Karen Hill

The expression “to cut a big swath” was slang, back in the 1840’s. It alluded to the wide sweep of grass mowed by a scythe; hence, to the flourish made by a pompous person swaggering down the walk. In fact, the first literary use of this American slang was precisely that. It was in High … Read more

The phrase “beside the mark” is very old. In fact, it is so old that, in the original Greek, it had passed from a proverbial phrase into a single word which expressed its figurative sense. That is, in the old Athenian contests, an archer who failed to hit the mark was said to be out … Read more

The expression hocus pocus means: Flimflam; deception; deceit; nonsense; charlatanism; jugglery: sometimes corrupted to “hokey-pokey.” Probably this was originally a form of reduplication, like hodgepodge, odd-bods, shilly-shally, and many others, and was based on Latin. One explanation is given in 1656 by Thomas Ady in A Candle in the Dark; or, A Treatise Concerning the … Read more

The phrase “on Easy Street” means: Having an easy living; in comfortable circumstances; prosperous; riding on the gravy train. American slang from the close of the nineteenth century. The earliest record of this imaginary street in the Dictionary of American English takes it to George V. Hobart’s It’s Up to You (1902), in which the … Read more

The phrase “to swear like a trooper” means: To swear tremendous oaths; to use extreme profanity. Some anonymous newspaper columnist, recently, though using trouper instead of trooper, said, “This expression started and was used in church meetings as late as the 1900’s. The troupers referred to are stage actors and the saying was used to … Read more

The watering or sprinkling cart was a much more familiar vehicle on our dusty American streets a few decades ago than it is today. In fact, nowadays one sees only a motorized version of it cooling hot paved city streets in midsummer. But from the use of this former vehicle in slaking the dust of … Read more

In America it is always dust that the hated villain bites when slain in mortal combat; in England, ground or sand. However, it is merely a matter of translation, for the original picturesque phrase is to be found in Homer’s Iliad, Book II, lines 417-18. This, in the almost literal translation of William Cowper (1838), … Read more

The expression “to stick (or stand) to one’s guns” means: To persevere in one’s course despite obstacles; to hold out for, or insist on, a desired course; to maintain one’s position. Obviously, the origin is military, pertaining to any commander who is determined to maintain a present position in the face of heavy attack by … Read more

The phrase “to add insult to injury” means: To heap scorn upon one already injured. Apperson, in English Proverbs and Proverbial Phrases (1929), reports that this familiar expression first appeared in Latin, iniuriae qui addideris contumeliam, “injury which is added to insult”, in the fifth book of the fables written by the Roman writer of … Read more

Since hay is the resultant of mown grass dried for fodder, and the sun is the cheapest and most available drying agency, the literal sense of the aphorism “to make hay while the sun shines” is most obvious. Its figurative intent is equivalent to “Strike while the iron is hot,” and in fact such are … Read more

The expression “to go up in the air” is said not only of balloons and aviators, but of ordinary persons, American fathers especially, who become vociferously enraged, who sputter furiously in resemblance to a skyrocket with an ignited fuse, from which the expression originated some fifty or sixty years ago. Its British equivalent is “to … Read more

Either literally or figuratively “to splice the mainbrace” required the full crew of a sailing vessel. The mainbrace is the rope by which the mainsail is trimmed. To splice this rope requires the services of the entire crew, and at the conclusion of this arduous task it became the custom in the British Navy, in … Read more

The expression “biggest frog (toad) in the puddle” means: The person of most importance in any community or group. The group or community is always a small one, otherwise the person would be a personage and “the biggest fish in the sea.” Daddy is, usually, the biggest frog in a domestic puddle, especially if he … Read more

The expression “drunk as a fiddler” means: Highly intoxicated; three sheets in the wind; squiffy; spifflicated; tanked. It would be quite an achievement to be able to prove that the “fiddler” in the case was Nero, who, somewhat shellacked himself at the time presumably, fiddled while Rome burned, during his reign back in the first … Read more

