Who taught: Kim

Money in the bag (source: http://cicmusic.wordpress.com/)

As you know, I teach at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU). A few days ago, I stumbled upon a youtube video that is about the stereotypes of CMU. Typically, the workload at CMU is intense and heavy. Students spend a lot of hours in libraries and meeting rooms. From the comments on the video, I found one very funny saying among CMU students. They say that the campus was made up of two types of people “the fruits” (drama, fine arts) and “the vegetables” (science, engineering). Sadly (??!!), I was one of the vegetables because I graduated from the School of Computer Science (SCS). Consequently, I am now a vegetable grower since I teach computer science students. Well… vegetables are well known as healthy food. I will do my best to grow nice organic ones so that they can help people.

About two weeks ago, I heard a very happy news from my friend, Kim. She applied for the Fulbright scholarship program a few months ago. She changed her status on Facebook, saying that she passed the first round. I do not know how many people know the program but it is actually a huge one to get as a student in the U.S. I was so happy that I commented saying that, “Awesome! So happy to hear that!” Of course, there were her other friends who added comments. She replied, saying, “It is not in the bag yet. But I will keep you posted.”

Not in the bag… That was a new one to me. I am sure you guys can also understand what it means, right? So, I replied to her, “That is a new one and it will be going into my blog.” That is what is happening now.

If you know the etymology of the expression, you will definitely be able to feel the expression. Based on my research, this expression is from the 16th century. At that time, bird hunting was famous and hunters go out with a bag. When they finally retrieve a bird and put it in the bag, they now can declare that they catch a bird for sure.

Can you feel it? This is the question Jean asked me when I say that “In the bag is the new one to me!” I now feel the expression a lot better after knowing the etymology. How about you? Don’t you like to know etymology of new expressions? Here is today’s homework! Why don’t you ask your American friends whether they know the etymology of this expression? I bet many of them would not know which is not surprising at all. We just use many expressions of our mother tongue without thinking about their origins, don’t we?