Thursday, January 04, 2007
The Daily Hump: Bowel Movement
Alternative title: Sausagefest
Bowels are not pretty. In the anatomical sense they're your intenstines. More generically the bowels can refer to the interior of anything, such as "the bowels of a sausage factory". Our word bowel is from the Latin botellus, meaning small intenstine. This is a diminutive form of the Latin botulus meaning sausage. In 1829, after 230 people died of sausage poisoning (no joke), German poet/health official Justinus Kerner looked to this Latin root and christened the disease botulism. Botulism spores, when not causing respiratory muscle paralysis, do an amazing job of erasing frown lines. Alas, Botox, as the spores are marketed, also does a great job of making people look really freaky.
bowel [AHD]
botulism [Gale Encyclopedia of Neurological Disorders]
Justinus Kerner [Wikipedia]
Bowels are not pretty. In the anatomical sense they're your intenstines. More generically the bowels can refer to the interior of anything, such as "the bowels of a sausage factory". Our word bowel is from the Latin botellus, meaning small intenstine. This is a diminutive form of the Latin botulus meaning sausage. In 1829, after 230 people died of sausage poisoning (no joke), German poet/health official Justinus Kerner looked to this Latin root and christened the disease botulism. Botulism spores, when not causing respiratory muscle paralysis, do an amazing job of erasing frown lines. Alas, Botox, as the spores are marketed, also does a great job of making people look really freaky.bowel [AHD]
botulism [Gale Encyclopedia of Neurological Disorders]
Justinus Kerner [Wikipedia]
Labels: Latin, The Daily Hump
:: posted by David, 9:25 AM