“Ish kabibble” is the usual way the expression appears. Some, however, write it as a solid word, ishkabibble, and others make it three words, ish ka bibble. Actually you may spell it as you wish, for, like the Missouri mule, it has no pride of ancestry and no hope of posterity. Its source, that is, … Read more

Originally the term “dark horse” was a racing term for a horse about which nothing was known; its abilities had been kept “in the dark”, secret, that is, until it appeared on the track. Benjamin Disraeli is credited with the first literary usage in that sense in The Young Duke (1831): “A dark horse, which … Read more

The phrase “Barmecide feast” (or banquet) comes from the “Story of the Barber’s Sixth Brother” in Arabian Nights. A poor beggar, Schacabac, without food for several days, asked for bread at the door of the rich Persian noble, Barmecide. To his amazement he was invited to the table. Servants brought golden platter after golden platter, … Read more

The phrase “gosh all hemlock” is just one of various minced oaths or exclamations by which a man who thinks he is non-profane actually says “God Almighty!” Gosh has served as a substitute for “God”, usually in “By gosh”, for more than two hundred years. Some other similar substitutes that have appeared on the American … Read more

The expression “to have the goods on one” means: To catch one with the goods, or, that is to say, to have evidence or proof of one’s guilt; to catch one red-handed. “Goods” in such usage refers to merchandise of any sort, whatever article a thief may purloin. The American expression dates from about the … Read more

The phrase “to warm the cockles of one’s heart” means: To evoke a glow of pleasure in one; to produce a feeling of friendliness, affection, sympathy, or the like in one. Considering the fact that the study of anatomy, most other studies too, for that matter, was stagnant throughout the Dark Ages, or roughly from … Read more

The expression “to be a piker” means: To be a cheap-skate, tin-horn gambler, four-flusher, etc.; to be a poor sport or small better. Although this American term is less than a hundred years old, its origin is shrouded in uncertainty. It could have been derived from a regiment, commanded by Colonel Zebulon M. Pike in … Read more

In a previous post, we repeated a couple of amusing but legendary yarns that might account for the expression “a gone coon,” but we have been reminded that the coon is but one of various specimens of animal life which, in American speech, have and are similarly “gone” or hopelessly done for. The expression “a … Read more

The expression “to pay the piper” means: To pay the fiddler; to settle the score; hence, to suffer the consequences; to take one’s punishment, face the music, or take the rap. This had the same allusion as “to pay the fiddler”; that is, to pay the musician who led a dance, and the piper was … Read more

The phrase “to make a mountain of a molehill” means: To make a great to-do over a trifle; to give something far greater importance than is justified. This is by no means a new idea. In fact, as dug up by Apperson, you will find that the witty Greek writer, Lucian (A.D. 125?-210?), used it … Read more

The phrase “to make one’s hair stand on end” means: To frighten or terrify; to cause one to become rigid with fear; to scare the pants off one. This might almost pass as a literal condition, because when one is suddenly terrified the hair on one’s head tends to rise, or feels as if it … Read more

The expression “a Roland for an Oliver” means: Tit for tat; a blow for a blow; an eye for an eye. There was an actual Roland, a knight who fought under Charlemagne and who was killed in a rear-guard action in the Pyrenees in A.D. 778. From his heroic action grew the famous medieval Chanson … Read more

The expression “to get one’s monkey up” means: To get one’s dander up; to become angry. Apparently, along about a hundred years ago, people first began to compare their sudden fits of anger with the unreasoning bursts of rage so often seen among members of the simian family. The expression is of British origin and, … Read more

Shangri-la was a place of mystery; a utopia. The place was fictional, some mysterious region in Tibet conceived by the late English-born novelist, James Hilton, in Lost Horizon (1933), where people lived for hundreds of years and attempted to preserve the best achievements in art and ideals of the outside world despite its tensions. The … Read more

The name is that of the chief character in the play, Paul Pry, written in 1825 by John Poole. He was such a perfect exemplar of those who go through life spying and eavesdropping into the affairs of others that the name was speedily adopted into the language. Brewer’s Handbook (edition of 1898) thus defines … Read more

