For some inexplicable
reason, I awoke early this morning with this question on my mind: Why do we
call a quick training session a crash course?
This question persisted in
my mind as I fed my remaining 20 pounds of housecat and made my coffee. As soon as I finished that, I fired up my computer
and Googled for an answer.
Seems, oddly enough, that
“getting a crash course” may have originated from a surprisingly literal
meaning. A thread at www.reddit.com/r/etymology quoted
this excerpt from Knights of the Air, a 1929 history of aviation:
…to demonstrate how pilots might crash and still escape injury. The crash course, as Sperry outlined it,
would have three stages. The student
would first crash into swamps, primarily to overcome the fear of crashing…
--Mitchell
Hegman
Swamps?There's a huge one in D.C.. Nope it hasn't been dredged. On the contrary, the denizens of its dregs are now in the WH and the Cabinet. May God help us all!
ReplyDeleteThat has been a swamp for many, many years.
ReplyDelete