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Something Rhymes with Purple
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The Origins of Square Meal
Robin Schafer from North London, what's the origin of square meal? There's a bit of a folk etymology attached to this one, which says that plates onboard a ship in the olden days would be square-shaped so that in turbulent waters, the food wouldn't spill. It's actually codswallop that, we think. Codswallop goes back to the bottles made by Huram Cod. The double D. Is it Hiram? Thank you. And wallop was a slang term for weak beer. Peter Scarf, again from London, where do we get the phrase, how's tricks? Well, there's a theory, a theory that it goes
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