THE ORIGINS OF EXPRESSIONS, PART TWO

BITE THE BULLET

This goes back to emergency surgery in wartime when there was either no anaesthetic or no time to administer any. In which case, the surgeon made patients bite down on a bullet in an attempt to distract them from the pain.

BUTTER UP

If you butter up someone, you’re doing your utmost to please them but it’s almost certainly not a pretty sight. You’re being oleaginous: greasing your way into their affections and/or trying to flatter them outrageously. From a linguistic point of view, it is easy to see why words like ‘buttering’ and ‘greasing’ would come to be used in this context: the person buttering is indeed acting in an emollient — oily — way so as to make their target feel in no doubt as to their intentions.

However, there’s another reason why butter (or buttering) is used: there was an ancient Indian custom that involved throwing balls of clarified butter at statues of the gods in order to seek favor. From there, you can see why we might butter up someone else to seek other favors.

SPILL THE BEANS

In Ancient Greece, beans were used when voting for candidates who were standing for various positions. Each candidate would be assigned a container into which the voters would place a white bean (meaning that they liked the candidate) or a black bean (signifying disapproval). Sometimes, a clumsy person would accidentally knock over the container which would ‘spill the beans’ and thus show how well a candidate was doing.

HOBSON’S CHOICE

Hobson’s choice is no choice at all. Thomas Hobson (1554—1631) was the owner of a livery stable in Cambridge who rented out horses to people. He had a strict rule that customers had to take the horse nearest the stable door. If they didn’t like that horse, then that was tough. So in as much as they had a choice, it was the choice of taking the horse offered to them or no horse at all. In other words, Hobson’s choice: take it or leave it.

CLOUD NINE

This is based on terminology used by the US Weather Bureau. Clouds are divided into classes and each class is divided into nine types with level (or cloud) nine being the very highest. Such clouds can reach as high as 10,000 metres or even higher and appear as glorious white mountains in the sky. So if you were on cloud nine you’d be right at the top. And that’s why it’s used to describe a happy person.

FITS TO A ‘T’

Architects and other people who need to draw with extreme accuracy use T-squares to draw perfect right angles. From there, you can see why something that’s spot on would be described as fitting to a ‘T.’

TO WEAR ONE’S HEART ON ONE’S SLEEVE

In the Middle Ages, on February 14, it was the custom for young men and women to pick names out of a bowl to see who their Valentines would be for the next week. The practice was for them to wear these names (invariably written on heart-shaped pieces of paper) on their sleeves for a whole week. Therefore, wearing your heart on your sleeve became a way of saying that someone had made their feelings obvious.

STEALING THE LIMELIGHT

Limelight — which originated from the burning of lime to create a strong light — was used by lighthouses and the Victorian stage before the era of electric light. So someone who was trying to steal or hog the limelight was thrusting themselves into the middle of the stage at the expense of the other actors.

PYRRHIC VICTORY

A Pyrrhic victory is one in which you win but only at huge cost. In other words, it’s a win in name only as it has all the hallmarks of a defeat. It is named after Pyrrhus, the King of Epirus who won the batttle of Asculum in 279 bc but he lost all of his officers and most of his best men in what we would now call a Pyrrhic victory.

Nowadays, we use the expression for everything from politics to sport. So if, for example, a football team wins a match but suffers terrible injuries, it could be described as a Pyrrhic victory.

KICK THE BUCKET

When a large animal was being killed at a slaughterhouse, a bucket would be placed under it while it was positioned on a pulley. Sometimes the animal would kick out during the process and so it would literally kick the bucket before being killed.

IN A NUTSHELL

It’s all thanks to a sixteenth-century English calligrapher named Peter Bales who was able to write in such small letters that it was said of him that he could write a Bible small enough to fit into a walnut shell. From that, we get the expression ‘in a nutshell’ to cover any example of a concise argument or point.

AS HAPPY AS A CLAM

It’s important to know the rest of this saying. It should be ‘as happy as a clam at high tide’. Why? Because clams are only harvested when the tide is out and so when it’s high tide, they’re safe and therefore happy.

BREAK A LEG

One can see why superstitious actors wouldn’t want people to say ‘good luck’ as it’s tempting fate. But why invite them to break their legs? There’s a two-fold explanation: firstly, it’s a form of reverse superstition (i.e. if good luck is tempting fate then wish them bad luck) and secondly, it’s a subtle way of saying that you hope the actor will be down on one knee at the end of the performance, bowing down before an appreciative audience — and, in olden days, picking up tips thrown on to the stage by grateful spectators.

