Words with a story they don't tell.

Turns Out is a small collection of everyday English words and phrases whose origin is not the story the phrase tells. A surname that became an adjective. A book title that became a noun. A line drawn on the ground that became a date in your calendar.

One new entry a week. Each one takes about three minutes to read.

A word gets in only if all three hold:

1. It is in everyday use. You have said it, or heard it, this month.
2. Its origin is concrete and can be checked.
3. The origin contradicts, or at least complicates, what the word means today.

That admits Kafkaesque, Catch-22 and deadline. It keeps out units and foods with no gap, and idioms with no checkable origin.

Every entry has the same parts. The story: what actually happened, dated and specific. The gap: the distance between that and the word as we use it.You'll hear it when: where the word turns up now. And the sources, so you can check.

Popular origin stories are often wrong, and some are unprovable. When the honest answer is "probably", the entry says probably.

Written in Norway, in English. Corrections welcome, with a source.