We use idioms all the time. They come rushing out of our mouths without thinking, but I started thinking: where do they come from? Who said it first?

This week's Weblog explores some of the most popular/bizarre expressions we use to explain things.

I have attributed much of the research below to the sources, but If I have forgotten to mention one or two, I'm sure the legal departments will be on my ass. "On my ass' is not an idiom I will cover in this Weblog, however.

Note: there are no Boston-isms in this edition, those are covered separately because of the quality and insights they provide

I have also labelled this 'Part 1' because I didn't cover the following (and more may show up someday):

• Cat got your tongue
• Ants in your pants
• Pulling my leg
• Devil's advocate
• Right as rain
• Party pooper

CLOSE BUT NO CIGAR



We all know that this expression is applied to runners-up. Those individuals and teams who came this close to winning the trophy or the championship.

Wikipedia says: It comes from traveling fairs and carnivals from the 1800s. The prizes back then were not giant-sized stuffed teddy bears, they were usually cigars or bottles of whiskey. If you missed the prize at a carnival game, the carnie folk would shout, “Close! But no cigar!”

Can you imagine if the surviving phrase was 'Close but no whiskey!' I think I'll try that the next time the Red Sox lose in extra innings and see what the reaction is.

My experience with this phrase has to do with longtime Boston Celtics coach Red Auerbach, who, right on the bench during a game would light up a cigar when he was sure the team had won. He called it a victory cigar. In Boston, at Faneuil Hall, there is even a statue of Red with his cigar.

As a coach, Red Auerbach won 938 games and nine NBA Championships. When he moved to the General Manager role, his teams won seven more NBA Championships.

That's a lot of cigars!

BITE THE BULLET

Personally, I have never tasted a bullet, nor even put one in my mouth. We use this expression in defeat or when something doesn't go our way or when we have no control over something important, or we don't get what we want.

It has to be serious, though. You certainly would not bite the bullet if you had a hot dog and there was only Gulden's brown mustard instead of your preferred French's yellow mustard, would you? Bite the hot dog not the bullet?

Wikipedia says: "Biting the bullet" is a metaphor which is used to describe a situation, often a debate, where one accepts an inevitable impending hardship or hard-to-refute point, and then endures the resulting pain with fortitude. The phrase (as "bite on the bullet") was first recorded by Rudyard Kipling in his 1891 novel The Light that Failed.

It has been suggested that it is derived historically from the practice of having a patient clench a bullet in their teeth as a way to cope with the pain of a surgical procedure without anesthetic.

Most of the metaphorical bullets we bite today are related to 'no choice' situations whether that is at home, (Brussel sprouts at dinner) at work, (the decision that was made to paint the office yellow), or in politics (not going there).

LIKE SHIPS PASSING IN THE NIGHT



Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, who happens to have a bridge named after him connecting Boston and Cambridge, wrote a poem called 'The Theologian's Tale' which I had to quickly read for this Weblog, so you don't have to.

Let me just save you the time: he didn't get the bridge named after him for this poem.

Here is the excerpt where it appears:

Ships that pass in the night, and speak each other in passing,

Only a signal shown and a distant voice in the darkness;

So on the ocean of life, we pass and speak one another,

Only a look and a voice, then darkness again and a silence.

It is a long poem, and Henry must have done better work to have a bridge named after him. I mean the Ted Williams Tunnel speaks for itself.

I may start a petition to rename the Longfellow the Red Auerbach Bridge. A lot of people would support that change and it makes more sense.

BREAK A LEG

Can you imagine if someone actually broke a leg after your 'encouragement' to do so? I don't know about you, but I'd feel bad.

There are about a dozen explanations for this expression, the three from Wikipedia that I selected are

1. "A performer bowing or curtsying to the audience in the metaphorical sense of bending one's leg to do so. And
2. The edge of a stage just beyond the vantage point of the audience forms a line, imaginary or actually marked, that can be referred to as the "leg line", named after a type of concealing stage curtain: a leg. For an unpaid stand-by performer to cross or "break" this line would mean that the performer was getting an opportunity to go onstage and be paid; therefore, "break a leg" might have shifted from a specific hope for this outcome to a general hope for any performer's good fortune.
3. Even less plausible, the saying could originally express the hope that an enthusiastic audience repeatedly calls for further bows or encores.

Still a gross expression and one I never use.

HAPPY AS A CLAM

This has to be a New England expression.

The original fuller version of the expression is claimed to be 'happy as a clam at high water.'

Clams are only dig-able at low tide, so when the tide is up, clams must be ecstatic that they can't be grabbed.

Of course, some say clams look like they are smiling, but I like the tide explanation. The first time the full phrase was used was in a Baltimore newspaper “The Sun” on July 19, 1839. Shame on you Boston Globe

IGNORING THE ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM

First of all, I have never heard of or seen a photo of an elephant in a room until this one. Just the bowel movements of an elephant are enough to keep them outside, don't you agree?