BARKING UP THE WRONG TREE

This comes from raccoon hunting. Dogs were used to hunt raccoons by following their scent. When they found one, they would stop at the bottom and bark at the tree trunk. However, because raccoons are nocturnal, hunting took place in the dark and sometimes the dogs would bark at the bottom of the wrong tree…

FACING THE MUSIC

This goes back to the days when army court martials (or, as these trials of soldiers should technically be known in the plural, ‘courts martial’) were even more formal than they are today. As the commanding officer read out the charges against the soldier to be tried, an army drummer would drum by his side. The soldier on trial would therefore be ‘facing the music’. So if a soldier — or later, as the saying became more widely used, a civilian — was going to be doing something risky or even illegal, he would talk about ‘facing the music’ if he was caught.

Interestingly, another expression is associated with this one. If someone is fitted up — i.e. accused of doing something bad that they didn’t do — then they would be facing ‘drummed-up’ charges or the case could be described as ‘drummed up’.

CHANCE ONE’S ARM

There are two possible explanations. The first is that it comes from boxing. When a boxer extends his fist to hit his opponent, he is leaving himself vulnerable to counter-attack. In that way, he’s chancing his arm.

The other (earlier) possibility is that it refers to a soldier — specifically a corporal or a sergeant — doing something that might bring him into trouble and lead to him being demoted and therefore having his stripes removed from the arm of his tunic. In that way he would be chancing his arm.

TOO MANY TO SHAKE A STICK AT

Shepherds would control their sheep by shaking their staffs (large sticks) to indicate where the animals should go. When farmers had more sheep than they could control, it was obvious that they had too many to shake a stick at.

LET ONE’S HAIR DOWN

In seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Paris, members of the nobility were obliged to wear elaborate hairdos — stacked preposterously high — which took several hours to prepare. At the end of a long day’s intriguing and ingratiating at the Palace of Versailles, they’d go home to relax and the first thing they’d do would be to let their hair down.

BUFFS

Anyone who’s an expert on — or an enthusiast for — something (maybe films or stamps) is described as a buff. In nineteenth-century New York, firefighters noticed that whenever they attended a fire, they would be followed by men who were eager to watch them. Because these men wore buffalo fur to protect them against the cold, the firefighters started calling them ‘buffalos’ or ‘buffs’ for short.

TO TAKE A RAIN CHECK

In the US, a rain check was offered to people who had tickets to a baseball game that was rained off. They would be given a rain check which was a ticket for a game at a later date.

COOL AS A CUCUMBER

There’s a good reason why cucumber is used as the epitome of cool and it’s entirely down to the fact that however hot or cold the weather is, the middle of a cucumber — its core — is usually some 11° C (20° F) colder than its outside temperature.

GETTING ON ONE’S HIGH HORSE

It comes from olden times when a person’s rank was determined by the height of their horse (and a high horse indicated a superior person).

TO KNOW ONE’S ONIONS

A myth has grown up that this is a reference to a British lexicographer, one Charles Talbut Onions, who worked on the Oxford English Dictionary and was so knowledgeable that his name became a byword for expertise. In fact, it comes from the US where it was just one of many such expressions that included ‘knows his apples’, ‘knows his oats’ etc.

A FEATHER IN ONE’S CAP

This comes from Native North American people who would reward warriors who killed their enemies, or hunters who killed lots of animals, with feathers to wear in their ceremonial headdress. From here, it’s easy to see why a feather in the cap would have been used to describe any achievement.

BRING HOME THE BACON

In sixteenth-century Europe, being able to afford pork was considered a sign of great wealth. So a man who could ‘bring home the bacon’ was more than providing for his family. When he entertained friends, he would cut off a piece of bacon or pork and give it to them to eat. They would sit around and (this is where this saying is derived from) ‘chew the fat’.

COLD TURKEY

It used to be thought that the skin of a person going through drug withdrawal would change — becoming harder and covered with goose bumps, like the skin of a plucked turkey.

GOING ROUND THE BEND

This derives from operators stationed on Telegraph Island who were desperate to escape to India by sailing round the bend in the Strait of Hormuz.

NO STRINGS ATTACHED

Traditionally, cloth merchants have always marked any flaws in their cloth with a tiny white string. Flawless cloth would be ordered by requesting ‘no strings attached’.

RULE OF THUMB

This derives from the old English law that stipulated you couldn’t beat your wife with anything wider than your thumb.

WHERE’S IT FROM?

NOSY PARKER

Matthew Parker was Archbishop of Canterbury in the sixteenth century. He had a very long nose and was extremely inquisitive — hence ‘nosy parker’.