DYK: Did you know? Have you ever wonder what this term really meant? The bitter end’ means the very end and comes from a nautical term. Anchor cable was wrapped around posts called bitts. The bitt end (or bitter end) refers to the final part of the anchor rope near to where the rope is fixed […]
Speak of the devil -This phrase is used to acknowledge the coincidence of someone arriving at a scene just at the time that they are being talked about. The full form goes like this – “speak of the Devil and he will appear”. The phrase originated in England, where it was, and still is, more […]
Samantha decided to go carol singing on Christmas Eve. She knocked on the door of a house and began to sing. A man, holding a clarinet, opened the door to the house. In a few seconds tears were streaming down his face. Samantha continued singing for at least a further 20 minutes. She sang every […]
“Take a rain check’ is something that you say when you cannot accept someone’s invitation to do something but you would like to do it another time. It comes from the custom started in 19th century America for vouchers to be issued to paying baseball spectators in the event of rain, which they would use […]
Beyond the pale means unacceptable; outside agreed standards of decency. The pale has nothing to do with whitish color it was the area around Dublin in Ireland. The everyday use of the word ‘pale’ is as an adjective meaning whitish and light in colour (used to that effect by Procol Harum and in countless paint adverts). […]
Today, ‘Loose cannon’ means an unpredictable person or thing, liable to cause damage if not kept in check by others The phrase is actually a nautical term. It derives from the days when sailing warships were armed with enormous cannons on wheels; if a tethered cannon broke loose it could do enormous damage to the ship. […]
Son of a gun seems to be a very strange phrase. A prevailing theory is that it comes from the 1800s, when British sailors took women along on extended voyages. When babies were born at sea, the mothers delivered them in a partitioned section of the gundeck. Because no one could be sure who the true fathers […]
A Spinster is an unmarried woman today, but once the word had a different meaning. Originally a spinster was simply a woman who made her living by spinning wool on a spinning wheel. However it was so common for single women to support themselves that way that by the 18th century ‘spinster’ was a synonym […]
A ‘Drop in a bucket’ means a very small proportion of the whole. The phrase comes from the Bible, Isaiah 40:15: (King James version) “Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing.” Amazon.com – […]
Caught red-handed – To be caught in the act of committing a misdemeanour, with the evidence there for all to see. For hundreds of years, stealing and butchering another person’s livestock was a common crime. But it was hard to prove unless the thief was caught with a dead animal … and blood on his […]
