Here are more origins of some common phrases.
Meaning: An overly anxious or stressed person who can’t function normally (yup, that’s Uncle John)
Origin: “First appeared as a slang term in WWI meaning ‘a quadruple amputee.’ Soldiers who had lost all their limbs actually were carried in baskets, because if they were carried on stretchers, they’d be too likely to fall out.” (From Jesse’s Word of the Day, by Jesse Sheidlower)
Meaning: To refuse to give up; to stick with it
Origin: “This hails from the world of boxing, where managers exhort exhausted fighters to clinch their opponents, or hang on to the ropes, to finish a round or a bout. In recent years the expression has come to be used as common parting words to someone in trouble since everyone in this life is usually up against the ropes in one way or another.” (From Grand Slams, Hat Tricks, and Alleyoops, by Robert Hendrickson)
Meaning: To be yourself
Origin: “To sail under false colors was to disguise a pirate ship by flying the flag of a friendly nation. Camouflaged in this way, pirates could usually sail fairly close to the ship he wanted to attack without raising an alarm. When the moment was right, he’d show his true colors by raising his own flag.” (From Scuttlebutt…& Other Expressions of Nautical Origin, by Teri Degler)
Meaning: To have the upper hand
Origin: “In the days before mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, lifeguards placed drowning victims over a barrel, which was rolled back and forth while the lifeguard tried to revive them. The person ‘over the barrel’ is in the other person’s power or at his mercy.” (From The Facts on File Encyclopedia of Word and Phrase Origins, by Robert Hendrickson)
The call of the koala bear sounds like a handsaw cutting wood.
Meaning: The action of a dead person, as if appalled by something that has happened or been proposed
Origin: “The first-known reference to this phrase is in Mark Twain’s 1894 novel, The Tragedy of Pudd’nhead Wilson. Twain says: ‘You has disgraced yo’ birth. What would yo’ pa think o’ you? It’s enough to make him turn in his grave.’” (From The Phrase That Launched 1,000 Ships, by Nigel Rees)
Meaning: A run-down part of town
Origin: “Seattle swells with pride in the well-documented knowledge that skid row had its origins there. In the mid-19th century a logging road along which logs were skidded led from the forest to Yesler’s Mill. The Skid Road became a road populated by lumber-jacks, sailors, prostitutes, and panhandlers. It soon became known as Skid Row, but today is always spelled with small letters.” (From Cassell Everyday Phrases, by Neil Ewart)
Meaning: To give up
Origin: “From the 17th-century expression, throw in the sponge, which was the practice of throwing up the sponge used to cleanse a boxer’s face at a prize-fight, a signal that the fighter had had enough—that the sponge is no longer required. In today’s pugilistic encounters one is more likely to hear that the manager of one contestant throws in a towel, rather than a sponge, but the original occasion for the expression still stands.” (From Heavens to Betsy!, by Charles Earle Funk)
“Some mornings it just doesn’t seem worth it to gnaw through the leather straps.”
—Emo Phillips
Monkeys given paints and paper on which to draw will scream in anger when an unfinished work is taken from them. But they don’t object to having a finished painting taken.