Maybe my excellent English teacher Mrs. McNutt is to blame. Somewhere, I developed a curiosity about the language and where words and phrases came from – things like “he’s full of baloney.” (I believe that one began as “full of blarney,” from the auld Irish and the Blarney Stone…)

Some of the sayings have fallen into disuse, or repeated only by grandparents (like me). I haven’t heard “not worth a Continental” in awhile. (The early “Continental” dollar bill was notoriously avoided by colonists during the Revolutionary War period.) I do hear people being called a “smart aleck,” and I can only assume that the person doing the calling has no idea who “Aleck” was. (1840’s New York City, Aleck Hoag, a sort of grifter who thought he knew more than the police, who later arrested him.)

But – if it makes you chuckle, you may be showing your rural roots. Where does the chuckle come from? (Other than a less-than-knee-slappingly-funny joke?) It was originally a verb form, as in “to chuck,” (not to be confused with the verb “upchuck” which really bad jokes may inspire). Around here, we would be more likely to say, “to cluck” than “chuck” – like a chicken. Back in medieval times, the chuck-chuck-chuckle was raucous laughter akin to the sound from the henhouse. By the 1800’s it had evolved into the sound of suppressed laughter, perhaps to keep from disturbing the chickens.

Sort of like a giggle, which – as we all know – is a baby Google.

Try this for chuckles: