2011年8月22日星期一
Chickenfeed: It Doesn't Add Up to Muc
(MUSIC)
No one knows for sure how a word for something to eat also came to mean something very small. But, a peanut is a very small food.
When you add the word gallery to the word peanut you have the name of an area in an American theater. A gallery is a high seating area or balcony above the main floor.
Another reason for the saying about working for peanuts may be linked to elephants. Think of how elephants are paid for their work in the circus. They receive food, not money. One of the foods they like best is peanuts.
Americans, like people in other countries, always want more money. One way they express this is by protesting that their jobs do not pay enough. A common expression is, "I am working for chickenfeed." It means working for very little money. The expression probably began because seeds fed to chickens made people think of small change. Small change means metal coins of not much value, like nickels which are worth five cents.
Almost every language in the world has a saying that a person can never be too rich.
It is a very different meaning from the main one in the dictionary. That meaning is small nuts that grow on a plant.
Chickenfeed also has another interesting meaning known to history experts and World War Two spies and soldiers.
An early use of the word chickenfeed appeared in an American publication in nineteen thirty. It told about a rich man and his son. Word expert Mitford Mathews says it read, "I'll bet neither the kid nor his father ever saw a nickel or a dime. They would not have been interested in such chickenfeed."
2008-2-16
I'm Susan Clark with WORDS AND THEIR STORIES, a program in Special English on the Voice of America.
The expression is an old one. Word expert Mitford Mathews says that as early as eighteen fifty-four, an American publication used the words peanut agitators. That meant political troublemakers who did not have a lot of support.
订阅：
博文评论 (Atom)
没有评论:
发表评论