The origin of words...

I was always fascinated with the origin of words and phrases. My dad owned a printing business, so I grew up around printing presses. And when I first started writing as part of my job (mostly technical writing), I ran into a word that was curious. One of its meanings seemed totally unrelated to the basic word itself, and I always wanted to find out how that seemingly unrelated meaning was derived. There are several similar theories about the origin, but I'm pretty certain from my research that I've finally captured the correct one.

1. In the newspaper industry, typesetting was an art form that began with moveable type that was hand set line by line to print newspapers on a printing press.

2. Back in the 1890’s, steel was rolled into plates that were used in manufacturing steam boilers. (And what does this have to do with anything?....Keep reading.)

3. During that old typesetting era, lots of things were not practical or cost effective to typeset over and over again. This included newspaper banners, advertisements, and other things that didn’t change from day to day. To print these unchanging items, the rolled steel was stamped to form permanent re-usable type.

4. That rolled steel that steam boilers were made from was called “boilerplate”.

And to this day we refer to standard clauses in contracts and the like as "boilerplate".
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