punk

cattail

I wrote elsewhere about something that was part of my New Jersey childhood autumns. We would gather cattails, dry them, light them, and blow out the flaming tip so there was a glowing and smoking tip. Some people said the smoke kept away mosquitoes and bugs, but honestly, we just liked the fire and smoke.

We called them punks, but until I wrote about that, I had no clue why that was the name we used for them. It may be a Jersey thing. There were also very small, manufactured punks that are still sold and are used as a lighter for fireworks and as an unscented incense stick. 

Doing a bit of etymological research, I found the more common usages of the word.

I suspect that today, the most common usage might be as an adjective describing a loud, fast-moving, and aggressive form of rock music, popular in the late 1970s and early 1980s. Some of the genre's followers with their colored spiked hair and clothing decorated with safety pins or zippers could be called punks.

Earlier in North America, to call someone a punk would be saying they were a worthless person. The word shows up in 1950s movies, TV, and books as being close to being a criminal or hoodlum.

Slightly less derogatory American usage would be using it to describe an inexperienced young person or novice.

As a verb, it can be used to mean being tricked or deceived.

In sports, it can mean to totally beat or defeat an opponent.

The word's origin is late 16th century. I found that in an archaic sense, it meant a prostitute. 

The closest I can find for my childhood usage is a North American, late 17th century (as noun) usage of uncertain origin, meaning a soft, crumbly wood that has been attacked by fungus, used as tinder to start a fire.

saved by the bell

Some Americans might know the phrase saved by the bell" as the name of a 1980s TV sitcom about high school kids. But we use this idiom to often mean that someone is saved by something unplanned that gets them free from a tough situation. It might be a bell that saves them - one to end a class so that they don't have to give their speech, or a phone call that frees them - but it can it could also be the person who summons you from a meeting that you didn't want to attend.

The the idiom originataes in sports. In boxing, to be saved from misfortune or unpleasantness and a possible loss by the sound of the bell signalling the end of the round. Even a boxer who is knocked to the canvas and must regain his feet before a count of ten or lose the fight can be saved by that end-of-round bell if it is rung before the count is finished. That gives him until the start of the next round to recover and resume fighting. 

ADHI dates this to the "mid-1900s" while the OED cites the first boxing use in 1932, and later figurative use in 1959.

ringers and dead ringers

 

If you say that someone is a  “Dead Ringer,” it means they have the exact likeness of someone else - like a twin.

Going back to 19th century U.S. in horse racing,  an owner might substitute a horse that was faster or slower than the original racing horse to con the bookies. That horse looked exactly like the substituted horse and was called a ringer. 

The term "ringer" may have originated from the British term of the same name, which means "substitute or exchange". 

But why "dead"? In the phrase "dead ringer", the word means "precise" or "exact", similar to the phrases "dead on", "dead center", and "dead heat". 

When I was younger, I had heard the more frightening folk etymology of a "dead ringer." This usage originated from a custom of providing a cord in coffins for someone who buried alive to ring a bell for help. However, this is a folk etymology and the phrase has nothing to do with death.