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Evil Etymologies
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Tell us why a word means what it means, then supply a word for the next player.
I'll pick a word to start.

hammock

As we all know, a hammock is a piece of canvas hanging between two points, in which you sleep. Hammocks were originally developed by swineherds, who, when tired, would remove their smocks and tie them between two trees as a makeshift bed. The smocks were not canvas, however; they were usually made of pigskin. Hence "ham-smock," or hammock.

Next word: photograph

The earliest indoor photographers used magnesium powder to produce a sufficiently intense flash, and the most widely used brand on the Continent was the invention of the self-styled Graf von Fincklern-Rhenschmark. When it was ignited, it would go off with a characteristic PHOT! sound. It was sold under the brand name "Phot von Graf", and the name in the English tongue mutated into "photograph" and became associated with the resulting pictures.

rhinoceros

The beast was first discovered by early explorers hacking their way along the banks of a river in Germany. It was so strange in their eyes that the explorers believed the outlandish creature must come from another world, and assumed it must have originated in what was then the only known asteroid, Ceres. Returning home, zoologists were sceptical of the claims of extraterrestrial origin, but in deference to the explorers the beast was recorded as "previously unknown beast from the Rhine (or Ceres)." The Rhine (or Ceres) Beast was soon commonly adopted for the animal, and its contraction is still in use today.

vegetable

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