Anyone else like to watch Forged in Fire? If you’re unfamiliar with it, it’s a competition show where smiths are forging knives. So fascinating! Watching that show has taught me that one of the most important things for steel is that it’s well tempered.

Yeah…important for people too, we just don’t do it through heat-treating!

But have you ever wondered how the same word has come to be applied to both our temperaments and things like steel?

Temper, the noun, comes from temper, the verb, which has traveled through the various forms of English from the Latin temperare, which means observe proper measure, be moderate, restrain oneself; mix correctly, mix in due proportion; regulate, rule, govern, manage.” So whether you’re doing it to yourself or to something else, the idea is that you’re reaching the correct measure or balance.

If you look at the root, you’ll notice it also looks a lot like tempus (time), which is no coincidence either. Etymologists aren’t exactly certain when tempus shifted from its root “stretch” to the time-sense of “measure,” but it’s definitely a change that happened back in the Latin days and has traveled forward into English for us.

It gained the meaning of “disposition” around 1590 in English, and by 1600 was specifically used for “calm state of mind” (a good temper). It wasn’t until 1828 that it’s recorded as being used for “bad temper.” That one surprised me, since it’s the primary usage today!

We recently celebrated my daughter’s 16th birthday, and one of her requests was to get her ears pierced. I got mine done when I was five, but I actually stopped wearing earrings after high school and just never picked the habit back up…so I thought, “Oh, I’ll go through my jewelry box” on her birthday and pull out any pairs I still had lying around to pass along to her. Well, while I was digging, I found some other jewelry I had put in there when the kids were small and grabby, LOL, including…the diamond tennis bracelet that my husband gave me on our wedding day. I was a bit appalled at myself for having left this beautiful gift hidden in the bottom of my jewelry box drawer for YEARS! I got it out and put it on and delivered the earrings to my daughter, who then asked (of course) “Why is it called a tennis bracelet?”

I had no idea, so looked it up.

As it turns out, the phrase is quite new. It all started with a tennis player named Chris Evert, who played professionally from 1972 – 1989. She wore a diamond in-line bracelet created by George Bedewi, not even taking it off for matches. In one heated match, the bracelet broke–and they actually halted the game to recover it. This put both the bracelet design and the jeweler who created it into the spotlight and brought instant fame to this new bracelet of design…which came to be termed the “tennis” bracelet because of the tennis match that gave it such attention.

I’m quite happy to have rediscovered mine and have it on even as I type this. 😉 Do you like tennis bracelets, diamond or otherwise, or do you prefer another design?

This one comes a special request from a regular reader (Hi, Bev!), who was wondering about the phrase “doggie bag.”

It’s pretty straightforward, really, but interesting nonetheless!

The phrase is first recorded in the 1960s, for a take-home container of leftovers from a restaurant. Why is it called that, though? Because it was assumed you’d be taking the food home for your doggie! 😉

(For the record, my family usually takes those leftovers home for ourselves…but my mother-in-law is a TOTAL “for the dog” person! We always laugh because she wants to take everything home to her pup, and we sometimes have to fight her for the right to eat it ourselves, LOL.)

Are you a fan of leftovers, or do they go to the doggie in your world?