Sideswipe: December 20: Does a man or woman live here?

Simple.

Simple.

Dirt poor

One oft-repeated origin for this phrase is that, back in the olden days, floors were dirt, and only the wealthy had something other than dirt. While people may have had dirt floors at the relevant period, that’s irrelevant for the phrase, which seems to have originated centuries later - on the other side of an ocean. The phrase dirt poor pops up repeatedly in the 19th century, but sometimes in odd places: In 1860, for instance, a type of guano is described as “nearly ‘dirt poor’ as a fertiliser”, while in 1865, it’s a mine that’s being called “dirt poor”. Things start getting closer to the current meaning in 1885, when a North Carolina newspaper discussed how cotton was impoverishing farmers and leading to foreclosed mortgages. This meant “the eastern merchants’ capital is being invested in real estate and they are becoming dirt poor”. WordOrigins.org speculates the phrase is related to the modern phrase house poor, and meant a farmer had land but little cash. But by the late 1880s, it began to refer to someone who had little cash, period.

Waterloo teeth

Waterloo teeth.

The BDA Museum has several sets of “Waterloo teeth” in its collection - some of these are teeth taken from dead soldiers after the Battle of Waterloo, which were made into dentures. Replacement teeth were traditionally made from ivory (hippopotamus, walrus or elephant). However, such teeth did not always look natural and deteriorated more quickly than real teeth. If you wanted a really nice set of dentures these were made with an ivory base and then set with real human teeth. These were expensive as it could take six weeks to make a complete set. They have subsequently become known as Waterloo teeth, as some were scavenged from dead soldiers on battlefields.

Good advice

In the 1950s, the French government’s pro-sobriety campaign featured posters saying: “No More Than a Litre of Wine a Day” (that’s a bottle and a bit!).