100 Fun Facts About Idioms

'Saved by the bell' comes from which sport, rather than the coffin bell-pulls people often credit?

Boxing spares a floored fighter when the bell ends the round before the referee counts him out; the tale of bells fitted to coffins for the buried-alive is a folk etymology.

Which measuring idiom is falsely said to come from a law letting husbands beat wives with a thin stick?

Rule of thumb has no such law behind it: the myth is often traced to a ruling rumoured of Judge Francis Buller in 1782, mocked in cartoons as 'Judge Thumb', though no record of one exists.

'Pandora's box' is a mistranslation: in Hesiod's Greek, what kind of container did Pandora actually open?

A jar is what Hesiod gave Pandora, a large storage pithos; Erasmus, retelling the tale in Latin in the 16th century, wrote pyxis, a box, and the slip stuck.

Which metal, used to turn fur into felt, poisoned 19th-century hat-makers and is widely linked to 'mad as a hatter'?

Mercury compounds used in felt-making caused erethism, with tremors so common in Danbury, Connecticut that locals called them the Danbury Shakes; the phrase's true origin remains uncertain.

'Humble pie' began as 'umble pie', a lowly dish with which filling?

Deer offal, the innards once called umbles, filled the pie; the unrelated word 'humble' merged in as a pun, and by 1830 eating humble pie meant a humiliating climbdown.

Which food completes 'spill the ___', the secret-revealing idiom first attested in 20th-century American English?

Beans, not tea: 'spill the beans' surfaces in American English in the early 1900s, and the story that it began with ancient Greeks voting with coloured beans is likely folk etymology.

Which idiom is traced to playwright John Dennis hearing his own new sound effect reused in a later Macbeth?

Steal my thunder is what Dennis reportedly cried: his Appius and Virginia had flopped at Drury Lane, but the theatre kept his new thunder effect for a Macbeth soon after.

Under Britain's Riot Act, the law behind 'read the riot act', how long did a crowd have to disperse?

One hour: under the Riot Act a magistrate read a set proclamation to any crowd of twelve or more, and anyone still there an hour later was guilty of a felony.

'Bury the hatchet' comes from a peace rite of which people, whose chiefs literally buried weapons to end a war?

The Iroquois sealed peace by burying weapons; diarist Samuel Sewall recorded two axes buried at a 1680 agreement, a rite he called more binding to them than all articles of peace.

'Wild-goose chase' is spoken by Mercutio in which Shakespeare play, when it still meant a follow-the-leader horse race?

Romeo and Juliet has Mercutio joke about wits running 'the wild-goose chase'; in the 1590s that was a horse race where riders had to follow the lead horse's course, like geese in formation.

Iago's 'green-eyed monster' warning about jealousy comes from which Shakespeare tragedy about a general?

Othello hears Iago purr 'O beware, my lord, of jealousy! It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock the meat it feeds on', and on that poison smothers the innocent Desdemona.

Shakespeare used 'break the ice' in which comedy about the wooing of two Paduan sisters?

The Taming of the Shrew has Tranio tell Petruchio 'if you break the ice and do this feat', meaning woo the shrewish Katherina, so that her younger sister Bianca is free to marry.

'In a pickle' is said by a drunk jester shipwrecked on an enchanted island in which Shakespeare play?

The Tempest's Trinculo, reeling drunk, says 'I have been in such a pickle since I saw you last', and jokes that, so pickled, he 'shall not fear fly-blowing', like meat preserved from the flies.

Shylock's bond with Antonio in which Shakespeare play gave us 'a pound of flesh' for a ruthlessly exacted debt?

The Merchant of Venice has Shylock lend 3,000 ducats against a pound of Antonio's flesh; when the loan defaults he demands it, until Portia rules that the bond grants 'no jot of blood'.

Casca's 'it was Greek to me', on a speech by Cicero, comes from which Shakespeare play?

Julius Caesar has Casca admit that Cicero's Greek went over his head; the joke may echo a medieval Latin tag, 'it is Greek, it cannot be read', so the line may not be Shakespeare's own coinage.

'Salad days', for one's green and youthful time, first appears in which Shakespeare play, spoken by the heroine?

Antony and Cleopatra ends its first act with Cleopatra dismissing 'my salad days, when I was green in judgment, cold in blood', her reckless youth before Antony.

