Search results
- Rugile
- Cat Got Your Tongue. Meaning: Said to someone who remains silent when they are expected to speak. Origin: There are two stories on how this saying came into being.
- The Walls Have Ears. Meaning: Be careful what you say as people may be eavesdropping. Origin: The face Louvre Palace in France was believed to have a network of listening tubes so that it would be possible to hear everything that was said in different rooms.
- Bury The Hatchet. Meaning: End a quarrel or conflict and become friendly. Origin: During negotiations between Puritans and Native Americans men would bury all of their weapons, making them inaccessible.
- Cold Feet. Meaning: Loss of nerve or confidence. Origin: This idiom originates from a military term, warriors who had frozen feet were not able to rush into battle.
- Fly off the handle. In the days before mass merchandising, poorly fastened axe heads would fly off while they were in use. The result was dangerous, hence why the phrase is used to describe risky behavior with unpredictable results.
- Steal someone’s thunder. In the early 1700s, English dramatist John Dennis invented a device that imitated the sound of thunder for a play he was working on.
- Chew the fat. Originally a sailor’s term, this phrase refers to the days before refrigeration when ships carried food that wouldn’t spoil. One of them was salted pork skin, which consisted largely of fat.
- White elephant. Legend has it, kings of Siam (now Thailand) used to give actual white elephants to people they wanted to punish. Yes, the elephants were valuable and respected, but that also meant they were expensive to take care of, so the kings hoped the present would drive the recipient into financial ruin.
The meanings and origins of thousands of English phrases, sayings, idioms, expressions and proverbs that we use daily.
- 'Absolute power corrupts absolutely' - the meaning and origin of this phrase
- The origin of the phrase 'Don't look a gift horse in the mouth'
- Phrases coined by Shakespeare.
- 'Go pound sand' - the meaning and origin of this phrase
- 'Early to bed and early to rise makes and man healthy, wealthy and wise' - the meaning and origin of this phrase
- 'The bee's knees' - the meaning and origin of this phrase
- 'Familiarity breeds contempt' - the meaning and origin of this phrase
- 'For whom the bell tolls' - the meaning and origin of this phrase
- 'Tilting at windmills' - the meaning and origin of this phrase
- 'Beyond the pale' - the meaning and origin of this phrase
- By The Same Token
- Get on A Soapbox
- Tomfoolery
- Go Bananas
- Run of The Mill
- Read The Riot Act
- Hands Down
- Silver Lining
- Have Your Work Cut Out
- Through The Grapevine
Bus token? Game token? What kind of token is involved here? Token is a very old word, referring to something that’s a symbol or sign of something else. It could be a pat on the back as a token, or sign, of friendship, or a marked piece of lead that could be exchanged for money. It came to mean a fact or piece of evidence that could be used as proof...
The soapbox that people mount when they get on a soapboxis actually a soap box, or rather, one of the big crates that used to hold shipments of soap in the late 1800s. Would-be motivators of crowds would use them to stand on as makeshift podiums to make proclamations, speeches, or sales pitches. The soap box then became a metaphor for spontaneous s...
The notion of Tom fool goes a long way. It was the term for a foolish person as long ago as the Middle Ages (Thomas fatuus in Latin). Much in the way the names in the expression Tom, Dick, and Harry are used to mean “some generic guys,” Tom fool was the generic fool, with the added implication that he was a particularly absurd one. So the word tomf...
The expression go bananas is slang, and the origin is a bit harder to pin down. It became popular in the 1950s, around the same time as go ape,so there may have been some association between apes, bananas, and crazy behavior. Also, banana is just a funny-sounding word. In the 1920s, people said “banana oil!” to mean “nonsense!”
If something is run of the mill, it’s average, ordinary, nothing special. But what does it have to do with milling? It most likely originally referred to a run from a textile mill. It’s the stuff that’s just been manufactured, before it’s been decorated or embellished. There were related phrases like run of the mine, for chunks of coal that hadn’t ...
When you read someone the riot actyou give a stern warning, but what is it that you would have been reading? The Riot Act was a British law passed in 1714 to prevent riots. It went into effect only when read aloud by an official. If too many people were gathering and looking ready for trouble, an officer would let them know that if they didn’t disp...
Hands downcomes from horse racing, where, if you’re way ahead of everyone else, you can relax your grip on the reins and let your hands down. When you win hands down, you win easily.
The silver lining is the optimistic part of what might otherwise be gloomy. The expression can be traced back directly to a line from Milton about a dark cloud revealing a silver lining, or halo of bright sun behind the gloom. The idea became part of literature and part of the culture, giving us the proverb every cloud has a silver liningin the mid...
The expression you’ve got your work cut out for youcomes from tailoring. To do a big sewing job, all the pieces of fabric are cut out before they get sewn together. It seems like if your work has been cut for you, it should make job easier, but we don’t use the expression that way. The image is more that your task is well defined and ready to be ta...
A grapevine is a system of twisty tendrils going from cluster to cluster. The communication grapevine was first mentioned in 1850s, the telegraph era. Where the telegraph was a straight line of communication from one person to another, the “grapevine telegraph” was a message passed from person to person, with some likely twists along the way.
The meanings and origins of thousands of phrases, sayings, proverbs, idioms and expressions.
Origin: The reason for the plethora of definitions is most likely the Americanization of the old British idiom, which reads “the proof of the pudding is in the eating.” Whereas the British version makes at least some sense, the shortened American version is nonsensical.
People also ask
Do you know the origin story of a popular idiom?
What is an idiom in English language?
What idioms have known roots?
What distinguishes idioms from other common phrases and old-time sayings?
Jan 7, 2016 · Learn the fascinating stories behind 30 common expressions in English, such as bite the bullet, break the ice, and let your hair down. Discover how history, culture, and language shaped these idioms and phrases.
