Our words shape our reality

Phrases and words have their own history - and sometimes it's not what we think.

Recently someone signing off an email to me wrote, 'Toodle-oo!' and then signed it. 'Toodle-oo' may sound like fun, but actually it's a corruption of the French 'A tout a l'heure' meaning: see you before too long.

What's wrong with that, I hear you say? Nothing, except that in about the 1890s rich air-headed young men who couldn't speak French liked to try and flaunt both their money and their ignorance by...