The expression “to keep one’s hair on” means: To restrain one’s temper; to remain calm and serene, unruffled despite provocation. This was popular American slang of less than a century ago. In fact, the earliest literary example appears to have been in Dr. Claudius, one of the first pieces of fiction written by Francis Marion … Read more

The phrase “in the lap of the gods” means: According to the will of the gods; in the hands of fate or Providence; beyond one’s control. The origin is Greek; the earliest occurrence is found in Homer’s Iliad, Book XVII, line 514. The speaker was Automedon, and the occasion was the fight over the body … Read more

In these days one is well heeled who has plenty of money, is well fixed or well-to-do, just the opposite of one who is down at the heels. Since the latter, down at the heels, alludes directly to the usual run-down condition of the shoeheels of one who is hard-pressed for money, it might be … Read more

The expression “to dislike the cut of one’s jib” means: To dislike, or be chary of, the appearance of a person, or his character; to have a feeling of distrust. Only occasionally do we use the opposite, “like.” The saying arose from nautical terminology of the seventeenth century, when the jib, the large triangular sail … Read more

A contributor (David Shulman) to American Speech dug up a neat early description of the first expression, which he found in Thomas W. Lawton’s The Krank: His Language and What It Means (1888): “Playing to the Grand-Stand. To accomplish this it is only necessary to smile, strike an attitude, and strike out.” That is too … Read more

The expression “in one ear and out the other” means: Through the mind, but leaving no impression; as though a sound traveled through a tube passing through the skull leaving no evidence of its passing. The notion is by no means new; probably Adam gave utterance to something similar after giving some instruction to Cain … Read more

Poor old Hogan is merely an innocent bystander in the modern Americanism “like Hogan’s goat”. Just as with “Hogan’s brickyard,” a slang designation of a baseball diamond, the goat could be the property of Jones, Smith, or Rockefeller, or VanTassel. That is, the name of the owner has no bearing whatever on the meaning of … Read more

The expression “handwriting on the wall” means: A forecast of some ominous event; a warning of probable danger. The allusion is to the account told in the fifth chapter of Daniel in the Old Testament. Belshazzar, to celebrate his access to the throne of Babylonia upon the death of his father, Nebuchadnezzar, declared a great … Read more

To give one a thorough and disciplined course of training. Mary Gilbert Smith of Wallingford, Vermont, author of the series of Grandpa White stories which appeared for some years in the Boston Globe, states that it stems from the days when plowing and heavy farm work in New England were done with oxen. “If a … Read more

The expression “mad as a hatter” doesn’t mean irate, a sense one sometimes hears; it means crazy, utterly demented. There have been various theories advanced for this peculiar metaphor, and some of the theories are themselves peculiar. One is that “hatter” was introduced merely to add an intensive force, that the individual spoken of was … Read more

The expression “as mad as hops” means: Confoundedly irate; mad enough to bite nails; roaring mad. Although “as thick as hops” has a literal background, referring either to the density of the hedges or thickets of hop vines as grown in southern England especially, or to the close growth of the cones on the vines, … Read more

The phrase “high Finks” means: Mad frolic; pranks; jollity. At the end of the seventeenth century this was a term applied at drinking bouts for the ludicrous performance put on by some members of the party selected for the purpose by a throw of dice. It is best described in Guy Mannering (1815) by Sir … Read more

The expression “to throw a monkey wrench in the machinery” means: To gum up the works; to place an obstacle or hindrance into a project or undertaking; to interfere, or cause confusion or disaster. Undoubtedly this literally described an act of sabotage when it was first used, possibly no more than fifty years ago, though … Read more

Mardi, Tuesday, and gras, fat; hence, “fat Tuesday,” as is the literal meaning in France, “Shrove Tuesday,” as we call the day before the beginning of Lent in English. No one knows when the Mardi gras carnival began, though probably they are a survival of the Roman festival of Lupercal held at the same season … Read more

The expression “a fish out of water” means: One out of one’s element or the setting or environment to which one is accustomed. But unlike the aquatic animal yanked from stream, pool, or sea, the person who merely feels like a fish out of water rarely suffers death from the sensation, no matter how protracted. … Read more

