Idioms Trivia
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100 free Idioms trivia questions with answers — trivia quiz, new questions added Oct 2026.
Every idiom is a tiny fossil. 'Three sheets to the wind' only makes sense if you know what a sheet does on a sailing ship, 'mad as a hatter' is a chapter of occupational medicine, and 'saved by the bell' has nothing to do with being buried alive, whatever your uncle says. These 100 questions cover the meanings and origins of the English idioms people actually use: the ones Shakespeare coined, the ones sailors and soldiers brought home, the ones lifted from Aesop and the King James Bible, idioms about animals, body parts, food and money, and a handful of fill-in-the-missing-word puzzles. Several exist to bust a popular myth, because folk etymologies are half the fun. It suits a pub quiz, an English lesson, or anyone who has ever wondered why a herring would be red. Play it on your phone with instant answers and explanations, or print it for the table.
30 of 100 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01'Saved by the bell' comes from which sport, rather than the coffin bell-pulls people often credit?
Boxing
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.
Q 02Which measuring idiom is falsely said to come from a law letting husbands beat wives with a thin stick?
Rule of thumb
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.
Q 03'Pandora's box' is a mistranslation: in Hesiod's Greek, what kind of container did Pandora actually open?
A jar
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.
Q 04Which metal, used to turn fur into felt, poisoned 19th-century hat-makers and is widely linked to 'mad as a hatter'?
Mercury
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.
Q 05'Humble pie' began as 'umble pie', a lowly dish with which filling?
Deer offal
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.
Q 06Which food completes 'spill the ___', the secret-revealing idiom first attested in 20th-century American English?
Beans
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.
Q 07Which idiom is traced to playwright John Dennis hearing his own new sound effect reused in a later Macbeth?
Steal my thunder
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.
Q 08Under Britain's Riot Act, the law behind 'read the riot act', how long did a crowd have to disperse?
One hour
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.
Q 09'Bury the hatchet' comes from a peace rite of which people, whose chiefs literally buried weapons to end a war?
The Iroquois
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.
Q 10'Wild-goose chase' is spoken by Mercutio in which Shakespeare play, when it still meant a follow-the-leader horse race?
Romeo and Juliet
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.
Q 11Iago's 'green-eyed monster' warning about jealousy comes from which Shakespeare tragedy about a general?
Othello
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.
Q 12Shakespeare used 'break the ice' in which comedy about the wooing of two Paduan sisters?
The Taming of the Shrew
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.
Q 13'In a pickle' is said by a drunk jester shipwrecked on an enchanted island in which Shakespeare play?
Q 21'Groggy' comes from Admiral Edward Vernon, 'Old Grog', who in 1740 had sailors' ration of which spirit watered down?
Rum
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.
Q 22'I like the cut of your jib', seamen's praise for someone's look, refers to which part of a ship?
A triangular foresail
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.
Q 23'Slush fund' began at sea as cash a crew raised by selling what ashore?
Cooking fat
The Tempest
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.
Q 14Shylock's bond with Antonio in which Shakespeare play gave us 'a pound of flesh' for a ruthlessly exacted debt?
The Merchant of Venice
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'.
Q 15Casca's 'it was Greek to me', on a speech by Cicero, comes from which Shakespeare play?
Julius Caesar
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.
Q 16'Salad days', for one's green and youthful time, first appears in which Shakespeare play, spoken by the heroine?
Antony and Cleopatra
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.
Q 17'Hoist with his own petard', blown up by your own bomb, comes from which Shakespeare revenge tragedy?
Hamlet
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.
Q 18Which poet's 1798 Rime of the Ancient Mariner gave us 'an albatross around your neck' for a burden of guilt?
Samuel Taylor Coleridge
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.
Q 19Which novelist's 1816 book The Antiquary gave print its first 'cold shoulder', lifted from everyday dialect?
Walter Scott
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.
Q 20In 'three sheets to the wind', sailors' slang for drunk, what exactly is a 'sheet'?
A rope controlling a sail
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.
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.
Q 24Which idiom comes from flintlocks whose priming powder lit without firing the shot?
Flash in the pan
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.
Q 25'Run the gauntlet' comes from 'gatlopp', a soldiers' punishment run between two rows of men, in which language?
Swedish
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.
Q 26'Riding shotgun', now the front passenger seat, first described an armed guard beside the driver of what?
A stagecoach
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.
Q 27Which idiom for enduring pain is often traced to surgery before anaesthetics?
Bite the bullet
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.
Q 28In which sport did 'hat trick' begin, as the name for three successes in three straight attempts?
Cricket
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.
Q 29William Cobbett's 1807 tale behind 'red herring' had a boy drag a kipper to pull which animals off a hare's trail?
Hounds
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.
Q 30In 'buy a pig in a poke', the idiom for purchasing something unseen, what is a 'poke'?
A sack
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.