Volume LVX

I. Cup of Joe ☕️

In 1914, Secretary of the Navy Josephus Daniels banned alcohol on all U.S. ships. Overnight, coffee became the strongest thing a sailor could drink. The men, unimpressed, reportedly started calling it a “cup of Joseph Daniels" which, like all good slang, got trunkacted fast.

One man's moral crusade and thousands of sailors' coping mechanism. The phrase stuck long after the policy stopped mattering.

Now it's what you call a $7 cup of oat milk so it sounds like less of a problem.

II. Top and Tail 🔪

No dramatic origin here, just British practicality.

It comes from old-school food prep in England. Fish, carrots, green beans...you cut off the top and the tail before doing anything else. It was so routine that the phrase bled into everyday language for handling both ends of something — the open and the close.

It's the host who greets you at the door and walks you out at the end of the night. It's the guy who signs the letter and stamps the envelope.

A distant relative of "dot the i's and cross the t's" sure, but it's not about the fine print, it's about the bookends.

III. Put a sock in it 🧦 

Before it was a crass way to tell someone to can it, this phrase had a much more practical meaning. Long before the days of JBL speakers, gramophones were the life of the party.

The problem? No volume knob.

So when things got a little too loud, people would shove a sock into the horn-shaped speaker to muffle the sound.

This isn’t a plug and play phrase and should be exercised with a little caution. Let’s just say maybe give a polite warning or two before telling someone to put a sock into it.

Keep on sending on. Forward to a friend.