'Hoist with his own petard', blown up by your own bomb, comes from which Shakespeare revenge tragedy?

Hamlet plots to turn the trap on the schoolfellows escorting him to England; a petard was a small bomb for blowing in doors, so its engineer is 'hoist' into the air by his own blast.

Which poet's 1798 Rime of the Ancient Mariner gave us 'an albatross around your neck' for a burden of guilt?

Samuel Taylor Coleridge's mariner shoots the albatross that had followed his ship as a good omen, and the thirst-silenced crew hang the dead bird around his neck as the mark of his guilt.

Which novelist's 1816 book The Antiquary gave print its first 'cold shoulder', lifted from everyday dialect?

Walter Scott wrote of 'shewing o' the cauld shouther'; the tale that hosts served unwelcome guests a cold shoulder of mutton has no evidence behind it.

In 'three sheets to the wind', sailors' slang for drunk, what exactly is a 'sheet'?

A rope controlling a sail is a sheet, so with three loose the canvas flaps and the ship lurches like a drunk; sailors graded it, one sheet for tipsy, three for falling over.

'Groggy' comes from Admiral Edward Vernon, 'Old Grog', who in 1740 had sailors' ration of which spirit watered down?

Rum was cut with water on Vernon's order of August 1740; his nickname came from his grogram cloak, and 'grog' soon meant the drink and 'groggy' its effects.

'I like the cut of your jib', seamen's praise for someone's look, refers to which part of a ship?

A triangular foresail, set ahead of the foremast, was cut differently from nation to nation, so sailors could judge a distant ship's nationality by her jib.

'Slush fund' began at sea as cash a crew raised by selling what ashore?

Cooking fat, or 'slush', scraped from the galley pots was sold ashore; by some accounts the money bought small comforts for the crew, by others the cook pocketed it as a perk.

Which idiom comes from flintlocks whose priming powder lit without firing the shot?

Flash in the pan described a musket whose pan of priming powder flared but failed to ignite the main charge, a burst of light and no shot; by about 1700 it meant any fizzled sensation.

'Run the gauntlet' comes from 'gatlopp', a soldiers' punishment run between two rows of men, in which language?

Swedish gatlopp, 'lane' plus 'course', named the ordeal of running between two lines of soldiers who struck the victim; English spelling later merged it with the unrelated armoured gauntlet.

'Riding shotgun', now the front passenger seat, first described an armed guard beside the driver of what?

A stagecoach carrying gold or mail had a 'shotgun messenger' up beside the driver to see off bandits, though the phrase 'riding shotgun' only reached print in the 1900s, after the stagecoach era.

Which idiom for enduring pain is often traced to surgery before anaesthetics?

Bite the bullet may come from patients clenching one in their teeth, though evidence is thin; 'chew a bullet' is recorded from 1796, and a rival theory points to cartridges bitten open in 1857 India.

In which sport did 'hat trick' begin, as the name for three successes in three straight attempts?

Cricket bowlers who took three wickets with three straight balls were reputedly given a new hat, or allowed to pass one round the crowd; the term is in print by the 1870s and later spread to other sports.

William Cobbett's 1807 tale behind 'red herring' had a boy drag a kipper to pull which animals off a hare's trail?

Hounds, harriers in Cobbett's telling, were drawn off the hare by a smoked herring dragged on a string; the story was probably invented, but his 1833 retelling helped fix the figurative sense.

In 'buy a pig in a poke', the idiom for purchasing something unseen, what is a 'poke'?

A sack: a closed poke could hide a worthless animal passed off as a piglet, and many European languages warn against buying 'a cat in a bag'; 'pocket' began as a small poke.

'Crocodile tears' comes from an ancient belief, repeated in bestiaries, that the reptile weeps while doing what?

Eating its prey, the story goes, makes a crocodile weep for its victims; Plutarch's era knew the proverb, and Sir John Mandeville's 14th-century travel tales spread it through English.

'Sour grapes', scorning what you can't have, comes from an Aesop fable about which animal failing to reach fruit?

A fox jumps for a bunch hanging from a vine, misses, and stalks off declaring the grapes unripe anyway; the fable is number 15 in the Perry Index of Aesop.

'Dark horse', for an unexpected winner, first appears in an 1831 novel, The Young Duke, by which future prime minister?

Benjamin Disraeli wrote of 'a dark horse which had never been thought of' rushing past the grandstand, racing slang for a runner whose form the bookmakers did not know.

