Thursday, June 11, 2009

CATCH PHRASES

Make no bones about it - A form of this expression was used
as early as 1459, to mean to have no difficulty. It seems
evident that the allusion is to the actual occurrence of
bones in stews or soup. Soup without bones would offer no
difficulty, and accordingly one would have no hesitation
in swallowing soup with no bones.



To throw in the towel/sponge - In its original form, to
throw up the sponge, this appears in "The Slang Dictionary"
(1860). The reference is to the sponges used to cleanse
combatants' faces at prize fights. One contestant's manager
throwing in the sponge would signal that as that side had
had enough the sponge was no longer required. In recent
years, towels have been substituted for sponges at fights,
and consequently in the expression too.



Fly off the handle - Refers to axe heads, which, in the
days before mass merchandising, were sometimes fastened
poorly to their handles. If one flew off while being used,
it was a dangerous situation ... with unpredictable results.



Pull the wool over someone's eyes - Goes back to the days
when all gentlemen wore powdered wigs like the ones still
worn by the judges in British courts. The word wool was
then a popular, joking term for hair ... The expression
'pull the wool over his eyes' came from the practice of
tilting a man's wig over his eyes, so he couldn't see what
was going on.



Pay through the nose - Comes from the ninth-century Ireland.
When the Danes conquered the Irish, they imposed an
exorbitant Nose Tax on the island's inhabitants. They took
a census (by counting noses) and levied oppressive sums on
their victims, forcing them to pay by threatening to have
their noses actually slit.



Caught red-handed - 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 hands.

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