I have to thank Annie Jackson for an e-mail. She asked where the ajective crestfallen comes from? And it'a a good one. I've spoken before on the programme about how some of the cruellest sports in our history - such as bear baiting, etc - have given idioms to the English language. And cockfighting has done exactly the same, unfortunately. And crestfallen goes all the wat back to a rooster who's lost his fight, so he might well have a fallen crest in a very literal sense. And the very first evidensce for it in the Oxford English Dictionary in from 1589, probably reffering to a person, but likening them to a rooster. "Oh, how meagre and lean he looked, so crestfallen that his comb hung down to his bill". So we have cockfighting to thank - if we have to thank it for anything - for crestfallen. But also a few other idioms. Like showing the white feather, associated very much, especially in the Second World War, with cowardice, of course. That goes back to the fact that gamecock that had a white feather was concidered to be of inferior breeding. So, poorly bred. And hence not to have as much gusto and bravery as the real pedigree roosters. So to show the white feather was literally to turn tail. But just one final stop, not really to do with cookfighting, but I mentioned showing the white feather, and the idea of the bird of poor breeding, if you like. And poor pedigree. And pedigree is actually a wonderful one, which I love, a wonderful origin. Because in medieval manuscripts, a mark that consisted of three curve lines was used to indicate a family lineage. So it was a family tree, not too dissimilar to the ones we have today. And people saw resemblance between this mark and the claw or track of a crane, so they called it a crane's foot. And in the French, the Normans who came over after the conquest, that was a pie de grue. And eventually pai de grue, in the English tongue, became pedigee. But its literally meaning is a crane's foot.
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