a few questions on etymology and slang terms

[ratty]

1. What did the phrase “swash-buckling” originally refer to? Is there such a thing as a swash? Does it buckle? What does this have (if anything) to do with pirates, swordplay, and Tyrone Power?

2. What does the phrase “and Bob’s your uncle” mean?

3. I just thought of this last night while trying to fall asleep: In English, we call a doctor who attends to pregnant women an obstetrician. In German, the word for fruit is obst. I was thinking that there might be a connection here, based on what seems a universal comparison between child-bearing women and fruit-bearing trees. This is my WAG for the day- am I way off base?

4. Why are white people referred to as Caucasians? I’m assuming it has something to do with the Caucasus mountains, but what?

5. The Japanese writing system of pictographic characters is called kanji, and is based on Chinese characters. Okay. I know that Chinese is not really one language, but really a large collection of dialects, many of which are mutually unintelligible. But all speakers of these dialects can read Chinese characters, since they stand for concepts as opposed to sounds. Is the same true for kanji- can Japanese speakers read and understand Chinese characters, or have they diverged to the point where they cannot be understood by speakers of both languages?

[APB]

*Originally posted by ratty *
**2) What does the phrase “and Bob’s your uncle” mean? **

World Wide Words: Bob’s your uncle

The Balfour explanation is the one which is usually given.

(BTW, it helps if separate queries have separate threads.)

[KneadToKnow]

Question 4 addressed.

[RealityChuck]

Swashbuckling, from the OED:

Acting like, or characteristic of the conduct of, a swashbuckler; noisily swaggering, blustering. So swashbuckling n.

[f. SWASH v. + BUCKLER n.2; hence lit. one who makes a noise by striking his own or his opponent’s shield with his sword.]

a1693 Urquhart’s Rabelais III. xlii. 349 The huff, snuff,…swash-buckling High Germans. .

Obstetrician

The OED reports “Obstetrics” comes from the latin “obstetrix” meaning midwife. So there is no direct connection. It’s possible the terms may be cognates, but it most likely is a coincidence (like the German word “gift” ).

[jjimm]

*Originally posted by ratty *
**5) The Japanese writing system of pictographic characters is called kanji, and is based on Chinese characters. Okay. I know that Chinese is not really one language, but really a large collection of dialects, many of which are mutually unintelligible. But all speakers of these dialects can read Chinese characters, since they stand for concepts as opposed to sounds. Is the same true for kanji- can Japanese speakers read and understand Chinese characters, or have they diverged to the point where they cannot be understood by speakers of both languages? **

In my experiences in Japan and China, since the scripts have the same root, there is a vague comprehension of the context of what is being written about between Chinese and Japanese reading each others’ script, but not total comprehension. For Japanese trying to read Chinese there are problems due to compound words being constructed of several seemingly unrelated characters. For Chinese reading Japanese, there is this problem, exacerbated by the use of hiragana and katakana, which are phonetic, and therefore largely incomprohensible.

I would liken it to having an understanding of Latin, and then trying to read a Spanish newspaper.

[Jabba]

For Q.3, Chambers dictionary says it comes from the Latin obstetrix, a midwife, which itself comes from ob, before, and stare, to stand.