Some disjecta membra that might interest Monsieur Le Rodent:
1) Daylight robbery. I came across this the other day: one assumes that the phrase means something blatantly obvious and wrong being done in the sight others, which is its usage, but its origin is quite different. It comes from the Window Tax in 17th century England, when, of course, people bricked up their windows to avoid the financial toll. Hence, it was not 'DAYlight robbery', as we say it, but rather: 'daylight: robbery'.
2) 'ghetto' comes from the Italian for 'foundry'. This was because there was an island foundry in Venice which, in the early 16th century, became the first formalised 'ghetto' for Jews. That was the beginning of the utter horrors (btw I can't, in this respect, recommend enough the late W.G. Sebald's great novel 'Austerlitz')
3) The word for the little dot over a lower-case i is apparently a 'tittle'. I haven't investigated the accuracy of this but I hope it's true.
Best
Dave
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