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- 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.
- 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.
Jul 5, 2012 · Maybe you move in different circles than I, but I've never heard "girl" used as an exclamation in the same way as "boy". That is, when someone is offerred something good, I've never heard them say "Oh girl!" like someone might say "Oh boy!" I have heard "You go girl" used to indicate encouragement to a female. That's the closest I can think of. –
An OK button on a remote control OK, with spelling variations including okay, okeh, O.K., ok and Ok, as well as k in texting, is an English word (originating in American English) denoting approval, acceptance, agreement, assent, acknowledgment, or a sign of indifference. OK is frequently used as a loanword in other languages. It has been described as the most frequently spoken or written word ...
Meaning: To reprimand someone for behaving badly, with the intention of improving that person’s behavior. Example: Taylor was being too loud in class, so I read her the riot act. Origin: This idiom most likely comes from the real Riot Act, an act passed by the British government in 1714 to prevent unruly assemblies.
Same old, same old is a phrase that means something boring, predictable, dreary. There are several theories as to the origin of the phrase same old, same old. One theory is that it comes from pidgin English spoken in either post-World War II Japan or Korea during the Korean War. The phrase is alleged to have been same-o, same-o, indicating that ...
Jul 16, 2024 · Writing in a 1975 issue of American Speech, Frank Greco of Rockefeller University suggested that the word might indeed have multiple origins—including the Scottish expression “ och aye ...
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