50 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 phrase first appears in a 1685 sermon, and a thumb's breadth simply served as a rough inch in the cloth trade.

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

A jar, a big storage pithos, is what Hesiod wrote; the 16th-century scholar Erasmus rendered it as the Latin pyxis, a box, and the error stuck.

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

Mercury compounds in felt-making caused erethism, with tremors, slurred speech and hallucinations so common in Danbury, Connecticut that locals called it the Danbury Shakes.

'Humble pie' began as 'umble pie', a dish servants made from which ingredient while the lord ate venison?

Deer offal, the heart, liver and lungs once called umbles, filled the pie; 'humble' crept in by folk etymology, and by the 1800s the phrase 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 was born when playwright John Dennis heard his 1709 storm sound effect used in a rival's Macbeth?

Steal my thunder is what Dennis bellowed: his Appius and Virginia had flopped at Drury Lane, but the theatre kept his thunder-sheet effect for its next production.

Under Britain's Riot Act, the 1715 law behind 'read the riot act', how many people made an unlawful assembly?

12 or more people, once a magistrate had read the proclamation aloud, had one hour to disperse; anyone who stayed was guilty of a felony punishable by death.

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

The Iroquois, the Haudenosaunee Confederacy, sealed peace by burying weapons; Jesuit missionaries described the rite in 1644, and a Boston diarist saw 'two Axes' put in the ground at a 1680 treaty.

'Wild-goose chase' shows up in which Shakespeare play, when the phrase still named a follow-the-leader riding sport?

Romeo and Juliet gives Mercutio the line 'if our wits run the wild-goose chase'; in the 1590s sport, riders had to copy every erratic turn of the lead rider, like geese in flight.

Iago's 'green-eyed monster' warning about jealousy comes from which Shakespeare tragedy about a Moorish 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 strangles the innocent Desdemona.

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

The Taming of the Shrew has Tranio tell Petruchio 'if you break the ice and do this feat', meaning tame the shrew Katherina, so that her 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 says 'I have been in such a pickle since I saw you last' after a night in the wine; the phrase had already existed in Dutch.

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, and Portia's 'not one drop of blood' ruling saves Antonio.

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

Julius Caesar has Casca admit that Cicero's Greek went over his head, a literal joke Shakespeare turned into the standard line for anything unintelligible.

'Salad days', for one's green and youthful time, was coined in which Shakespeare play, spoken by an Egyptian queen?

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 play about a Danish prince?

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

Walter Scott wrote of 'shewing o' the cauld shouther', and the tale that the phrase refers to serving unwelcome guests a cold joint of mutton is a later invention.

In 'three sheets to the wind', the sailors' phrase for being 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, half a pint a day, was cut with a quart of water on Vernon's order of 21 August 1740; the nickname came from his grogram cloak, and 'grog' soon meant the drink and 'groggy' its effects.

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

A triangular foresail, set ahead of the foremast, was cut differently from nation to nation, so 18th-century sailors could tell friend from foe by a distant ship's jib.

'Slush fund' began at sea as cash a crew raised by selling what to tallow makers?

Cooking fat, or 'slush', skimmed from the galley pots was sold ashore, and the money was kept apart from the ship's accounts to buy small comforts for the crew.

Which idiom for a showy start that fizzles 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 the late 1600s 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 itself isn't recorded until a 1905 Western novel.

Which idiom for enduring pain is often traced to patients clenching ammunition in their teeth during surgery?

Bite the bullet may come from surgery without anaesthetic, though evidence is thin; 'chew a bullet' is recorded from 1796, and British troops in 1857 spoke of 'biting the cartridge'.

'Hat trick' began in 1858 in which sport, when fans bought H. H. Stephenson a hat for three in a row?

Cricket's H. H. Stephenson took three wickets with three consecutive deliveries, and the spectators' collection bought him a hat; football borrowed the term for three goals.

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, would abandon the hare's scent for a smoked herring dragged on a string; he retold the story so often that the figurative sense took hold.

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

A sack, from the French poque that also gave us 'pocket' and 'pouch', hid the goods; John Heywood was already warning against buying 'the pig in the poke' in 1555.

'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.

'Baker's dozen' means 13 because medieval English bakers feared penalties for short weight under which law?

The Assize of Bread and Ale punished short measure with fines, flogging or the destruction of the oven, so bakers threw in a thirteenth loaf to be sure the weight was met.

'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, which is to say with nothing at all.

In 'the apple of my eye', used by King Alfred in the 800s, the 'apple' originally meant which part of the eye?

The pupil, the 'aperture 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 made him invulnerable wherever its water touched, so the heel covered by 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 by inmates of a federal reformatory in Oklahoma?

Harry Truman's sign turned poker slang on its head: the 'buck' was a marker, often a buckhorn-handled knife, passed to whoever had to deal 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 china egg left in the nest tempts the hen to add to it, and savers borrowed the image for money set aside to grow.

Which metal completes 'born with a ___ spoon in your mouth', the inherited-wealth idiom tied to christening gifts?

Silver spoons were the customary godparents' gift at an English baptism, and a 1712 translation of Don Quixote already notes that 'every Man was not born with a Silver Spoon in his Mouth'.

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

Sixes and sevens was 'to set on sice et sept', the careless gambler's numbers in hazard; the tale that it comes from two London livery companies squabbling over sixth place is disproved by Chaucer's earlier use.

'Cut to the chase' comes from which medium, where editors trimmed slow scenes to reach the exciting pursuit?

Cinema gave the order: cut, meaning edit, the film so the audience reaches the exciting part, and the everyday sense of 'get to the point' followed from the editing room.

'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, desperate charge?

Malay meng-âmuk, 'to make a furious and desperate charge', traces back to a Proto-Malayo-Polynesian root hamuk, 'attack', and English kept the word for any wild rampage.

What does 'a chip on your shoulder' mean, from a 19th-century American boys' dare to knock a wood chip off?

Nursing a grudge that is quick to flare into a fight is the sense; an 1830 Long Island paper described two boys, one with a chip placed on his shoulder, the other dared to knock it off.