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BL - Origin of the word clue

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posted on Oct, 17 2004 @ 05:33 PM
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Found this at www.pballew.net...

and thought it interesting

Clue or Clew
One evening as my wife and I sat reading in the Library of our home she turned to me and said, "Hey, Wordman," (she never calls me wordman unless she has a word she thinks she can stump me with)"Do you know where the word 'clue' comes from?" I pondered for a moment, and had to admit I didn't have a clue.

The origin, as she gleefully told me, goes back to the ancient Greek myths about a Monster who lived on the Island of Crete during the reign of king Minos. Each year fourteen people were sacrificed to the monstor, a Minotaur. It seems that Theseus volunteered to be part of the group andwent into the Labyrinth hoping to kill the Minotaur. The Minotaur was a half man-half bull, son of Minos�s wife Pasiphae and a beautiful bull, sent to Minos by Poseidon, to whom Minos was to sacrifice it. He didn�t do the sacrifice, so Poseidon made Pasiphae fall in love with it. The Minotaur was the result. Minos confined it in a Labyrinth built by the architect Daedalus. As he makes his way into the labyrinth, Theseus leaves a trail to find his way back out by unwinding a ball of string. In Old English, a ball of thread or twine was called a clewe, and so a method of guiding us toward the solution to a mystery or puzzle became known as a clew, or clue. Both spellings seem acceptable according to my dictionary, but I cannot recall ever seeing any other than clue in American English.



posted on Oct, 17 2004 @ 05:43 PM
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I knew it!

I knew i would learn lots of useless information doing this game


Thats a good story to tell ya friends, i never knew this clew thingy.



posted on Oct, 17 2004 @ 05:55 PM
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very interesting.

you really do learn something new everyday...



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