And post-vaccine, these will be possible again! ;-)

As incredible as it sounds, men and women took baths only twice a year (May and October) Women kept their hair covered, while men shaved their heads (because of lice and bugs) and wore wigs. Wealthy men could afford good wigs made from wool. They couldn't wash the wigs, so to clean them they would carve out a loaf of bread, put the wig in the shell, and bake it for 30 minutes. The heat would make the wig big and fluffy, hence the term 'big wig.' Today we often use the term 'here comes the Big Wig' because someone appears to be or is powerful and wealthy.

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.

Could be when the word was taken into English, we mispronounced it. Or maybe it was from a language other than German. Still sounds like an Old Country last name to me. eta: Okay I caved and looked it up. The origin probably came through the Old English, German, or Yiddish word for "chest", spellings (and opinions) vary.