The 'dog days' of summer are named for which star, whose dawn rising the ancients tied to the hottest weeks?

Sirius, the Dog Star in Canis Major, rises with the sun in high summer, and Greeks and Romans blamed its heliacal rising for heat, fever and lethargy.

'Hair of the dog', drinking to cure a hangover, is cut down from a folk remedy for which disease?

Rabies was the target: 'the hair of the dog that bit you' was pressed into the wound on the principle that like cures like, and drinkers borrowed the logic for the morning after.

'White elephant' goes back to the monarchs of which two countries, where the sacred beast still marks a just reign?

Thailand and Burma still treat a white elephant as a sign the ruler reigns with justice, yet a courtier given one was cursed with a sacred animal he could neither use, sell nor give away.

'With a grain of salt' is traced to King Mithridates' antidote recipe in which Roman writer's Natural History?

Pliny the Elder's Natural History records a poison-proofing recipe credited to the Pontic king Mithridates, to be taken 'addito salis grano', with a grain of salt added.

A 'baker's dozen' of 13 is widely traced to medieval English bakers' fear of punishment for what?

Selling underweight loaves could mean a fine or a flogging under the Assize of Bread and Ale, so bakers are said to have thrown in a thirteenth loaf to be safe.

'By the skin of my teeth' comes from which book of the Bible, spoken by a man who has lost everything?

Job, covered in boils and stripped of his children and wealth, says 'I am escaped with the skin of my teeth' in the King James Version; teeth have no skin, so the image may mean the barest of margins.

In 'the apple of my eye', in English since the 800s, the 'apple' originally meant which part of the eye?

The pupil, the opening at the centre of the eye, was thought to be a solid ball like a fruit; the oldest use is in a ninth-century Old English translation credited to Alfred the Great.

In the myth behind 'Achilles' heel', into which river did his mother dip the infant, leaving only her grip dry?

The Styx, in the telling the idiom follows, made him invulnerable wherever its water touched, so the heel under his mother Thetis's fingers stayed mortal, and Paris's arrow found it.

Which US president's desk sign read 'The buck stops here', made for him at a federal reformatory in Oklahoma?

Harry Truman's sign turned poker slang on its head: the 'buck' is said to have been a marker, often a buckhorn-handled knife, passed to whoever dealt next, so passing the buck meant dodging a duty.

'Nest egg' for savings comes from a poultry trick: an egg left in the nest to encourage a hen to do what?

Keep laying there is the idea: a real or artificial egg left in the nest tempts the hen to add to it, and savers borrowed the image for money set aside to grow.

Who traditionally gave a baby the spoon often linked to 'born with a silver spoon in your mouth'?

Godparents who could afford it gave a silver spoon at the christening, which may be where the idiom began; or it may simply reflect that the rich ate from silver while others did not.

Which number goes with 'sevens' in the confusion idiom, thought to come from the riskiest throw in the dice game hazard?

Sixes and sevens began as 'set on six and seven', Chaucer's phrase for risking everything, probably on a reckless dice throw; the London livery companies' squabble over sixth place came a century too late to have started it.

'Cut to the chase', for getting to the point, began as a working instruction in which medium?

Cinema: silent films often saved a chase for the climax, and 'Cut to chase' turns up as a script direction in a 1929 Hollywood novel; the everyday 'get to the point' sense followed in the 1940s.

'The writing on the wall' comes from a feast in the Book of Daniel, thrown by which Babylonian ruler?

Belshazzar was drinking from vessels looted from the Jerusalem Temple when a hand wrote 'mene, mene, tekel, upharsin' on the plaster, and Daniel read it as his kingdom's doom.

In Matthew's Sermon on the Mount, 'a wolf in sheep's clothing' is the image for which group to beware of?

False prophets 'come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves', Jesus warns in Matthew 7:15, and the King James wording fixed the idiom in English.

'Run amok', for a frenzied rampage, was borrowed from which language's word for a furious attack?

Malay amuk, 'attacking furiously', reached English through Portuguese: a traveller's account of about 1516 describes 'Amuco' who ran through the streets killing everyone they met.

'A chip on your shoulder' grew out of a 19th-century American boys' dare and now means what?

Nursing a grudge, and itching to fight over it: an 1830 Long Island paper describes quarrelling boys setting a wood chip on one's shoulder and daring the other to knock it off 'at his peril'.

