where does "olive branch" originate ?
823555
Noah sent out a dove from the ark, and when the waters had receded to the point where trees could grow again, a dove returned with an olive branch.  That was the symbol of renewed life for the people on the ark.  Thus a dove, symbol of peace, bringing back an olive branch symbol of life renewed, adds up to a very potent symbol of peace.
752236
I think probably by accident when some ancient person dropped some in the fire ...:D\n\nhttp://www.nal.usda.gov/speccoll/images1/popcorn.html#early gives the quote below\n\n"Scholars agree that corn, and popcorn, originated in the Americas. Precisely how it originated, however, is a topic of debate. It is believed by many experts that corn was developed by centuries of breeding and crossbreeding wild grasses like teosinte. There has also been much speculation about how popcorn may have been prepared or used by the native Americans, fueled by findings of popcorn in archeological digs. "
1041300
The name "Pom" is said to derive from Australia's origins as a convict colony. Each unfortunate transported down under from Britain for his or her (mostly) petty crime was said to be a "Prisoner of Her Majesty" or POHM, later simplified to POM.  \n\nHowever, there is an alternative explanation as  Pom was around a few years before Word War II.  In fact, we first come across it in print during World War I, in 1914, as a derogatory term for an immigrant to Australia from England.  It is a quotation from D.H. Lawrence's Kangaroo in 1923 that gives us the most popularly accepted etymology of this word: "Pommy is supposed to be short for pomegranate. Pomegranate, pronounced invariably 'pommygranate', is a near enough rhyme to immigrant, in a naturally rhyming country. Furthermore, immigrants are known in their first months, before their blood ‘thins down’, by their round and ruddy cheeks. So we are told."  Slang lexicographer Eric Partridge also favors the pomegranate derivation, and he gives a slightly more detailed explanation by quoting from H.J. Rumsey's The Pommies (1920): "Colonial boys and girls, ready to find a nickname, were fond of rhyming Immigrant, Jimmy-grant, Pommegrant, and called it to the new chum children.  The name stuck and became abbreviated to pommy later on."  Partridge also believes that the word was being used as far back as the end of the 19th century.  It is often the case with slang that it is spoken for several years before it is put into writing. Anyhow, the OED is careful to note that there is no good evidence supporting the pomegranate derivation.
776976
According to babynames.com, it means "elf army." That sounded amazingly unlikely, so I looked it up at babyzone.com. They say it means "peaceful or the olive tree, which symbolizes fruitfulness, beauty, and dignity." That sounds a little better, I think. -yk
971910
i've heard it before, don't know if it originates in judaism though
916316
From the American Heritage Dictionary:\n\nTrade with the Low Countries across the North Sea was important to England in the later Middle Ages, and it is perhaps because of this trade that we have the word pickle. Middle English pikel, the ancestor of our word, is first recorded around 1400 with the meaning "a spicy sauce or gravy served with meat or fowl." This is a different sense from the one the word brings to mind now, but it is somewhat related in sense to its possible Middle Dutch source pekel, a solution, such as spiced brine, for preserving and flavoring food. After coming into English the word pickle expanded its sense range in several ways. It was applied, as it had been in Middle Dutch, to a pickling solution. Later pickle was used to refer to something so treated, such as a cucumber. The word also took on a figurative sense, "a troublesome situation," perhaps under the influence of a similar Dutch usage in the phrase in de pekel zitten, "sit in the pickle," and iemand in de pekel laten zitten, "let someone sit in the pickle."
529183
No - it comes from the visual form of the branches
1138046
I think it comes from medevil times when they believed that if you actually went and got some of the hair of the dog that had bitten you it would heal faster or something. I know it is something along those lines. Actually here this is from wikipedia:\n\n"The origin of the phrase is unclear, but instances of the phrase have appeared in English literature since the time of Shakespeare. E. Cobham Brewer writes in the Dictionary of Phrase and Fable (1898): "In Scotland it is a popular belief that a few hairs of the dog that bit you applied to the wound will prevent evil consequences."
1088558
According to the English, it is derived from a place name indicating that they came from a place near the woods, or perhaps a grove of trees. My guess is that it is of Scandinavian origin and can be found all over Northern Europe.
1102149
First of all, congratulations. Daughters are precious, as are the old names from our family's past. I'm going to stick my neck way out here and give you my best guess. \n\nOcerna, coming from the same root as ocarina which is a small flute of a type found in many cultures around the world. \n\nThe noun ocarina is the diminutive form of oca (Italian dialect -goose) from the late Latin auca. It translates as "little goose" or gosling. \n\nThe name would have had to cross over from Italian into German in the Tyrolean region, which includes parts of both Italy and Austria. And, yes, the Austrians speak German.
