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.
Count von Primark was a German cove, married for ten long years to a gorgeous pouting Englishwoman named Sue. He loved to play practical jokes on her...slamming her face in the fridge when she was getting some milk, that kind of thing. One day she could take it no more and planned revenge. She asked the Count to change a lightbulb. He stood up onto the table, lightbulb in hand, and began to examine the light fitting.
Meanwhile, she climbed silently behind him, grabbed the top of his underwear and yanked it sharply upwards, leaving the Count with the sorest "down below" area this side of the Rhine. "This is hereby known as the wedgie table", she said. "Vot?" he puffed in his necessarily over-the-top German accent. "The veggy table?" The name stuck, and later became associated as a collective name for the pieces of food...carrots, beetroot etc...that happened to be on that table that day.
During the Revolution, bands of low-ranking members were dispatched with orders to harass the leaders of the ruling regime. A common tactic was to show up at the target's house and carry on in such a way as would embarrass them. Although a variety of outlandish costumes were used in the effort, the favorite was a simple gorilla suit. Contrary to its appearance, "gorilla-gram" is not a corruption of guerilla-gram but is a straightforward translation from the Spanish "gorila-grama," which itself exemplifies the vogue for punning and wordplay prevalent at the time.
A whangee is the kind of springy bamboo cane which Charlie Chaplin's tramp character sported. The word is haptopoeic, i.e. its sound suggests the shape or movement of the thing. An onomatopoeic equivalent would be "whacko".
This came from an event early-on in the Hundred-Years war at the battle of Crécy. In 1337, based on his claim to the French throne as a descendant of Philip IV through his mother, Edward III of England refused to do homage to the French King Philip VI. The resulting war that started shortly afterward between France and England continued, with periodic truces, until 1453. The Battle of Crécy, fought on Saturday, August 26, 1346 was the first of several significant battles during which the English longbow triumphed over crossbowmen and armoured knights. A group of some twelve thousand English troops, most of them archers, defeated a French force treble their own size, firing an estimated half-million arrows over the course of the day. To honor this heroic feat, Edward knighted every single archer who survived the battle (almost all of them - English casulaties were a scant few hundred). Afterwards, they would prove thier rank to the laymen by drawing their sleeves back and showing the mark where bowstring upon bowstring had worn away the flesh on their wrists to an ugly callous. This was their undeniable medal and ticket into the upper class - the "Wrist o' Crécy". punctuation