The phrase “putting on the dog” means: Making pretensions of grandeur; assuming airs. This was American college slang of the 1860’s. Whether or not it originated at Yale, it was so credited by Lyman H. Bagg who, in his Four Years at Yale (1871), wrote: “Dog, style, splurge. To put on dog is to make … Read more

The expression “not for money, marbles, nor chalk” means: Not for any consideration whatever; absolutely not; utterly incorruptible. Although “marbles,” in this expression, could be taken to mean “slight value,” with “chalk” indicating “no value,” we think it more likely to be a slight mispronunciation of meubles, a term of French origin used both in … Read more

If your wife kicks you under the table or otherwise makes it plain to you that it would be best not to go on with what you were about to say, you may, she hopes, understand that she’s trying to head you off from “putting your foot in it,” from committing a social blunder or … Read more

The phrase “easy as rolling off a log” means: Nothing could be easier; the simplest action possible. Early American colonists, probably, moving into a wilderness with a hundred things to be done at once by both husband and wife, sought desperately for a safe and dry place to “park” the baby temporarily. Just as a … Read more

The expression “to get a kick (or charge) out of something” means: To become thrilled, excited, or stimulated by something physical, mental, or emotional. The older American slang with “kick” is gradually being replaced by the later “charge,” having the same interpretation, but “kick” has served well for some fifty years. Originally the “kick” was … Read more

The phrase “hoist with one’s own petard” means: Ruined or destroyed by the device or plot one has set for another; caught in one’s own trap. Had it not been for Shakespeare this expression would undoubtedly have died out long ago. It is found in Hamlet, one of the most popular of his plays. In … Read more

The expression “to break the ice” means: To dispel coolness or aloofness; to break through reserve or formality, establish friendly relations; also, to start an enterprise. Literally, of course, it is the ice on a river or lake that is broken for the passage of boats in early spring. Because that denoted the start of … Read more

It is at least interesting to speculate on the origin of the slang phrase “to take a powder”, even if there is no possible way of determining who started it nor his line of reasoning. Here we have something meaning to depart rapidly, to flee, to go over the hill, to take it on the … Read more

Unlock the origins and meaning of the expression “to pull a boner.” Delve into its history and unravel the unexpected journey of this intriguing phrase. Key Takeaways: Uncover the historical context behind the expression “to pull a boner.” Explore its evolution and diverse interpretations. Gain insights into how language expressions can undergo unexpected transformations over … Read more

A friend, just returned from a trip to Spain, said to me, “Know what I saw in Barcelona, Charles? The mansion from which we got the word gaudy! Put up by a grandee named Gaudi.” I said, “Well, it must be pretty old, then.” “No,” said he, “just recently finished.” He was quite taken aback … Read more

The expression “to pile (or heap) Pelion on Ossa” means: to heap difficulty upon difficulty; to attempt that which is all but impossible. Pelion is a mountain peak in Thessaly, about 5,300 feet high; Ossa, another peak in Thesssaly, about 6,500 feet high. The story is told in Homer’s Odyssey (Book XI) as follows, according … Read more

The expression “come off your perch” means: come down a peg or two; don’t be too conceited, haughty, or arrogant. The allusion is to the twig serving as a resting place for a bird; hence, a point of vantage from which one may take a superior view. The present expression is American of some fifty … Read more

“Dead soldier” means just a liquor bottle, or, perhaps nowadays, can, that is empty; hence, worthless, good for nothing, as a dead man or soldier on a battlefield would be. The term was recognized in A New Dictionary of the Terms Ancient and Modern of the Canting Crew, printed about 1700, and must certainly have … Read more

The expression “to take down a peg” means: to pull one off his high horse; to knock one off his perch; to humble one; to lower one in his own or another’s estimation. This is found as far back as the sixteenth century, but the original allusion has been lost. Shakespeare, in Love’s Labor’s Lost … Read more