Which admiral is linked to 'turn a blind eye' for raising a telescope to his sightless eye at Copenhagen in 1801?

Horatio Nelson was signalled to break off the attack, lifted the telescope to his blind eye and said 'I have a right to be blind sometimes'. He fought on; his commander was recalled in disgrace.

'Jump the shark', said of a series past its best, comes from a 1977 water-ski stunt by Fonzie in which sitcom?

Happy Days sent Fonzie over a shark on water-skis, still wearing his leather jacket. The phrase was coined in 1985 by university roommates Jon Hein and Sean Connolly.

In a 'Faustian bargain', named after a German legend, what does the scholar Faust trade away for knowledge and pleasure?

His soul goes to the demon Mephistopheles under a signed contract. Christopher Marlowe put the tale on the English stage around 1592, long before Goethe's famous version.

'Lock, stock and barrel', meaning the whole of something, lists the three main parts of what?

A musket is its firing lock, its wooden stock and its barrel, so the three together are the entire gun. The tale that they were a shopkeeper's door lock, goods and casks is fanciful.

The original 'devil's advocate' was a Catholic Church lawyer appointed to argue against candidates for what?

Sainthood cases were tested by the Promoter of the Faith, an office set up in 1587 under Pope Sixtus V to pick holes in the evidence. John Paul II cut back its powers in 1983.

'Push the envelope' reached everyday English through Tom Wolfe's book The Right Stuff, as jargon used by whom?

Test pilots used it for flying to the edge of an aircraft's proven limits. The 'envelope' is a mathematical curve marking those limits, and has nothing to do with stationery.

In 'jump on the bandwagon', the original wagon carried a band through American towns in the parade of a what?

Circus bands rode the wagon in the street procession, and winning politicians borrowed it for their victory celebrations. Theodore Roosevelt wrote of being 'on the bandwagon' by 1899.

'Meet your Waterloo' recalls Napoleon's final defeat in 1815, at a village in which present-day country?

Belgium only became an independent country in 1830, fifteen years after the battle. Waterloo lies just south of Brussels, and its name became a byword for a final, crushing defeat.

The original 'Peeping Tom' was a tailor who, in legend, spied on whose naked ride through the streets of Coventry?

Lady Godiva rode to win relief from the heavy taxes her husband Leofric imposed on the town. In most versions Tom is struck blind or dead for looking.

In Don Quixote, what does the knight attack as giants, giving English an idiom for fighting imaginary enemies?

Windmills looked like ferocious giants to Don Quixote, so he charged at them. To 'tilt' is to joust, which is why the idiom is 'tilting at' them.

Being 'in the limelight' recalls 19th-century stage spotlights that glowed by heating a cylinder of which compound?

Calcium oxide, better known as quicklime, glows intensely in a flame of oxygen and hydrogen. London's Covent Garden Theatre first lit its stage with it in 1837.

Which conqueror, by legend, sliced the Gordian knot with his sword, a byword for boldly solving a hard problem?

Alexander the Great met the knot in 333 BC at Gordium, where it tied an ox-cart in the old Phrygian palace. One ancient account says he just pulled out a pin and untied it.

Which mythical king, horrified when even his food turned to gold, gives English a 'touch' for easy money-making?

Midas cursed his wish once food and drink hardened in his hands, and washed the power away in a river whose sands turned golden. The 'Midas touch' has since become pure praise.

Which novelist's 1961 war satire gave English 'catch-22' for a rule that traps you whichever way you turn?

Joseph Heller first called the book Catch-18, then changed the number after the popular novel Mila 18 was published shortly before his.

In the legend behind 'the sword of Damocles', the blade above the courtier's seat hung by a single what?

Horsehair from a tail was all that held the sword over the throne. The tyrant Dionysius hung it there to show Damocles how it feels to hold power with danger always overhead.

A 'man Friday', a capable and loyal assistant, is named after the hero's companion in which classic castaway novel?

Robinson Crusoe names his companion after the day of the week on which the two first meet. Daniel Defoe published the novel in 1719, and the name outlived the plot.

Whose 1837 tale 'The Emperor's New Clothes' gave English a phrase for a sham that nobody dares to point out?

Hans Christian Andersen reworked a medieval story of 1335 in which the cloth was invisible to any man who was not his father's true son. He turned it into a test of vanity.

