Eric wants to know why a fruitless and pointless activity is called a ‘wild goose chase’. It seems that around 1600 there was a kind of horse race in which the second and following horses had to pursue the (usually erratic) course of the leader at set intervals – a bit like a car rally, but without a set course. At the time, this was compared to following the flight of wild geese. The rider of the leading horse could make it almost impossible for the field to catch up. So, over time, ‘wild goose chase’ came to mean any impossible or pointless pursuit.

Where does the ‘crypto’ in ‘cryptocurrency’ come from? And what does it mean? ‘Crypto’ comes from Greek and means ‘hidden, or concealed’. It has been used as a prefix in English since at least the 1830s – usually by scientists, in long, multi-syllabic words to name some plant, insect or animal that didn’t look like what it actually was. The word ‘cryptocurrency’ was coined in 2009 on Twitter, to name a kind of digital currency where the history of transactions was hidden (concealed) by something called ‘blockchain’ technology. ‘Cryptocurrency’ was probably coined from the earlier word ‘cryptography’ meaning ‘hidden writing’. Now here’s my explanation of how this ‘crypto’ stuff works when it comes to cryptocurrency. (Bearing in mind I had to get my IT son to explain it to me, speaking slowly and using short words.) What blockchain technology does is to hide a chain of transmission. Blockchain is a digital database where transactions are stored in linked sequential data groups (known as ‘blocks’). This means that any individual user can look back at the last ‘block’ of data, but no further. So when payments are transferred over a long ‘chain’ of such blocks, it becomes impossible to trace the source of the payment back to its original, beginning source. Anyone getting into the chain can see the previous block, but no further. This makes each block secure and, hence, useful for individuals or corporations. But it’s also extremely handy for organised crime when they are busy ‘laundering’ their ill-gotten gains.

Speccie reader Nathan asks me to explain the expression ‘country mile’ – and why it is longer than a city mile. The term ‘country mile’ goes back to at least 1661. And it seems that a mile in the countryside has long been regarded as a greater length than a standard mile. What is unclear is whether there were, in fact, two different measurements or if it was just the case that travelling a mile in the countryside always felt longer. However, my best guess is that there was once a real difference – perhaps similar to the two different measurements we now cover by the word ‘ton’. In Great Britain a ‘ton’ is 2240 lbs while in the United States it is 2000 lbs. (These are called a ‘long ton’ or a ‘short ton’ when they need to be distinguished.) If we go back far enough in history, back before the standardisation of measurements, might a mile in the countryside really have been a different distance from an urban mile? I wouldn’t be surprised. And as for Australian standards of measurement in the bush, if you ask a local about a distant place he’ll probably tell you it’s ‘a cut lunch and a water bag away’.