The origins, properly sourced How we source & date Folk etymologies corrected Established 2026

Index

Myth Files

How chain emails and viral posts became folk etymology

Many of today's most confident word-origin "facts" trace to a single forwarded email from 1999. Here is how a joke became a…

Who invented “saved by the bell”? The safety-coffin myth vs the boxing record

The macabre story ties the phrase to bells rigged above Victorian graves. The dated record ties it to the boxing ring, and…

The acronym problem: why “posh”, “golf” and “tips” aren’t acronyms

A whole genre of word-origin stories claims old words are secret acronyms. A single date-based rule exposes almost all of them as…

The rule of thumb story: tracing a myth to its source

The claim that "rule of thumb" recalls a wife-beating law is the most repeated false etymology in English. Followed link by link,…