I came across a book this evening called Dictionary of Idioms. If I recall, Adam bought it at one of the school book fairs when he was in elementary school.
Idioms appear in every language, and English has thousands of them. They are often confusing because the meaning of the whole group of words taken together has little, often nothing, to do with the meanings of the words taken one by one.
For instance, to let the cat out of the bag means to reveal a secret. Today the phrase has nothing to do with a cat or a bag, but hundreds of years ago, it actually did. The origin of this idiom goes back many centuries in England, where you might have bought a costly pig at a farmer's market. If the merchant was dishonest and put a worthless cat into the bag instead of a piglet, you might not find out about it until you got home and let the cat out of the bag!
To get up on the wrong side of the bed means to awake in a bad mood, feeling cross or grouchy. The origin of this goes back to ancient Rome, when the left side of anything was considered evil or menacing. The word sinister comes from the Latin word for left. The ancient Romans thought bad luck would come to anyone who put his or her left foot down first when getting out of bed. The superstition that left was bad continued for centuries and gave birth to today's expression get up on the wrong side of the bed.
If anyone is interested in the origin of any idioms, feel free to post a request in the comment section and I'll gladly look it up for you.
11 comments:
LOL how bout "ants in your pants"
"You never sit still. You must have ants in your pants."
Ants in your pants....fairly self-explanatory! It means extreme restlessness and you can easily imagine where this saying came from. What if you actually had ants in your pants?? You'd find it difficult to settle down. You'd keep squirming to get rid of the ants!
alright then...."caught with your pants down"
OK...guess 'caught with your pants down' isn't that important! It's not one of the 600 idioms in the book. So how's this one instead?
Spitting image:
"You must be Jonathan's mother. He's the spitting image of you."
It means a perfect resemblance or an exact likeness. Originally this saying was "spit and image" (Spit was an old word that meant 'likeness', but the original word might have been spirit, shortened into spit.)
As the years went by, "spit and" was pronounced "spittin" and later became "spitting." The word seemed to fit because people said that a boy who looked like his parent could have been 'spit' out of their mouth. A related expression is "chip off the old block."
Very interesting....Quick & Simple magazine (April 18) has a "brief" article on this too! I always enjoy words & word games!
Raining cats & dogs is one that always gets me...
Or Cute as a button-I never really thought buttons were cute,
what about run like the dickens? What's that mean?
OK...one out of three ain't bad!! The only one in the book was 'raining cats and dogs."
We know it means to rain very heavily. There are several theories about the origin of this popular idiom, which goes back to the middle 1700's in England. One comes from Norse mythology, in which dogs were associated with windy storms and cats were associated with rain. Also, in England in the 17th and 18th centuries, many cats and dogs drowned in floods caused by torrential rainstorms, and their bodies were found in the streets afterwards as if they had fallen from the sky with the rain.
how bout "push the envelope."
this is fun :-)
Sorry....no 'push the envelope' either!
How 'bout this one? Alyssa's AP Gov't teacher shared this one with the class:
"Get the dirty end of the stick"...most people associate this with ending up with the lousy deal. The origin comes from hundreds of years ago when toilet paper was non-existent [pause for thoughts of disgust...]. Sticks were used to clean um, well, you know...as a result most people didn't want to get the dirty end of the stick!!
Last night I was reading my issue of "Reading Today" and came across an educational series called "Hit The Ground Running"-Exploring Idioms in English-available for grades 1-8. I thought this was an interesting way to teach language skills. What's the origin of Hit the ground running(I know a bit obvious), grass is always greener on the other side, or neat as a pin?
Sorry....none of those made the cut! But really....there ARE 600 in this book...LOL!
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