Whose gesture before the crowd, in Matthew's account of the trial of Jesus, gave English 'wash your hands of' something?

Pontius Pilate washes his hands in public and declares himself innocent of the blood of a just man, leaving the crowd to decide. Only Matthew's Gospel includes the scene.

A 'doubting Thomas' is named for the apostle who refused to believe which event until he could feel the wounds?

The Resurrection was reported to Thomas by the ten other apostles, but he held out until he could see and feel the marks of the crucifixion. The story is told in the Gospel of John.

Which emperor, rumoured to have sung to his lyre during the great fire of AD 64, inspired 'fiddling while Rome burns'?

Nero was at his villa in Antium, 35 miles away, when the fire broke out, as the historian Tacitus tells it. Rumour had him singing from a private stage while the city burned.

'Close, but no cigar', first printed in a 1935 film script, most likely recalls cigars given as prizes where?

At fairground stalls a cigar was the prize, so a near miss earned the showman's consolation line. The earliest known use in print is the script of the film Annie Oakley.

'Dutch courage', bravery found in a bottle, is popularly traced to English soldiers of the 1600s drinking which spirit?

Gin began as Dutch jenever, the word for juniper, and English shortened the name. One story has it steadying English troops before battle in the Anglo-Dutch Wars.

'Lose face', to suffer public humiliation, is a borrowing from which language, though 'save face' was coined in English?

Chinese gave English the idea of face as public standing, and 'lose face' renders a common expression there. 'Save face' has no exact original: English speakers made it up as the opposite.

'Blue blood', for noble birth, translates a boast of the old aristocratic families of which country?

Spain's proud Castilian families spoke of 'sangre azul', and English copied the phrase in the early 1800s. The image is probably the blue veins that show through very fair skin.

A 'red-letter day' recalls the medieval habit of using red ink to mark feasts and festivals in what?

Church calendars picked out the Christian festivals in red, and many printed calendars still show holidays that way. 'Rubric' shares the root: it meant service instructions written in red.

Being 'on tenterhooks' comes from the hooks on a tenter, a wooden frame used since the 1300s to stretch wet what?

Woollen cloth was hooked onto the frame while wet so that it dried taut and did not shrink. Anyone 'on tenterhooks' is stretched just as tight, waiting for news.

In 'get off scot-free', used for escaping all punishment, what was the Old English 'scot' that people hoped to dodge?

A royal tax, or a share of the town's charges, was a 'scot', so the scot-free had simply got out of paying. The word comes from an old Germanic root meaning to pay or contribute.

'Sold down the river', meaning betrayed, probably recalls enslaved Americans shipped south along which river?

The Mississippi carried enslaved people from states such as Kentucky and Tennessee to the harsher plantations of the Deep South. Mark Twain's Huckleberry Finn uses the phrase in its literal sense.

By tradition, the original 'whipping boy' of early modern Europe was beaten for the misdeeds of which classmate?

A young prince outranked his tutor and so could not be struck, the story goes; watching a friend suffer was meant to shame him instead. Historians find little evidence that it really happened.

'At the eleventh hour', meaning at the last moment, comes from a Gospel parable about men hired late to work where?

In a vineyard, the owner pays the men hired about five o'clock, with the working day almost over, the same denarius as those who laboured since morning. The parable is in Matthew, chapter 20.

'Drinking the Kool-Aid', for blind loyalty to a cause, refers to the 1978 mass deaths at which settlement in Guyana?

Jonestown's poisoned drink was made from a cheaper mix called Flavor Aid, later misidentified as Kool-Aid. More than 900 members of the Peoples Temple died there.

Thomas Hobson, whose take-it-or-leave-it rule gave English 'Hobson's choice', hired out what in Cambridge around 1600?

Riding horses went out strictly in turn: a customer took the one in the stall nearest the door or none at all. Hobson kept about 40, and the rule stopped the best being overworked.

'Occam's razor', the rule that the simplest explanation is best, is named for a medieval Englishman of which calling?

Franciscan friar William of Ockham held that it is futile to do with more what can be done with fewer. He never used the famous Latin wording, and the 'razor' label came centuries after he died.

'Between Scylla and Charybdis', the classical 'rock and a hard place', names two sea monsters faced by which Greek hero?

Odysseus was advised to steer close to Scylla and lose a few sailors rather than risk the whole ship in Charybdis's whirlpool. Myth set the pair on either side of the Strait of Messina.