The phrase “tell it to the Marines” means: A fish story: an expression of disbelief or incredulity. Lord Byron, in The Island (1823), who appears to have been the first to record the expression, added the note: “‘That will do for the marines, but the sailors won’t believe it,’ is an old saying.” A year … Read more

Both this name bestowed by sailors, two hundred or more years ago, and the regular name, the storm petrel, carry us to the New Testament. Petrel, French for “little Peter,” was so named from its seeming to walk on the water like the disciple Peter, as related in Matthew xiv, 29. And Mother Carey (or … Read more

The familiar things, the cherished possessions, the appearance, the indescribable atmosphere which combine to make a house a home. Actually, this phrase combines two groups of Roman gods, though rhinor gods, to be sure. The lares (two syllables, please, lar’eez) were divinities presiding over the hearth and the whole house, representing the spirits, not of … Read more

One who sticks his (or, more likely, her) nose into the affairs of others; or, among the young, one who inordinately busies oneself with or constantly fingers objects belonging to others. The term derived from a poem of that title, written by Ann Taylor, first appearing in Original Poems for Infant Minds, published in 1804-05, … Read more

The phrase “plain as the nose on one’s face” means: ridiculously obvious; as conspicuous or evident as anything could possibly be. The comparison must have been known to Shakespeare, who used it ironically in Two Gentlemen of Verona (1591). The Lady Sylvia had enjoined Valentine, who loves her, “to write some lines to one she … Read more

The expression “no skin off one’s nose” means: nothing of concern to one; not one’s affair. In today’s slang, nose is sometimes replaced by ear, elbow, or back, but the implication is equally evident: If one doesn’t butt into, or stick one’s nose into, an affair that is none of one’s business, he is not … Read more

The expression “a hurrah’s nest” means: a disorderly, untidy mess; a place of wild confusion. This “nest” has been variously attributed to a hurrah, a hurra, and a hoorah, but, I regret to say, no naturalist or folklorist has ever yet attempted to describe the imaginary creature responsible for the untidiness. My one-time associates, compilers … Read more

The expression “to quarrel with one’s bread and butter” means: to complain about one’s means of livelihood; to act against one’s best interests. And many’s the time you’ve seen a child do that, throw his buttered bread or his piece of cake or even the ice-cream cone he’s been whimpering for on the ground in … Read more

The phrase “to the queen’s taste” means: to a fare-you-well; lock, stock, and barrel; completely; utterly; totally. There was no individual queen to whom this phrase alluded, but because a queen is the highest lady in the land, all virtues are ascribed to her, including possession of all that is complete and thorough. Curiously enough, … Read more

The expression “in a pretty pickle” means: behind the 8-ball; the devil to pay and no pitch hot; in trouble; in a sorry plight. The Dutch, from whom we borrowed “pickle” and also the original phrase some four or five hundred years ago, said in de pekel zitten, literally to sit in the salt liquor … Read more

The expression “to walk the plank” means: to force out of office or position. This refers to a method used in a literal sense for getting rid of undesired persons on shipboard, a method used primarily by pirates or corsairs, especially in the seventeenth century on the Spanish Main, for disposing of unwanted captives in … Read more

The expression “to play possum” means: to pretend; to deceive; especially, to feign sickness or death. Early American hunters speedily learned that the opossum is a past master in the art of simulating death. If threatened with capture it will lie with closed eyes and limp muscles, and no amount of handling or ordinary abuse … Read more

The phrase “without rhyme or reason” means: lacking in sense or justification. The French still say, ni rime ni raison; but we borrowed the saying from the French of the late Middle Ages, na Ryme ne Raison, as reported by W. W. Skeat some years ago in Notes & Queries. English usage dates from the … Read more

The expression “to raise or play hob” means: to raise Cain; play the devil; make mischief. In English folklore, “Hob” was the familiar name of the sprite, Robin Goodfellow, the household spirit full of mischievous, sometimes malicious, acts, the being who, at least, received the blame. Shakespeare, in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, gives him also … Read more

First, away back in the sixteenth century, it was “tag and rag,” or sometimes just “tag,” always meaning the rabble, the common herd, the riffraff of society, the people generally held in low esteem. Thus we read: “To walles they go, both tagge and ragge, their Citie to defende” and “Huntyd, and killyd tage and … Read more

