Stories Behind Words

Is it correct to speak of a receipt in cooking?

Yes, this is the oldest meaning of the word. What we now call prescriptions were once called receipts. A much later meaning, that of a bill or statement, has now generally supplanted the older one, but it is still heard, especially in the South. Elsewhere the related recipe is more common. Recipe is simply the same verb as that upon which receipt is based. but it is in the imperative, it's an order: "Take!" Indeed the mysterious Rx at the head of prescriptions in only recipe abbreviated.

Why us someone who is deceived said to be "hoodwinked"?

Hoodwink meant literally to blindfold, to cover the face so that the one covered could not see (and sometimes so that he could not be identified). Criminals were hoodwinked at their execution to spare them; witnesses were hoodwinked in dangerous trials, to save them. It is now used solely in its metaphorical sense: to blindfold mentally, to prevent one from seeing the truth, so that he might be the more easily deceived.

Why is a hypocrite said to weep "crocodile tears"?

Human beings in the aggregate must eat at least 10,000,000 animals everyday. This is known as "a nourishing diet." Once in a great while an animal will eat a human being. This is known as a "shocking occurrence." Among the few animals that have thus meagerly enriched their diets is the crocodile. It has been asserted, from antiquity, that he not only dined off passers-by but cunningly selected the most tender by weeping and moaning and then perfidiously seizing those that turned aside to comfort him. The term was particularly applied by our embittered fathers to ladies who imposed on masculine big-heartedness with their tears and then ruined the poor dupes that were moved by them.

Source: Coronet, November 1960
How Word Works by Dr Bergen Evans

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