Pucks and Puckish

"Puckish" is an adjective that means impish or whimsical. We might describe someone as having "puckish humor."

the adjective has its origin with a character from Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Puck is "that merry wanderer of the night." He is a shape-shifter and mischief-maker. He answers to the king of the fairies.

By KCBalletMedia - Puck, CC BY 2.0, Link

William Shakespeare didn't totally invent the character who existed in Engish folklore. The traditional version of Puck was more malicious than the whimsical Shakespearean comedy character. The older Puck was more of an evil spirit or demon.

Back in Medieval England, this hobgoblin was known as the puke or pouke.  (No etymological connect to modern English "puke.") Those Medieval names go back to the Old Norse pūki, meaning "devil."

Shakespeare's much lighter Puck has stuck over the years and became the adjective that was appearing regularly in English texts in the 1800s.

We also have the hockey puck disk made of rubber that serves the same function in hockey as a ball does in ball games. This origin is more obscure. It may be related related to the verb to puck (poke) used in the game of hurling for striking or pushing the ball.

The shape of the sports puck is the origin for several other uses of the word.

A puck is also a graphics tablet accessory that is mouse-like and resembles the hockey puck and can detect absolute position and rotation.

The coffee grounds inside an espresso machine portafilter are also called a puck, because of its shape.

It is also sometimes used to describe a kind of a hard shaving soap that is used with a shaving brush and also resembles the hockey puck shape.

Velcro

Here's another generic trademark post. Did you realize that it was back in 1958 that Velcro was patented? It was invented by George de Mestral, an electrical engineer from Switzerland who applied for his first patent when he was 12 years old, for a model airplane.

While on a hunting trip, he hiked through patches of burdock, a thistly plant that spreads its spiny seeds by latching them onto anything or anyone passing by. Back home he was picking the burs off his dog’s coat and his own clothes and got curious about how they so effectively attached to surfaces.

a hook and loop fastener generically called velcro

Under a microscope, he saw that each bristle was a tiny hook that was able to catch in the loops of clothing. It took him 10 years to get his hook and loop working by being sewn to nylon. There were hundreds of loops per inch and the initial production was slow and inefficient.

That is the origin story for the product. The word's origin is the combination (a portmanteau) of the beginnings of two French words velour, meaning "velvet" and crochet meaning "hook."

Velcro BVBA is a privately held company that produces fasteners and other products. It is the original patentor of the hook-and-loop fastener. Like other companies, it is not thrilled that their original product has been attached to generic products that are called "velcro."

Alice in Chains

Alice in Chains (abbreviated as AIC) is an American rock band from Seattle, Washington. It was formed in 1987 by guitarist and vocalist Jerry Cantrell and drummer Sean Kinney, who later recruited bassist Mike Starr and lead vocalist Layne Staley. They are associated with grunge music, although they also can be considered as heavy metal.

The band took its name from Staley's earlier group. That band was a glam metal band, Alice N' Chains. That band formed in 1986 had wanted to change their name to Alice in Chains, but there were concerns that the reference to female bondage would hurt the band, so they chose to spell it as Alice N' Chains. Staley's bandmates had also briefly considered the name Alice in Wonderland but settled on the version that could be interpreted as Alice IN Chains or Alice IN Chains in its pronunciation.

One humorous but unfounded origin rumor I found was that they were named after a lost episode from The Brady Bunch series which had a major character named Alice.