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who took part in illegal expeditions against Cuba, Mexico, and Central America to set up local governments that would apply to the United States for annexation. It was first used as a political term in the U.S. Senate in the late 1800s.” (From An Avalanche of Anoraks , by Robert White)
    GOD
    Meaning: Deity; creator of the universe; supreme being
    Origin: “The term for the deity sometimes is said to derive from ‘good,’ and there is some overlap between the two words. The words have different Indo-European roots, however. God has been traced to gheu- , meaning ‘to call,’ ‘to invoke,’ or ‘to offer sacrifices to.’ Good derives from ghedh- and means ‘to unite,’ ‘to join,’ or ‘bring together.’” (From Devious Derivations , by Hugh Rawson)
Sweet smell of success: The smell of peppermint improves the concentration of office workers.
    STRIKE
    Meaning: To stop working as a form of organized protest Origin: “First used to describe an event in 1768 when a group of angry British sailors demonstrated their refusal to work by ‘striking’ (taking down) their sails. As a labor term, it was first used in America in 1799 to describe a ten-week walkout by New York shoemakers.” (From Once Upon a Word , by Rob Kyff)
    DOODLE
    Meaning: Scribble absentmindedly
    Origin: “Comes from the German word dudeln , meaning ‘to play the bagpipe.’ The notion seems to be that a person who spends his time playing bagpipes would be guilty of other frivolous time-wasting activities—like scribbling aimlessly on scraps of paper. Although the word has been around for several centuries, it did not come into widespread popularity in the United States until Gary Cooper used it in the famous film Mr. Deeds Goes to Town in 1936.” (From Dictionary of Word and Phrase Origins, Volume III , by William and Mary Morris)
    MUMBO JUMBO
    Meaning: Confusing language; nonsense
    Origin: “The earliest references used capital initials, as Mumbo Jumbo was said to be an African deity. Unfortunately, no one since the 18th century has reported any such deity in any West African tribe. It is possible that mumbo jumbo is a corrupt form of nzambi , Congolese for ‘god.’
    “Many explorers dismissed any native god as ignorant superstition. A religious belief in Mumbo Jumbo, a god supposedly invented to scare the womenfolk, was seen as even more nonsensical. Presumably this gave rise to mumbo jumbo in its modern sense of ‘obscure or meaningless talk.’” (From Take Our Word for It , by Melanie and Mike Crowley)
    *        *        *
    Dumb Joke: A man walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm and says, “A beer please, and one for the road.”
18th-century English sailors wore skirts.

CAR TUNES
Radios are so much a part of the driving experience, it seems like cars have always had them. But they didn’t. Here’s the story .
    S UNDOWN
One evening in 1929 two young men named William Lear and Elmer Wavering drove their girlfriends to a lookout point high above the Mississippi River town of Quincy, Illinois, to watch the sunset. It was a romantic night to be sure, but one of the women observed that it would be even nicer if they could listen to music in the car.
    Lear and Wavering liked the idea. Both men had tinkered with radios—Lear had served as a radio operator in the U.S. Navy during World War I—and it wasn’t long before they were taking apart a home radio and trying to get it to work in a car. But it wasn’t as easy as it sounds: automobiles have ignition switches, generators, spark plugs, and other electrical equipment that generate noisy static interference, making it nearly impossible to listen to the radio when the engine was running.
    SIGNING ON
    One by one, Lear and Wavering identified and eliminated each source of electrical interference. When they finally got their radio to work, they took it to a radio convention in Chicago. There they met Paul Galvin, owner of Galvin Manufacturing