mythetymology / etymythology

[Arnold M. Zwicky]

at lunch today, an engineer friend of mind retailed to me an account,
widespread among his colleagues, of the origin of the word "crud":
it's an acronym, arising from the early days at the cambridge (england)
atomic reactor, whose operators were faced with the question of what to
call the junk that built up in the machine.

obvious: Cambridge Reactor Unknown Deposit, or CRUD.

my friend was taken aback when i laughed openly at this etymology and
offered to bet large sums on its being wrong.  he was astonished at my
professional doubting of acronymic sources for  slang words.  i gave
him Bad Examples.  though at the time i wasn't able to cite middle
engiish sources for "crud"; now i can at least point to standard
dictionaries.

arnold (zwicky at csli.stanford.edu)