Thank you for this. I was struck by the fact that when Hester wore the letter A in The Scarlet Letter it not only represented Adultery, it was also the letter of her "beau," I believe his name was Arthur. So the people of the town unconsciously pinned Hester with her co-adulturer's name.

I always thought it meant something was finished, or unchangeable. Like wood that's cut and dried, it's done, not changing. Maybe that's the same thing as "already prepared"?

When I was learning Russian, we were taught that a large portion of Russian is idiomatic and cannot be translated literally. For example, дождь идёт translates literally as "rain takes a walk," but really means "It is raining." This makes learning Russian even that much more difficult than English, not to mention the complex grammar in Russian with multiple declensions and cases for nouns and adjectives (even more than in Latin) and multiple ways of conjugating verbs, not counting all the irregular verbs. We were also taught that most Russians do not speak proper Russian - mainly because it is too difficult. English is much simpler and easier, and still native English speakers often do not speak proper English. It's too bad that Latin is not taught as much in schools as it used to be.

I always knew what it meant, but I had no idea of how it originated. It's a term my mother always used in reference to phonies. But I doubt she knew where it came from, either, she probably never played a hand of poker in her life. Rusty