where does the expression "Chow" come from?
80506
I believe you're thinking of Ciao, the Italian word for goodbye.  I'm not 100% sure of the spelling or that it's Italian, but I'm fairly confident.
954134
Here is the definition I found:\n\nNoun. Food. [Northern use. Late 1800s]
141560
Nobody actually knows where that phrase comes from.  There is an urban legend about where it came from that can be found here: http://www.snopes.com/language/stories/brass.htm
833115
Here's a website on word origins that has a few suggestions:\n\nhttp://www.phrases.org.uk/bulletin_board/5/messages/97.html
1078231
From: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-cho3.htm\n\nQ] From Dr Anthony Rea: “I live in Australia and a few years ago some friends visiting from Canada were perplexed by my father’s use of the term chock-a-block, meaning full. For example, “the street was chock-a-block with cars”. Are you able to shed any light on the origin of this phrase?”\n\n[A] Chock-a-block is actually a fairly widely known North American term, I’m told. I know it well and would use it, though there’s a faint air of being slightly out of date about it. In Britain, it’s now common to hear the abbreviated forms chocka (or chocker), which are both from World War Two services’ slang, and in Australia the closely related chockers.\n\nChock here is the same word as in chock-full, jam-packed full or filled to overflowing. One meaning of chock in the nineteenth century was of two things pressed so tightly against each other that they can’t move. This led to the nautical term that’s the direct origin of the phrase. Block refers to the pulley blocks of the tackle used for various hauling jobs on board ship. These worked in pairs, with the ropes threaded between them. When the men hauling tackle ropes had hoisted the load as far as it would go, the two pulley blocks touched and could move no further. They were then said to be chock-a-block, or crammed together.\n\nThe origin of chock is complicated and not altogether understood. It’s clear that there has been some cross-fertilisation between it and chock in the sense of a lump of wood used as a wedge to stop something moving. That’s closely enough related to our sense to make it seem as though it might be the same word. But the experts think that chock in chock-a-block actually came from chock-full.\n\nThat has been around at least since 1400. It comes from a different source, the verb chokken, as in the Middle English phrase chokken togeder, crammed together. This in turn may be from an Old French verb choquier, to collide or thrust. One of the problems of working out the origin has been that chock-full has appeared in several different spellings—including chuck-full and choke-full—reflecting users’ uncertainty about where it comes from.
741742
I think it's a euphemism for "jacksh-t"\nSo now the question is, where did THAT phrase come from?
584120
Amerigo Vespucci is the person from whom the word comes from.
998592
It comes from the early 1800s in London.  The term "pig" for a contemptable person was around a long time before that.  Particularly, the name refers to a certain group of Police called the Bow Street Runners that criminals referred to as China Street Pigs.
450997
I would ask you to define "smouches," but I'm afraid you might try.\n\nNevermind.  I found it:\n\nSMOUCH\nCounterfeit tea.\nWhen tea first arrived in Britain from China in the 1660s it was extremely expensive, made much more so in the following century by customs duties which greatly encouraged smuggling. Its high price was a stimulus also to counterfeiters, who made imitation teas out of the dried leaves of hawthorn, ash, sloe and other native British plants. These were coloured with various noxious substances, such as verdigris and copperas, and sold to dealers under the slang name of smouch (more formally and euphemistically, British tea). So pervasive was this practice (one estimate is that three million pounds weight were being made each year at one point) that Parliament passed an Act in 1725 condemning it, not only because it cheated the Revenue but because it resulted in the “destruction of great quantities of timber, woods and underwoods”. The source of the word is unknown, though it was also current in the same period as a dialect term for a kiss (hence the modern smooch), and as an offensive slang term for a Jew, and later turns up in the US as a verb meaning “to acquire dishonestly; to pilfer” (for example, in Huckleberry Finn: “So I’ll mosey along now, and smouch a couple of case-knives”).
120738
I believe it originated around gangsters of the 20s who wanted a word to act tough with when asking for money such as "Gimme yer dough!!" or "Frankie, don't forget the dough or Patty will be mad" It was just the slang of the time, but sort of lingered till present day
839081
Once in a Blue Moon\n\n"Blue moon" appears to have been a colloquial expression long before it developed its calendrical senses. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, the first reference to a blue moon comes from a proverb recorded in 1528:\n\n    If they say the moon is blue,\n    We must believe that it is true.\n\nSaying the moon was blue was equivalent to saying the moon was made of green (or cream) cheese; it indicated an obvious absurdity. In the 19th century, the phrase until a blue moon developed, meaning "never." The phrase, once in a blue moon today has come to mean "every now and then" or "rarely"—whether it gained that meaning through association with the lunar event remains uncertain.
1170816
This originated in the early 1980s. It is generally regarded as an American expression. This item from the New York newspaper the Syracuse Herald-American, Feb. 1982, which is the earliest version in print that I can find, puts that in some doubt. It's in a piece by Jerry Buck, writing out of Los Angeles, about actress Lauren Tewes
1040815
From ******, which is a deritive of **********.  Its also latin for *******************  *****.
438589
it is from the Middle English word lenten, or lente, meaning spring (reference to the time of year that it happens).
229872
The etymology for lam does seem to correlate nicely to lambaste, e.g. "beat it".  I don't see the mentioned connection to bumbaste, indeed any mention of the word at all escapes me except as an alternate spelling of bombaste, which doesn't mean anything like this at all- the word bombaste, I think literally means "cotton padding".
578919
Everyone is wrong except the guy who said it was from Anglo-Saxon.  "F..k" has a long pedigree in the Germanic languages.  It was found in Proto-Germanic about 2500 years ago as the verb *fukan 'have intercourse'.  This was not vulgar at that time and was a euphemism for some older word.  Ultimately, it comes from Proto-Indo-European *pug- "to strike", from which we get the borrowed Latin form pugilism 'boxing'.
167949
Well, I ran it through Alta Vista translator and got "Trace program of the herds?".  I'm assuming the phrase is French.  Does this make any sense in the context in which you saw it?