Worry wort

[BobbiLynn]

Does this term have something to do with homebrewing?

 

[brewguyver]

Does this term have something to do with homebrewing?

Lol - it's quite possible. Or maybe it's a wine thing - concerns about nasty feet crushing grapes.

 

[OrdinaryAvgGuy]

Not to spoil the fun but I believe the term was coined in the mid 1950's by a cartoonist who used the name for a character.

 

[BobbiLynn]

Not to spoil the fun but I believe the term was coined in the mid 1950's by a cartoonist who used the name for a character.

Was the character a homebrewer?

 

[Revvy]

Actually it's "Worry Wart" And ordinary was right about it having some cartoon connotations.

“Worry” itself is an interesting word, one that has traveled far from its origins. When “worry” first appeared in Old English (as “wrygan&#8221, it meant, not “to fret,” but “to strangle” (putting a whole new light on “put your worries behind you&#8221. That grisly meaning of “worry” softened a bit over the subsequent centuries, first to “bite and shake” (as dogs “worry” their rubber toys today), then “to harass or vex,” until finally arriving at its modern meaning of “to make (or to be) persistently anxious” around 1822.

“Wart,” on the other hand, has meant “a small excrescence on the skin” since it appeared in Old English from a Germanic root. Several centuries of development gave “wart” a variety of figurative meanings, including that of “a defect or unattractive feature” (as in the phrase “warts and all&#8221 and, perhaps inevitably, “an annoying, obnoxious or insignificant person” in the 19th century.

Thus the stage is set for decoding “worry wart” as “a person who annoys others by worrying loudly and constantly over nearly everything.” The earliest use of the phrase in print found so far is from 1956, although an earlier form, “worryguts,” had been popular in Britain since the 1930s. But “worry wart” became a household standard when it was used as the name of a recurrent character in “Out Our Way,” a popular newspaper comic strip drawn by James R. Williams from 1922 to 1957. Oddly enough, Williams’ “Worry Wart” was a young boy who caused worry in others, rather than being plagues by worry himself.

 

[Revvy]

And the wort of brewing ;

From Middle English wort, worte, from Old English wyrt, wyrte ("brewing wort, new beer, spice"), from Proto-Germanic *wurtijō (“spice&#8221, from Proto-Indo-European *werǝd-, *wrād- (“sprout, root&#8221. Cognate with Dutch wort ("wort"), German Würze ("wort, seasoning, spice"), Danish urt ("beer wort"), Swedish vört ("beer wort").

 

[BobbiLynn]

a person who annoys others by worrying loudly and constantly over nearly everything.

Hmmm.....

 

[Revvy]

Hmmm.....

But yeah, I could see how it would fit with a newb homebrewer posting an "is my beer ruined" thread....

Good observation.:rockin:

 

[Homercidal]

And the Antonym of Worry Wort might be something like "havabrew", meaning which came about slowly and evolved from the much longer phrase, "Relax, Don't Worry, Have a Homebrew!" which became popular in the late 20th century to the early 21st century.