that I was trying to trick you!
Look for more mischievous misnomers in two weeks.