I too would like to welcome Hillbilly, whose interests seem to coincide with mine. I love these old phrases too, and try to research them sometimes. Sometimes you hear something which has an echo of long ago, and you can make a connection over time and distance, long time and vast distance it often seems.
There is a word I ran across recently, which rang a vague bell. The word is 'german' (lower case g). It means a kinship which is consanguine on only one side of one's parentage. I wonder what the etymology here might be. I assume it is cognate to 'germane', but I don't know the etymology of that word either.
Andrew, perhaos this from from Webster's 1913 dictionary helps:
Quote:\Ger"man\, a. [OE. german, germain, F. germain, fr. L.
germanus full, own (said of brothers and sisters who have the
same parents); akin to germen germ. Cf. {Germ}, {Germane}.]
Nearly related; closely akin.
Hyperdictionary
It helps some, Walter, thank you. But I'm still wondering about the historical (if any) relationship between German and german.
