I've got a collection of random information in my brain that makes me an awesome Trivial Pursuit partner, but is completely useless when it comes to real world application. Like say, job applications. I thought I'd share some of this random crap with you in the form of another acronym-ific series. I give you - Word Origins from Left Field - that's right, the WOLF. Er... ignore the fact that the "from" doesn't fit.
Here's one that I confess I didn't really understand until quite recently.
Have you ever heard someone referred to as a Luddite? I have, more than once (it happens when you work in the public school system), but I was always too embarrassed to ask what the hell that meant, because I'm the person who's already supposed to know that stuff.
A Luddite is someone who resists technology. So, for example, anybody who won't use a microwave or refuses to get online because the devil is in the url. But where does this come from?
With the industrial revolution came some great problems, and one of them was mechanized weaving looms. Textile workers were not allowed to unionize, but what they did do was organize protests, claiming that everything was being orchestrated by a mythical dude named General Ludd. During these protests mechanized looms were smashed as an expression of the worker's anger at a machine taking over their job. The followers of the non-existing Ludd were referred to as Luddites, and the term stuck.
Unfortunately for them so did technology.