Wordorigins.org

A goody two-shoes is a prudish or morally upright person. It’s an odd term to the modern ear. What do shoes have to do with being good?

The term comes from the title character in the 1765 The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes:

The Pleasure she took in her two Shoes...by that Means obtained the Name of Goody Two-Shoes.

The goody in the name has nothing to do with being good. Rather, it’s an abbreviated form of goodwife, the mistress of a house, the equivalent of the modern Mrs. Later readers, unfamiliar with that form of address, took it to mean pious or virtuous.

The slang usage is 20th century. From the Los Angeles Times, 30 May 1924, in a description of a boxing match:

The two showed much brotherly affection in the first and second round thereby bringing a Kansas tornado of yips and catcalls from the angered fans. Hollywood bugs brook no Goody-Two-Shoes bouts.

(Sources: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition; Historical Dictionary of American Slang)

Despite the claims of some that the name of this game is an acronym, its origin is unknown. The place of origin, however, is known and it should come as no surprise that the game comes from Scotland.

The earliest known reference to golf is from 1457 in the Acts of James II of Scotland, where it is banned. It seems that golf was taking too much time away from military training:

And at the fut bal ande the golf be vtterly cryt downe and nocht vsyt.
(And [playing] at the football and the golf is to be utterly condemned [lit. “cried down”] and not engaged in [lit. “used”].)

It is sometimes claimed that golf comes from the Dutch kolf or kolv, literally club, and is the name of a sporting implement in a variety of games. There are some problems with this explanation, however. The Dutch words appear later than the Scottish and none of the Dutch games resemble golf, so they are not likely predecessor games. Nor are any of the Dutch games named kolf or kolv, although one is named kolven. Finally, the early Scottish forms are with an initial g. If the Dutch word is the origin we should expect a c or a k.

Another claim is that it comes from the Scots gowf, meaning a blow with an open hand or used as a verb meaning to strike. Still, evidence of 15th century use of this word is lacking, so that term could just as easily come from the game instead of the reverse.

As for the allegation that it is an acronym standing for Gentlemen Only, Ladies Forbidden, that is just silly.

(Source: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition)

This business buzzword of the 1990s is actually about 30 years older. It appears in adjectival form in The Economist of 4 April 1959:

Italy’s “globalised quota” for imports of cars has been increased.

The word globalization itself appears in Merriam Webster’s Third New International Dictionary of 1961.

It’s even older in a more general, non-economic sense. It was used in reference to the spread of American racism by U.S. troops during the Second World War. From The Chicago Defender, 15 January 1944:

The American Negro and his problems are taking on a global significance. The world has begun to measure American by what she does to us. But—and this is the point—we stand in danger [...] of losing the otherwise beneficial aspects of the globalization of our problems by allowing the “Bilbos in uniform” with and without brass hats to spread their version of us everywhere.

And from the Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science (1951):

Replacing the central mythos of the medieval Church, this new culture pattern is in process of “globalization,” after a period of formation and formulation covering some three or four hundred years of westernization.

And in an entirely different sense, globalization was used in the 1920s by Belgian psychologist Jean-Ovide Decroly as jargon for a stage in a child’s development. He published La Fonction de Globalisation et l’Enseignement in 1929.

(Sources: Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition; ADS-L; Merriam-Webster’s Third New International Dictionary; ProQuest Historical Newspapers)

Glitch is from the German glitschen, via the Yiddish gletshn, meaning to slip. The term is technical jargon in the electronics world to describe what happens when the inputs of a circuit change. When this occurs, the outputs briefly spike to some random value before settling to the correct value. If the circuit is queried during a glitch, a wildly inaccurate response may result. From this it acquired a more general sense meaning any malfunction.

The term gained popular currency through the U.S. space program. From John Glenn’s 1962 Into Orbit:

Another term we adopted to describe some of our problems was “glitch.” Literally, a glitch is a spike or change in voltage in an electrical circuit which takes place when the circuit suddenly has a new load put on it...A glitch...is such a minute change in voltage that no fuse could protect against it.

(Sources: Historical Dictionary of American Slang; Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition)

Gig is an interesting word with a variety of senses, not all etymologically related.

The oldest sense is that of a top or other whirling object. Originally whirligig, the origin is unknown but is probably echoic. From Promptorium Parvulorum Sive Clericorum, Lexicon Anglo-Latinum Princeps, c.1440:

Whyrlegyge, chyldys game, giraculum.
(Whirligig, child’s game, giraculum.)

This sense of top is the source of some other senses, such as a giddy or flighty person, fun, merriment, and a whim.