The beauty of LANGUAGE
What does a Jerusalem artichoke have to do with Jerusalem? Why do we fall head over heels when that’s the right way up? And doesn’t having your cake and eating it make total sense? If you’ve ever pondered any of these linguistic curiosities, the answer in each case is that we simply got it wrong. English, it turns out, is full of muddles and mishaps that happened a long time ago.
To begin with, the Jerusalem– sunflower – the name given to the tall North American plant because it is closely related to the sunflower itself. proved too much for our British tongues, but, hey – it sounded like Jerusalem, so we plumped for that instead.
