Transcripts

Charles Hodgson:
Opisthenar and that is the real word that means the back of your hand. It's strange that we use a multi-word expression to refer to the back of our hands when there's a real word.

Charles Hodgson, author of the book Carnal Knowledge, has researched some of the unusual words and phrases that refer to body parts.

There's a little bump in your ear if you put your finger in your ear, it sort of blocks the hole that goes into your ear. And that one is called the tragus and the reason it's called the tragus is because the ancient Greeks already had a word tragus and you may have had an uncle or teacher in high school that may have had fuzz growing out of his ears and that Greek word tragus meant billy goat - so the fuzz growing out of the ears is the billy goat's beard.

Why do we call them nostrils?

There's an old English word that we don't use any more "thorough" - and that meant hole. So if you wanted to say nose hole back in the old days you would have said nose thorough and if you compress those two words into one; nose thorough - nostril.

And do you know where the phrase "knuckle under" comes from?

When you knuckle under you give up. And this seems to have come out of an old drinking game when you've had too much to drink and you think you're going to give up and let the other guy win, you would actually wrap your knuckles underneath the table in the bar, and signal that you couldn't take anymore.

At somethingyoushouldknow.net I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.