Tolkien named "Bag End" (Bilbo and Frodo's home) for the literal French to English translation of "cul-de-sac" as a way of poking fun at the English habit of using French phrases to sound sophisticated.
Frodo lived in a cul-de-sac: 'end of bag'.
Reminds me of how "Middle Earth" is just taken from the word Midgard from Norse Mythology, which loosely translates to "middle place".
I love how Tolkien's linguistic work was so inspired and elaborate except for when it wasn't. xD
Of course "cul" by itself means "ass" in French, as "culo" means in Italian and I think Spanish. It's also the root of "culot" (fr) which means audacity in the same sense that we use "balls" in English. So "avoir du culot" in French is about the same as "having a lot of balls" in English.
what I'm getting from this is that Lord of the Rings and Ed Edd and Eddy could have taken place in the very same cul-de-sac, separated by a few hundred (or thousand) years 🤔
(i'm just goofing, but it's genuinely neat to learn where the name bag end came from!)
