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
In 1977, King’s Cross was brought to a standstill by mohicaned Sex Pistol’s fans who’d heard rumour that John Lydon would be alighting there on his way to record God Save The Queen. Several had banners proclaiming their devotion to Mr Rotten, one of which proclaimed “Jonny – Your the Best”. Despite his affectations to appear working class, Lydon was actually a public school educated fellow and was a keen student of grammar. He quickly pointed out the grammatical error on the banner, hence the punk tuition at the punk station led to a corruption of the two terms, punctuation.
I’d love to know where the word exploitation comes from.
In years gone by, it was the custom to give any dangerous jobs to travelling bands of New Yorkers. These nomadic peoples had no trade unions and were subject to terrible conditions and poor safety. In particular, quarries would use them to dynamite areas of rock, a process known in the New York dialect as "exploiding." Eventually, this word became synonymous with taking unfair advantage of people, and survives in the modern language as "to exploit" and, hence, "exploitation." Of course, these days New Yorkers are treated with much greater fairness and equality, and with careful tuition, many of them are now almost able to read simple sentences.