Livery

You know, there are some words that you think are just dead and gone... Like livery... Quick, who knows what that is?? Without looking in the dictionary! I saw it twice yesterday!! On taxicabs... on their taxi-license plates. Yup, remember livery stable from the old days? Stables where you could rest and feed your horse? That was a livery stable... which then was used for the hackney cabs in London and elsewhere, horsedrawn cabs that you could rent... And voila... even though they aren't horse-drawn cabs anymore... we've kept the word livery in relationship to cars for hire... Go figure... Of course, livery is also used to describe the uniform or attire of servants, etc. And even the livery of an aircraft (the paint job). I wonder how many other words are out there, that we think are dead and gone... or have virtually forgotten the meaning of...??

It would be an interesting project to be more attentive to the words out there and think about them a bit... Looking outside, I see a container with "Litter only" written on it... Now there's a word that can mean a bunch of different things! A litter-bearer is... someone who carries a stretcher... so the stretcher is a litter... And then there is a litter of pups... we all know what that is... Not a mess of pups!! And not the mess they make on the floor! And then there is leaf litter... which is the uppermost of decaying stuff on the forest floor... And then our own most-common definition as "garbage"... more or less...

Maybe I've got too much time on my hands?? But it's no wonder English is such a hard language to learn!!!