Believe it or not, the first known use according to the Oxford English Dictionary, was not in a 19th century carnival or 20th century poem but was in The New York Times in 1959: "Financing schools has become a problem about equal to having an elephant in the living room.

It often refers to an important or enormous topic, question, or controversial issue that is obvious or that everyone knows about, but no one mentions or wants to discuss because it makes at least some of them uncomfortable and is personally, socially, or politically embarrassing, controversial, inflammatory, or dangerous. The metaphorical elephant represents an obvious problem or difficult situation that people do not want to talk about. (Wikipedia)

It seems like today that there are more elephants in more rooms in Washington DC than any other location?

GIVE SOMEONE THE COLD SHOULDER

I don't believe that I have ever given someone the cold shoulder, but I have been on the receiving end. Remember: warm shoulders can give cold shoulders.

If you are married, it is possible, but not likely, that you might be more familiar with the practice of getting the cold shoulder.

The origins of the phrase are similar to its use today. In the early 1800's if guests overstayed their welcome, they would be served a a cold cut of shoulder meat. The inferior and toughest part of the animal. Once they got the cold shoulder, most took the hint and left.

As a bonus here is another Wikipedia article where you will learn that a cold shoulder can be a Boston butt.

BOSTON BUTT

A Boston butt is the slightly wedge-shaped portion of the pork shoulder above the standard picnic cut which includes the blade bone and the "lean butt", both extensions of the tenderloin cut and can be used in place of the tenderloin. Generally the pork shoulder is considered a primal cut.

GO COLD TURKEY



This phrase is most often used to describe the sudden stop of a substance, whether that is alcohol, tobacco or buffalo sauce.

The expression first appeared in the Daily Colonist in British Columbia in 1921: "Perhaps the most pitiful figures who have appeared before Dr. Carleton Simon ... are those who voluntarily surrender themselves. When they go before him, that are given what is called the 'cold turkey' treatment."

But why turkey, and why cold? The most popular theory was repeated by the San Francisco Chronicle columnist Herb Caen in 1978: "It derives from the hideous combination of goosepimples [sic] and what William Burroughs calls 'the cold burn' that addicts suffer as they kick the habit."

In Cop Speak: The Lingo of Law Enforcement and Crime, Tom Philbin recites a second theory, that "the term may derive from the cold, clammy feel of the skin during withdrawal, like a turkey that has been refrigerated."

HIT THE SACK & HIT THE HAY

The older I get, the more likely I am to hit the hay or hit the sack. The assumption is that the phrases come from the fact that mattresses used to consist of cloth sacks stuffed with hay. Makes sense to me.

However, today we don't say 'hit the foam' or 'hit the posture-pedic' so I am a little skeptical.

The most common use of the word sack is in football today.

Some historians go so far as to suggest that “hit the hay” and “hit the sack” come from the practice of fluffing up the hay inside the mattress before lying down to sleep. Before 1880 “hit the hay” meant to sleep in a barn, presumably where the farm’s hay was stored. That was a more literal meaning of hitting the hay. In the early twentieth century “hit the hay” came to mean to go to bed in general, wherever that may be. (From www.nosweatshakespeare.com/quotes)

THE WHOLE NINE YARDS

Growing up, I thought this should say the 'Whole Ten Yards' because nine yards only gets you second down in football.

There are a lot of possible explanations for the expression, but the one I like refers to the standard length of fabrics sold during the 1800's and early 1900's that were routinely in nine-yard increments (and other increments of three yards).

A nine-yard kilt would cover almost everyone and everything.

HOLD YOUR HORSES OR COOL YOUR JETS

These universally mean slow down. Hold your horses is obviously older since horses predate jets. Cool your jets, may have originally started as 'cool down' since agitated or angry people are heated.

Cool down first appeared as a slang term in America around the year 1950. Other similar expressions are to keep one’s cool, to lose/blow one’s cool, but I like 'cool your jets' the most.

THE LAST STRAW

Also known as ‘The Final Straw,’ the phrase ‘The Last Straw’ is used to describe the last of a series of undesirable or unpleasant events that makes you come to the realization that you can no longer accept a situation that has been worsening for a while.

The origin of the idiom 'the last straw' can be found in the old English proverb, “it is the last straw that breaks the camel’s back.” It was first seen around 1755.

It is amazing how many last straws I have experienced in my life, although I have never met a camel.

PAINT THE TOWN RED

Believe it or not, this phrase is based in history and is an accurate representation of what happened. In 1837, an English prankster George Beresford and friends went carousing and when he found some red paint they literally painted the town red — the tollgate, statues, many of the town’s front doors.

He had enough cash to pay back any damage costs, but what he did became shorthand for having a wild night out.

My recommendation is that if you are going out to party, keep the paint at home.

There is no such thing as impossible.

Even the word says: 'I'm Possible.'