Some fun things to brighten your day...
By: Dave Rothfeld So where did it come from?
The following are facts from the book Common Phrases And Where They Come From by Myron Korach.
Cut the Red Tape
Bureaucratic and, as it turns out, legal delays derived their common phrase "red tape" deservedly.
For centuries, English kings put their royal decrees on parchment rolls bound with expensive red silk tape ribbons. When governmental bureaus were established, they mimicked the royal practice. Lawyers who sought royal or bureaucratic favors then followed suit by putting their written petitions in the same form. When Thomas Carlyle, the Scottish essayist and historian, and Charles Dickens wrote of governmental and legal delays, they called them "red tape." The phrase met with immediate public approval.
Stool Pigeon
This phrase is used as a derogatory label for a criminal who "ratted" (gave information) on his colleagues to the police, usually in exchange for a lighter jail sentence. But it used to be that all dishonest people were called "stool pigeons."
Not so many years ago the pigeon was an important item in every household food cabinet. Livestock animals were not abundant, and hunting for pigeons was not an autumn sport but crucial to human survival. It was discovered that pigeons could be lured into a net by placing a clay pigeon atop a pole called a stool. When the pigeons surrounded the decoy on the stool, they were covered with a net. The decoy was thus called a stool pigeon. Because the stool pigeon was used to deceive its victims, liars and similar malcontents were also called "stool pigeons."
Spill the Beans
"To reveal a secret" is the most popular meaning of "spill the beans." The phrase comes from the ancient Greeks, among whom beans were very important not only for food but also in the conduct of their local elections.
When a Greek voted, his ballot was cast by putting a bean in the helmet of the candidate of his choice whose helmet lay alongside those of the whole slate of candidates. The candidate whose helmet had the greatest number of beans in it at the close of the election was declared the winner. The count was public, and when the winner was announced, his helmet, with the beans in it, was returned to him. Thereupon, he would "spill the beans" out on his head. This act symbolized his acceptance of the office to which he had been elected. Because the helmet contained the outcome of the election, "spill the beans" became synonymous with disclosing a secret, which is the way we use the phrase today.
See How it Pans Out
This phrase originated from gold mining. Miners still separate the coveted gold dust and nuggets from the sand in which they are found with a pan of water. When the pan is shaken, the heavier gold dust collects at its bottom. The lighter sand sifts through and floats off. From this practice the world has learned to discriminate in the same way the gold miner does -- by "seeing how it pans out."
So Long
When it's time to take our leave, we say, "So long." For this phrase, we are indebted to the natives of East India, and to the awkward language skills of English sailors.
When English sailors returned to England after their first voyage to East India, they brought with them an Indian salutation. The Indian word salaam means "good-bye," but the best the tongue-tied sailors could do with salaam was "so long." Before long, they had all of England mispronouncing salaam and "so long" became a stock phrase.
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Interesting Metaphors
The following are metaphors from the book Loose Cannons, Red Herrings, and Other Lost Metaphors by Robert Claiborne.
Aftermath
Once upon a time, a math was a mowing of hay or grain, and the aftermath, the grass sprang up afterward, which might provide either pasturage or a second hay crop. Today, of course, the “aftermath” means the events that “spring up” after some notable occurrence (“the aftermath of World War II”).
In The Bag
Some call this expression no more than a variant of “all wrapped up,” but I don’t believe it. To a hunter, the “bag” is his game-bag, and a bird in the bag is a dead certainty. In Australian racing, a horse that’s in the bag is also a certainty- to lose; similarly, in the U.S., a “bagged” legal case is one where someone has put in the fix.
“In the bag” also means “drunk” – maybe the same metaphor, but maybe not. The drunk, like the bagged horse, is certain to lose, if only his equilibrium, but he’ll also move as clumsily and blindly as someone literally inside a bag.
Baker's Dozen
Some say this was a thirteenth loaf, given the customer in medieval times to make sure he was getting full weight (legal penalties for short-weighting were severe). This sounds unlikely: very few people would have needed – or could have afforded- to buy a dozen loaves at a time.
More likely, it was an extra loaf given by wholesale bakers to street peddlers, which provided their margin of profit. However the expression originated, it became a useful euphemism for the unlucky number thirteen, and for the “devil’s dozen”- for these thirteen witches supposed to make up a coven.
Barking Up The Wrong Tree
When pioneers hunted coons or possums, they’d turn loose their hounds to find the creature and chase it up a tree. Gathered around the trunk, the dogs would bark to let their masters know where the quarry was. Sometimes, however, the hunters would find to their disgust that the dogs had gone off on a false scent and were barking up the wrong tree.
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