'Beware of Greeks bearing gifts' paraphrases a warning about the Trojan Horse in which Roman poet's epic?

Virgil gives the line to the Trojan priest Laocoön, who hurls a spear at the horse and is soon killed, with his sons, by twin sea serpents. Troy reads that as an omen and takes the gift in.

Which instrument has the 'stops' in 'pull out all the stops', where using every one makes it as loud as possible?

Pipe organ stops are knobs that switch on each set of sounds, so with all of them pulled out the instrument plays everything it has at once.

An early 'smoking gun', the clinching proof of guilt, is a 'smoking pistol' in an 1893 story about which detective?

Sherlock Holmes is told how a ship's captain lay dead while the chaplain stood over him with a smoking pistol in his hand. The scene comes in 'The Adventure of the Gloria Scott'.

A 'Potemkin village', a showy false front, comes from tales of sham settlements built to impress which Russian ruler?

Catherine the Great toured Crimea in 1787, and the story has her former lover Grigory Potemkin lining the route with portable fake villages. Historians agree the accounts are exaggerated.

Which rueful 'law' is named for an American engineer whose measuring devices failed during 1940s rocket-sled tests?

Murphy's law took shape after aerospace engineer Edward Murphy's devices failed in tests of how much sudden deceleration a human body could bear. Project head John Stapp spread it at a press conference.

'Keeping up with the Joneses' gained currency from 1913 as the title of what, in which the Joneses never appear?

A comic strip by Arthur 'Pop' Momand followed the social-climbing McGinis family as they tried to match their neighbours. It ran in newspapers until 1940 without once showing the Joneses.

'Bob's your uncle' is popularly traced to which prime minister, who gave his nephew Arthur Balfour a top post in 1887?

Lord Salisbury, the 'Bob' of the story, made Balfour Chief Secretary for Ireland, a surprising and unpopular act of nepotism. The snag is that the phrase is not found in print until decades later.

'Paint the town red' is popularly tied to an 1837 spree by the Marquis of Waterford in which Leicestershire town?

Melton Mowbray's toll-bar and several buildings are said to have been daubed red by the Marquis and his friends. The town is better known for pork pies, and nothing proves the spree coined the phrase.

'Every cloud has a silver lining' grew from two words coined in Comus, a 1634 masque by which English poet?

John Milton wrote of a dark cloud turning its silver lining on the night. Later writers borrowed the image so often that they spoke of 'Milton's clouds'.

'Morton's fork', a choice between two equally bad options, is named after a Tudor tax-raiser who held which high office?

Archbishop of Canterbury John Morton argued that anyone living modestly must have savings, and anyone living lavishly was plainly rich, so both could afford the king's 'benevolence'.

Which comedy by Aristophanes, staged in 414 BC, gave English 'cloud cuckoo land' for a city in the sky?

The Birds has a middle-aged Athenian talk the world's birds into building a city in the air, giving them control of all traffic between gods and men. Its Greek name is Nephelokokkygia.

'A curate's egg', something good only in parts, was made famous by an 1895 George du Maurier cartoon in which magazine?

Punch ran the cartoon in November 1895, six months after a rival magazine, Judy, printed much the same joke and cried plagiarism. The timid curate assures his bishop that parts of the bad egg are good.

The Parthians behind 'Parthian shot', a barbed remark made on leaving, ruled an ancient empire in which modern country?

Iran's Parthian horse archers would gallop away in real or feigned retreat, then twist round to shoot at their pursuers. They did it without stirrups, and still beat the Roman general Crassus.

'Sent up the river', American slang for being jailed, refers to which prison on the Hudson, north of New York City?

Sing Sing stands on the east bank about 30 miles north of Midtown Manhattan, so the city's convicts really were sent up the river. Renamed Ossining Correctional Facility in 1970, it took its old name back in 1985.

'The powers that be' first appeared in a 1526 New Testament translated by which scholar, later executed for heresy?

William Tyndale used the words in Romans 13, and the King James Version kept them: 'the powers that be are ordained of God'. The 'be' is simply an old form of 'are'.

'Banana republic' was coined by which American short-story writer, for a fictional land based on Honduras?

O. Henry had lived in Honduras, and turned it into the Republic of Anchuria in his linked story collection Cabbages and Kings. The real country's economy leaned heavily on exporting the fruit.