Wordorigins.org

To launder money is to pass money from an illegal source through a legitimate business so that the illegal origin of the funds cannot be traced. The phrase can be traced back to the Watergate scandal of 1973, as evidenced from this citation from the Guardian newspaper of 19 April of that year:

Suitcases stuffed with 200,000 dollars of Republican campaign funds; money being “laundered” in Mexico.

But while the phrase can only be found in print from 1973, the metaphor of “washing” money is much older. There is this from the San Francisco Call-Bulletin of 3 June 1935:

There is not a hot money passer in America who will “wash” this money exchanging it for “cool” currency—unless it is offered him at such a tremendous discount that he can afford to hold it for years, if necessary, before attempting to pass it.

(Sources: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition; Safire’s New Political Dictionary

The phrase to play fast and loose is rather common in modern speech, but relatively few who use or understand the phrase know where it comes from. The origin is the name of a con game, along the lines of three-card monte (in spirit, not in actual structure of the game). From George Whetstone’s 1578 The Right Excellent Historye of Promos and Cassandra:

At fast or loose, with my Giptian, I meane to haue a cast.

The game is undoubtedly somewhat older than this, as the metaphorical sense predates this citation by some decades. From Tottel’s Miscellany of 1557:

Of a new maried studient that plaied fast or loose.

The game is described in this quote from James O. Halliwell’s 1847 A Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs and Ancient Customs, from the Fourteenth Century:

Fast-and-loose, a cheating game played with a stick and a belt or string, so arranged that a spectator would think he could make the latter fast by placing a stick through its intricate folds, whereas the operator could detach it at once.

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition)

Is the country called Burma or Myanmar? And what’s the difference between the two names?

Interestingly, the conflict between the two names is in the English version; there is no such conflict in the Burmese language. The official name of the country in Burmese is Pyidaungzu Myanma Naingngandaw, meaning Union of Myanmar (or Myanma), which is often shortened to Myanma Naingngandaw.

Myanmar has always been the official name of the country and the Burmese use this word when they want to be official or literary. But since the 19th century, the Burmese have used the name Bama or Bamar in everyday, colloquial speech. This colloquial usage has been turned into Burma in English. In Burmese, both names coexist without conflict, each being used in its proper place. The ultimate etymology and what the name means is unclear, but both Myanmar and Bama ultimately come from the same root.

In 1989, the military junta that rules the country decided to change the official English version of the name from Burma to Myanmar. At the same time, they changed the official transliteration of several other place names to better reflect their pronunciation in Burmese, one of these being the English name of the capital, which was changed from Rangoon to Yangon. But in protest of the military government, which they considered illegitimate, several Western nations, including the US, Australia, Canada, and Britain, refused to recognize this change and went on calling the country Burma. Some Western news organizations follow the lead of their government and use Burma. Others use Myanmar. And other compromise and use both.

(Sources: BBC News, CIA World Factbook)

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Angel comes from the Greek angelos, meaning messenger. The Greek word was used in the Septuagint, a Greek translation of Hebrew scriptures written sometime between the third and first centuries B.C.E., to translate the Hebrew mal’ak. A mal’ak-yehowah is a messenger of Jehovah.

From Greek, the word was borrowed into Latin, becoming angelus, and from Latin into the Germanic languages. Exactly when English picked up the word is uncertain, but it clearly pre-dates the Norman Conquest. The earliest known appearance in English writing is from c.950 in the Lindisfarne Gospels, in Matthew 22:30:

sint suelce englas godes in heofnum
(are like god’s angels in heaven)

There is a famous story that appears in Bede’s The Ecclesiastical History of the English People, written c.731 in Latin, about Gregory (c.540-604), who would later become Pope Gregory the Great (590-604). Gregory encountered some English slaves in a market place:

“What is the name of this race?” [said Gregory] “They are called Angles,” he was told. “That is appropriate,” he said, “for they have angelic faces, and it is right that they should become joint-heirs with the angels in heaven.

It doesn’t tell us anything about the origin of the word angel, but it is an interesting example of medieval wordplay.

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition)