Have you ever wondered where some of the unusual expressions we often use in everyday language originated? Here’s a handful to illustrate my point… Turn a blind eye, Crocodile tears, Resting on laurels, Paint the town red, Dead as a doornail, Get off Scot-free… and so on. There’s scores of them when you think about it, sourced in bygone practices or life-situations.
Murray Smith
“Spilling the beans,” literally came from a practice in ancient Greece, where voting for or against a matter was determined by placing either a white or a black bean in a vase to indicate yay or nay. If the vase was accidentally (or deliberately) knocked over, the beans would be visible to everyone, exposing the result prematurely. Hence you had ‘spilled the beans’.
The other day when someone spoke about their “little nest egg,” I naturally understood it to mean a little bit of money that this person had put aside for possible future needs. But evidently from the 14th century, it related to a farmer collecting his chicken’s eggs, always leaving one ‘nest egg’ to encourage the chickens to continue laying there. And “barking up the wrong tree,” relates to hunting with packs of dogs from the 1800s. If a dog was barking up a trunk of the wrong tree, odds were the prey had escaped or the dog had just got it wrong.
Did you know that ‘biting the bullet’ came from a military context? Between the 18th and 19th century when anaesthesia wasn’t a thing, ‘surgeons’ would have wounded soldiers bite down on a bullet to ‘distract’ them. Many everyday phrases come from a nautical setting – taken aback, loose cannon and high and dry all originated at sea. I suspect many wouldn’t know that by and large originated with mariners. Sailing “large” meant the wind was behind the ship, whereas “by and large” referred to trawling the seas in any and all directions relative to the wind. Today, it’s come to just mean, “all things considered” or “for the most part.”
Growing up, I heard my parents and grandparents use pithy sayings. Not fully grasping them in childhood, many are revealing as I look back. A stickler for doing things properly, my father regularly quoted his father, “Don’t spoil the ship for a ha’pennorth of tar.” Scrimping on applying tar to seal ship timbers against water penetration to save a ha’penny (half a penny), risked leaving unsealed openings that eventually could sink the ship.
Family sayings or mottos are significant for what they convey about attitudes – they’re worth noting. “Waste not, want not,” encouraging thriftiness, likewise “A penny saved is a penny earned,” are examples.
I’m grateful for great parents and a solid Christian upbringing which anchored us through difficulty. My dad’s business, church activities and helping others out, kept him busy while mum continually pled, “Charity must begin at home…” Her desperate cry for my dad to re-consider his priorities went over my head as a child, though tensions were evident and a painful breakdown loomed ahead. I’m thankful to God, that in time, a beautiful reconciliation and restoration took place.
The truth in that little saying went a long way.
Charity begins at home. Photo: Antoni Shkraba Studio: pexels.com