1148537
God told Noah: "And as for you, take for yourself every sort of food that is eaten; and you must gather it to yourself, and it must serve as food for you and for them.”  (Gen. 6:21)\n\n"Later on the dove came to Noah about the time of evening and, look! there was an olive leaf freshly plucked in its bill, and so Noah got to know that the waters had abated from the earth. 12 And he went on waiting still another seven days.  Then he sent out the dove, but it did not come back again to him anymore."  (Gen. 8:12,)  This indicates that vegetation was growing again on the earth, like the olive tree.  After Noah sent the dove out the third time, it did not come back, which most likely shows that ample vegetation had grown on the earth to feed the dove.\nYet, some olive trees in the Flood apparently retained their vitality, enabling them to sprout fresh shoots when the waters receded.\n\nConcerning the olive tree, 'The New Bible Dictionary' states:  “If cut down, new shoots spring up from the root, so that as many as five new trunks could thus come into being.  Moribund [near dead] olives usually sprout in this manner also.”  It is “as if its vitality were indestructible,” says The New Schaff-Herzog Encyclopedia of Religious Knowledge.  No human today knows the details, such as salinity and temperature, of the floodwaters. Hence, we cannot be sure about their potential effect on olive trees and other vegetation.\n\nIf you would like further information, please contact Jehovah's Witnesses at the local Kingdom Hall.  Or visit http://www.watchtower.org
1004223
ITS ACTUALLY CALLED STERCULIA FOETIDA--     Description: Java olive is a soft wooded tree that grows up to 115 feet high. In tea growing regions the soft wood is used to make tea chests. The tree has smooth, grayish-white bark and a fibrous inner bark. The large, palmately compound leaves are crowded at the ends of the branches and have 5-9 leaflets. The foul smelling flowers are bell-shaped, 5-lobed, yellowish green when they open and later turn deep red. The woody, bright-red fruit consist of 1-5 spreading follicles that are armed with stiff stinging bristles along the inner margins. Each follicle splits to reveal up to 17 blue-black seeds attached to the inner margins. \n(Barwick, M. 2004. Tropical & Subtropical Trees: An Encyclopedia. Staples, G. W. & D. R. Herbst. 2005. A Tropical Garden Flora.)\n--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\n Dangerous/Poisonous: Raw seeds may be poisonous.\n--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\n Preservation and Conservation Strategies: Plants are readily propagated from seed and need no special care. (Staples, G. W. & D. R. Herbst. 2005. A Tropical Garden Flora.)\n--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\n Taxonomy: Sterculia foetida (Sterculiaceae)\n\nCommon Names:\nJava-Olive\nSkunk tree\nPoon tree\n\nClassification: \n\nSterculia foetida L.\nKingdom: Plantae-Plants \nSubkingdom: Tracheobionta-Vascular plants \nSuperdivision: Spermatophyta-Seed plants \nDivision: Magnoliophyta-Flowering plants \nClass: Magnoliopsida-Dicotyledons \nSubclass: Dilleniidae \nOrder: Malvales \nFamily: Sterculiaceae-Cacao family \nGenus: Sterculia L. - Sterculia \nSpecies: Sterculia urens Roxb. - Sterculia \n(National Plant Database. 2003.)\n--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\n Geographic Distribution: The Java-olive occurs in seasonally dry areas of the Old World tropics. It is occasionally cultivated in Hawai'i, but is best admired from afar when flowering because of the offensive smell. \n\n--------------------------------------------------------------------------------\nFood Uses: Some sources report the seeds to be edible raw, but other sources state should be roasted first. (Staples, G. W. & D. R. Herbst. 2005. A Tropical Garden Flora.)\n--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1152788
Where it started.  In England
321429
the dining fork was invented in Italy in the sixteenth century\n\n*hugs* ~:)
583427
The letters, not to keep you guessing, stand for "oll korrect." They're the result of a fad for comical abbreviations that flourished in the late 1830s and 1840s. \nThere is an interesting article on this at the source webpage I referenced below. \n\nBarbecue\nThis American contribution to international cuisine actually originated in the Caribbean, and the word comes to us via Spanish from its Indian roots. The original sense of barbecue is that of a raised, wooden (later metal) framework used for either sleeping upon or curing meats. The Indians of Guiana called it a babracot and the Haitians a barbacoa. The Spanish evidently acquired the Haitian word and it came into English from the Spanish.\nThe earliest English cite, used for a sleeping platform, is from 1697. By 1733 the word was being used for an open-air, social gathering featuring the grilling of meat.\nBarbecue has one false etymology that is commonly promulgated on the Internet and elsewhere. It is claimed that it comes from the French barbe (beard) and queue (tail); the idea being that an entire pig is roasted, from head, or beard, to tail. This is simply not true.\n(In Mexico, "barbacoa" is a pulled pork-type meat from a certain animal that I won't mention here. It is cooked in a pit for 12 hours or more--basically the same way as the english definition of barbecue.  Slow and long.)
