Many common English words we use daily trace back to fascinating Chinese origins. Gung-ho now meaning enthusiastic or eager, started as gōngyè hézuòshè - a phrase used by Chinese industrial cooperatives in the 1930s. U.S. Marine Lt. Colonel Evans Carlson encountered it while observing these cooperatives and brought it back to his Marines. Typhoon blends Cantonese tai fung (meaning great wind) with influences from Greek mythologys Typhon. Meanwhile, kowtow comes from the Mandarin kē tóu - literal