Idiom Origins

[Baburra]

I come across a lot of English idioms which have meanings that aren't too obvious, and I tend to forget what they mean eventually if I don't make myself fully understand them. Personally, I think knowing about the origin of a phrase will only make the meaning stick to your head better or it may at least give you better appreciation for it.

As an example, I will put up something I looked up just recently which is "A dime a dozen".

At first, I didn't really see the obvious implication of it, but having read up on it and seeing how the evolution came about from how it was originally used and compared to how it is now used really gave me some perspective on it and undoubtedly gave me a clearer picture of the best way it could be used. Here is the history for anyone who is interested:

It's likely that the origins for this phrase derive from a time where ordinary items were commonly bought with nothing more than a single dime.

For instance, in the 1800s, there were a number of newspapers that mentioned how certain foods were available for the price of, literally, a dime a dozen. For an example, we can look at the Galveston Daily News, a newspaper published in 1866. It has a line that reads:

"The San Antonio Ledger says the city is well stocked with peaches at a dime a dozen."

How about you guys, any interesting origin stories? Please do post them, and I'll do the same as I remember and look up more of these. 

[linguaholic]

[Wrong side of the tracks]

Etymology: This idiom is based on the idea that a poor area is often divided by the rest of a town by railway tracks. I don't really know when this idiom came into life. I would guess around 1900.

[SarahRTW]

the rule of thumb...

Women won't like this one:

It was legal for a man to beat his wife with any object as long as it was no thicker than his thumb.

Bakers Dozen

(13 items, not 12)

Bakers and other trades people were being inspected by government agents to ensure they weren't ripping off customers.  To make sure their count and weight wasn't off,  resulting in heavy fines, they would add an extra item to the order.  So customers would get 13 items for the price of 12. This was, I think during the renaissance and later period.

It's not an idiom, but the children's song "ring around the Rosy" comes from the  plague

Ring around the Rosie = the white ring that surrounded the red swelling ("rosie")

Pocket full of posies = lots of corpses, so you'd carry posies (a small floral bouquet) to hold up to your nose to block the stench

Achoo achoo = sick, have the plague

we all fall down = you are dead from plague

(Some people say "ashes ashes" instead of achoo...this might refer to burning the corpses, which I'm not sure they did,  or "ashes to ashes, dust to dust")

Sources: Rule of Thumb and Ring around the Rose I learned in University.  Bakers dozen I don't know where I picked up.  I must have read it somewhere.

[Baburra]

the rule of thumb...

Women won't like this one:

It was legal for a man to beat his wife with any object as long as it was no thicker than his thumb.

Bakers Dozen

(13 items, not 12)

Bakers and other trades people were being inspected by government agents to ensure they weren't ripping off customers.  To make sure their count and weight wasn't off,  resulting in heavy fines, they would add an extra item to the order.  So customers would get 13 items for the price of 12. This was, I think during the renaissance and later period.

It's not an idiom, but the children's song "ring around the Rosy" comes from the  plague

Ring around the Rosie = the white ring that surrounded the red swelling ("rosie")

Pocket full of posies = lots of corpses, so you'd carry posies (a small floral bouquet) to hold up to your nose to block the stench

Achoo achoo = sick, have the plague

we all fall down = you are dead from plague

(Some people say "ashes ashes" instead of achoo...this might refer to burning the corpses, which I'm not sure they did,  or "ashes to ashes, dust to dust")

Sources: Rule of Thumb and Ring around the Rose I learned in University.  Bakers dozen I don't know where I picked up.  I must have read it somewhere.

Wow. The one about "rule of thumb" was pretty disturbing, and of course, Ring around the rosy was too but the thumb one caught me by surprise because I didn't know about that one. I vaguely remember learning that a lot of children's songs were about troubled times, so that one didn't shock me as much anymore. Some other notable examples are "London Bridge" and "Jack and Jill" if I'm not mistaken. Thanks for sharing those!

Anyway, I found another interesting one - "Close but no cigar" originates from carnivals once offering cigars as prizes, and participants usually only came close to winning the prize but never quite making it, as is the norm at these types of games - hence the term.

[Baburra]

Just found a new one and thought this would be a more appropriate place to post it than starting a new thread. I'll be posting here as well as I find more.

Anyway, on to my new discovery...

I was curious about the term "pipe dream" which means to have a dream that will never bear fruit for one reason or another.

so I looked it up and found out that it was used first back in the 19th century when opium was more prevalent, and apparently this idiom pertains to the dreams of a person when high on opium which I assume you use a pipe for.

[AExAVF]

The idiom jump on the bandwagon now means to go along with the trend.  It traces its origins to the Wild West era where people lived in isolated areas and the only way they can get to faraway towns is to ride on the earliest available bandwagon that will take them to their destination.  Actually, I got these idioms from a language reviewer I just purchased online.

Also, another idiom on my mind is rob Peter to pay Paul, which in present times now refers to the infamous Ponzi scheme.  The etymology of this idiom is religious in origin as it refers to payment of St. Paul's Church taxes at the expense of funds belonging to St. Peter's Church.

[takibari]

Knowing the origins of idioms will really help you appreciate their meanings. So, let me share one I found:

"Don't look a gift horse in the mouth"

Meaning: Do not be critical of a gift.

Origin:

Horses have gum lines that recede with age. Hence older horses have longer teeth than young horses.

To "look a horse in the mouth" is to examine the horse's mouth closely to determine its age (and therefore its usefulness and/or worth). To immediately judge a gift based on its worth or usefulness rather than the "thought" behind it considered rude, and ungrateful (it is a gift after all, and didn't cost the receiver anything).

The phrase is apparently quite old, a Latin version of it appeared in a work by St. Jerome in 420 AD, and it also exists in many languages. An Early english version (1510 AD) appears in John Standbridge's "Vulgari Standbrigi": "A gyuen hors may not (be) loked in the tethe."

[hudsonhawk]

"Beating a dead horse"

Meaning: To continue an activity that is no longer useful or constructive

From Salty Dog Talk: The Nautical Origins of Everyday Expressions by Bill Beavis and Richard G. McCloskey:

A 'dead horse' was the seaman's term for the first month at sea--a month for which they would have already been paid and spent the money very quickly afterwards. So it seemed to them, withthe money all gone, that the first month was spent working for nothing. To mark the end of the 'dead horse' month the crew would make an effigy of a horse and parade it around the decks (on passenger ships money would be collected), then with great noise and celebration the horse would be hoised to the end of a yard, cut down and dropped into the sea. No doubt there was the established understanding of beating a dead animal to work but to ship's officers 'flogging a dead horse' described the difficulty of getting the crew to do any work during the first 'unpaid' month at sea.

This tradition may also be the origin of the term "Horse latitudes" to refer to the area of light winds and calms between 30 and 35 degrees north of the equator. Ships sailing from Europe would reach these waters about a month into the voyage.

[NATASHA]

wow there are some interesting ones here and how strange some of them are. Bakers dozen is regular one and if people knew the origin they would think twice about using it.