1703 Shoot Luke

Not long ago I was talking to a friend about the term wainscoting. I pronounced it that way. Like Scottish, I guess because I thought it had some sort of origin in Scotland. Wood halfway up your cottage walls to keep the sheep from chewing the plaster or something.
My friend, on the other hand, pronounced it wains–coating, as if you were coating the walls with something. I looked it up in an online dictionary that also had pronunciation sound snippets and we were both right—coating, cotting, potaytoe, potahtoe.
The dictionary further pointed out that wainscot originally comes from the words for wagon and partition. And referred to high quality oak boards. I was disappointed. I figured that someone named Wayne or Scott had something to do with inventing it.
Lots of words make me wonder that way. Like when someone says, "Shoot Luke, it's your dime." Why Luke? Was the apostle known for demanding to speak up? Or was he some sort of marksman of the soul? If Luke was a Marksman, was Mark a Lukesman? Or did Luke just want to leave a Mark?
I'm not even going to bring up all the words John ended up standing in for.
But I do wonder where lukewarm came from. Was Luke a tepid fellow? There is a definition of lukewarm that means "lacking in zeal" that dates back to the 1500s. Maybe his gospel wasn't as passionate as Matthew, Mark and John's. And it got a lukewarm response?
But no, sorry to disappoint. Turns out the Luke in lukewarm has nothing to do with the person. It's from the Middle English word leuk, l-e-u-k-. Leuk actually means tepid. So lukewarm means, literally, tepid-warm.
Neutral and redundant.
And as exciting as this ending.
America ya gotta love it.