The expression “neither head nor tail” means: neither one thing nor another; nothing definite nor positive: usually in such construction as, I can make neither head nor tail of this story. In the expression, which dates back to the seventeenth century, head means “beginning” and tail means “end”; hence, I can understand neither beginning nor … Read more

The phrase “a shot in the arm” was derived from the hypodermic injection of a drug administered by a physician for the prevention or cure of a disease or the alleviation of pain. To be sure, the expression is used with such meaning, but we don’t think that the original “shot” was with such purpose. … Read more

The expression “on the fritz” means: out of order; gone haywire; on the kibosh; not in good health or in good condition. According to our best recollections and those of others whom we have consulted, this expression entered the American language about the turn of the century, though it seems to have escaped the notice … Read more

The phrase “not to care a fiddlestick” means: to be wholly unconcerned; to care nothing at all. Although our ancestors, some three hundred years ago, had high regard for the fiddle, they seemed to think of the fiddlestick, without which the fiddle could not be played, as a mere trifle, a bagatelle, something so insignificant … Read more

Though we’re not saying that the reading of the Thirty-nine Articles has an actual bearing on the “forty winks” or short nap that is likely to succeed that reading, or interrupt it, such a sequel could be inferred. The Thirty-nine Articles, for the benefit of the unenlightened, are the articles of faith of the Church … Read more

The phrase “fit as a fiddle” means: in fine form or condition; in splendid health. Although “fiddles” were known in England back at least in the early thirteenth century, it was some four hundred years later, evidently, before their shape, form, tone, and other qualities became so pleasing as to invite complimentary applications to humans. … Read more

“Fast and loose” was the name of an old cheating game, known in the middle of the sixteenth century at least. The game was thus explained by James O. Halliwell in his Dictionary of Archaic and Provincial Words, Obsolete Phrases, Proverbs and Ancient Customs, from the Fourteenth Century (1847): “A cheating game played with a … Read more

The expression “the fat is in the fire” means: the mischief is done and unpleasant results must be faced; an irretrievable blunder has been made and ill consequences will follow; some dire act has been committed which will undoubtedly provoke an explosion of anger. Nobody knows how old this saying may be, and the beginning … Read more

The expression “root hog or die” means get to work or suffer the consequences. Although the earliest printed record of the Americanism so far exhumed dates only to 1834, “We therefore determined to go on the old saying, root hog or die”: A Narrative of the Life of David Crockett, it probably goes back to … Read more

“To cut (or split) a melon” is a delightful procedure, both for the cutter and for him who receives a portion of the melon. He, or more likely they, in charge of the cutting is delighted that there is something to cut, and the receiver always has had a mouth watering for the taste. In … Read more

Of course every American knows that the expression “nip and tuck” means neck and neck, or just about as close a finish in any sort of competition as two or more contestants could get, a photo finish, in modern terminology. But why “nip,” and why “tuck”? There have been variations of the expression in the … Read more

Yes, “to paint the lily” is the way Shakespeare wrote it; not as one so often hears it, “to gild the lily.” It’s to be found in King John, Act IV, scene 2. The king who seized the throne unjustly after the death of his brother Richard in 1199 believed toward the close of his … Read more

The idiom “to have too many irons in the fire” means to undertake many things or have many activities under way at one time; also, to have alternate plans for gaining one’s purpose; or, if we say “too many” rather than “many,” to be engaged in more activities than one can properly manage; to bite … Read more

The expression “to hang on by the eyelashes” means to be just barely able to retain one’s hold on something, literal or figurative; to be in a precarious condition. Our ancestors, back in the seventeenth century “hung (something) by the eyelid,” rather than the eyelashes, indicating that they meant to keep that thing or subject … Read more

When I was young, the saying “according to one’s lights” always struck me as a silly expression. The “lights” were the last things, bright red and closely adhering , that my mother removed in cleaning a fowl, the “liver and lights” always in combination. It was not until some years later that I learned that … Read more