712632
Hmmm...that's a good question....\n\nIf I had to guess, I would think it would have something to do with 'The Fruit of Knowledge', which is a biblical reference found in Genesis.  Plus, giving apples to teachers seems like an American tradition.  It may have something to do with that too.\n\nBut the bible never said that it was an apple....so I don't know how it became associated with the fruit of knowledge.
1022504
Eric Partridge, in Origins (1983), says OK derives from the OK Club, which supported Martin "Old Kinderhook" Van Buren in 1840. That isn't wrong, but it's only half the story. \n\nWilliam and Mary Morris, in the Morris Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins (1977), mention the OK Club and give several other theories as well, including the off-the-wall idea that OK comes from "Aux Cayes," a port in Haiti noted for its rum. They imply the matter is still shrouded in mystery.\n\nBaloney. The etymology of OK was masterfully explained by the distinguished Columbia University professor Allen Walker Read in a series of articles in the journal American Speech in 1963 and 1964. \n\nThe letters, not to keep you guessing, stand for "oll korrect." They're the result of a fad for comical abbreviations that flourished in the late 1830s and 1840s. \n\nRead buttressed his arguments with hundreds of citations from newspapers and other documents of the period. As far as I know his work has never been successfully challenged.\n\nThe abbreviation fad began in Boston in the summer of 1838 and spread to New York and New Orleans in 1839. The Boston newspapers began referring satirically to the local swells as OFM, "our first men," and used expressions like NG, "no go," GT, "gone to Texas," and SP, "small potatoes." \n\nMany of the abbreviated expressions were exaggerated misspellings, a stock in trade of the humorists of the day. One predecessor of OK was OW, "oll wright," and there was also KY, "know yuse," KG, "know go," and NS, "nuff said."\n\nMost of these acronyms enjoyed only a brief popularity. But OK was an exception, no doubt because it came in so handy. It first found its way into print in Boston in March of 1839 and soon became widespread among the hipper element. \n\nIt didn't really enter the language at large, however, until 1840. That's when Democratic supporters of Martin Van Buren adopted it as the name of their political club, giving OK a double meaning. ("Old Kinderhook" was a native of Kinderhook, New York.) \n\nOK became the warcry of Tammany hooligans in New York while beating up their opponents. It was mentioned in newspaper stories around the country.\n\nVan Buren's opponents tried to turn the phrase against him, saying that it had originated with Van Buren's allegedly illiterate predecessor, Andrew Jackson, a story that has survived to this day. They also devoted considerable energy to coming up with unflattering interpretations, e.g., "Out of Kash, Out of Kredit, and Out of Klothes." \n\nNewspaper editors and publicists around the country delighted in coming up with even sillier interpretations-- Oll Killed, Orfully Konfused, Often Kontradicts, etc.--so that by the time the campaign was over the expression had taken firm root nationwide.\n\nAs time went on, though, people forgot about the abbreviation fad and Old Kinderhook and began manufacturing their own etymologies. Here's a sampling: \n\n(1) It's a derivative of the Choctaw Indian affirmative "okeh." Andrew Jackson, who figures in many stories about OK, is said to have introduced the word to the white man.\n\n(2) Another Jackson story has it that he used to mark OK for "oll korrect" on court documents. In the one example of this that was actually unearthed, however, the OK was found actually to be OR, for "order recorded," a common courthouse abbreviation. \n\n(3) It was a telegraphic signal meaning "open key," that is, ready to receive. Others say OK was used for "all right" because A and R had already been appropriated for other purposes. Big problem with this theory: the first telegraph message was transmitted in 1844, five years after OK appeared.\n\n(4) It stands for O. Kendall & Sons, a supplier of army biscuits that stamped its initials on its product