False origin story spread through popular culture.
No, the claim that “like” comes from the phrase “the similar” is a modern folk etymology. The word appears in Old English as gelic (c. 900 AD) long before any such phrase existed. Its true origin is the Proto‑Germanic *gelīkaz, cognate with German gleich, meaning “the same” or “alike”.
The claim that English ‘feed’ is simply a vowel‑shifted form of ‘food’ is false. Linguistic evidence shows ‘feed’ descends from Old English fēdan, a verb meaning ‘to nourish’, while ‘food’ comes from Old English fōda, a noun meaning ‘sustenance’. The two share a distant Germanic ancestry but developed independently. The real origin lies in Proto‑Germanic *fedan, not in any modern acronym or backronym.
The claim that VIRAL stands for “Very Infectious Rapidly Amplified Link” is a modern backronym with no historical basis. The adjective “viral” first appears in 19th‑century medical language, derived from Latin virus meaning poison or slime. Its online sense of rapid spread was borrowed metaphorically from the biological term, not invented as an acronym.
No, the claim that “meme” derives from a Greek word “mimeme” meaning “imitated thing” is false. The term was coined by Richard Dawkins in 1976, based on the Greek *mimēma* (that which is imitated), and shortened to mirror “gene.” The real origin lies in Dawkins’ analogy, not a historic Greek root.
No such law has ever been found in English legal history. Despite being widely repeated since the 1970s in academic and popular contexts, no “rule of thumb” wife-beating statute exists in any English, Scottish, or American legal record. The phrase most likely derives from craftsmen and brewers using their thumb as a measuring instrument — a physical “rule” (measuring tool) no wider than a thumb.