These Words Have Absolutely Wild Superhero Origin Stories

Most words have a pretty interesting backstory when you look into them, but a lot of them grew up in a fairly recognizable way — going to word school, getting a word job, maybe settling down with another word and having little word children. But some words did things the hard way. Some words ran away from home to join the word merchant navy or, like, fly a word hot air balloon around the world. Before I completely lose track of this metaphor, here are five words that ended up somewhere very different from where they started. <img alt="CLUE: Comes from yarn." src="https://miro.medium.com/v2/resize:fit:875/0*VX4AzENLuGhazvQw.png" style="height:374px; width:700px" /> Theseus is 100% the type of dude whose number you’d want in your rolodex if you had a pest control problem in your labyrinth, but that doesn’t make him boyfriend material, unless you think “being abandoned on an island” is a good idea for a first date. And in fact, although Theseus did manage the admittedly tricky part of separating the fearsome minotaur from its head, the “clue” that led him there was very much Ariadne’s idea. As the 17th century English poet John Gay has it in <a href="https://publicdomainreview.org/collection/gay-trivia/" rel="noopener ugc nofollow" target="_blank">Trivia: or, the Art of Walking the Streets of London</a>: <a href="https://medium.com/the-cellar-door/these-words-have-absolutely-wild-superhero-origin-stories-46d95afc25c5">Learn More</a>