Polish the Polish Furniture

The oddities of English confound foreign speakers on the regular and confound native speakers more often still. Consider the “their, there, they’re” conundrum for a start. We’re not alone in this. French and German have similar quirks, but English, which has a larger vocabulary (we steal from everybody), wins hands down. “Hands down”, by the way - a clear victory - comes from horse racing and the sporting pages circa 1830 at which time it was literal, "Independence … won with hands down" meaning the rider was so far ahead in the contest, he relaxed his grip on the reins of the thoroughbred as they crossed the finish line. But by 1853, it was metaphorical, "She won with the most perfect ease imaginable, little Sherwood going past the post 'hands down’” where it remains to this day. In our Mother Tongue, there’s no egg in eggplant, no ham in hamburger and pineapple has neither pine nor apples. Now finish your Grape Nuts. We could do this sort of linguistic tomfoolery* all day, but let’s buckle down**, shall we?