McGonagall in today's Daily Buzzword

[Karen Barker]

LOL!  When I was very small at school my teacher sent me to the 
secretary's office to ask for a tub of elbow grease upon seeing my 
blank look when she told me to use some!  I sort of knew I was being 
set up for something but went anyway!  It's quite a common trick 
played on apprentices on building sites I believe, along with 
sending them to ask for a 'long (weight) wait' or a tin of tartan 
paint!

Karen

--- In HPFGU-OTChatter at yahoogroups.com, Mhochberg at a... wrote:
> This is in my email each today. Today's emailed word featured  
Professor 
> McGonagall.
>  
> What is the Daily Buzzword for July 9?
> elbow grease   \EL-boh-GREESS\  noun
> 
> What does it mean?
> : forceful effort  in doing physical labor
> 
> How do you use it?
> "You will be  polishing the silver in the trophy room with Mr.
> Filch," said Professor  McGonagall. "And no magic, Weasley --
> elbow grease." (J. K. Rowling, _Harry  Potter and the Chamber
> of Secrets_)
> 
> Are you a word wiz?
> How  old do you think the term "elbow grease" is?
> 
> A. Very old; medieval  laborers erecting castles probably used it.
> B. Old; Pilgrims who built  the settlement at Plymouth might have
> heard it.
> C. Fairly new; it  was first used during the construction of the
> Panama Canal.
> D. Very  new; NASA engineers coined it while working on the  Space
> Shuttle.
> 
> Answer: 
> The Pilgrims certainly labored hard  to build their settlement
> at Plymouth, and they may have used the term "elbow  grease"
> to describe their labor. "Elbow grease" first made its
> appearance  on the English scene back in the late 1600s, where
> it was immediately used as  a humorous euphemism for the sweat
> produced by hard work. It later came to  mean "effort in doing
> labor," the meaning we give it today. "Elbow grease"  tends to
> appear in more casual writing. For more formal writing,  you'd
> probably be better of with a word like "effort," "exertion,"
> or  "pains."
> 
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