The Phrase Finder-Meanings and Origins of Phrases, Sayings and Idioms

[Buddy]

_http://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/index.html

The Phrase Finder
(Meanings and Origins of Phrases, Sayings and Idioms)

A collection of 1,500, fully researched phrase and saying origins, which you can view via the alphabetical list or search box, or categorized lists:

* Coined by Shakespeare
* Sailor's lingo
* Biblical sayings

Also available: a Phrase Thesaurus (writers' resource).

Also a Bulletin board intended for discussion of the derivation of English phrases with an archive of more than 70,000 previous postings.

From the site:
Popular fallacies -We get thousands of e-mails about phrases and sayings and postings on our bulletin board. Many of them are useful additions, but some are, well, nonsense. We've made a collection of the most popular of these - the Nonsense Nine.



Here's an example from the "O" alphabetical listing:

One for the road

Meaning

A final drink taken just before leaving on a journey.

Origin

The suggestion that this phrase derives from the supposed practice of offering condemned felons a final drink at pubs on the way to the the place of public execution in London - The Tyburn Tree, isn't supported by historical record. The phrase isn't known until the mid 20th century, long after Tyburn ceased to be a place of execution. It appears to have originated just as a colloquial reference to a departing drink in English pubs, just as 'a quick one' refers to a one taken in haste.

The earliest citation I can find of 'one more for the road' is from The Times, March 1939:

"Propaganda should be employed to train and fortify public opinion in the condemnation of persons who drink before driving - above all to discourage the practice of 'one for the road'."

That piece is as reproachful as a second citation from the same year is comical. This report, of a court case in England, was reported in the Canadian newspaper The Lethbridge Herald, in December 1939:

A cultivated English voice which said, "Come on, let's have one for the road." led a Weymouth innkeeper into court. Police outside his inn heard this remark - after closing time. So Landlord Frank Roe received a summons, The landlord's father explained in court that police had heard the English-speaking announcer of the German Zeesen radio station popularly known as "Lord Haw Haw." The summons was dismissed.

The phrase really took hold when Johnny Mercer used it in the lyrics of his song One for My Baby (and One More for the Road), which he wrote for Fred Astaire in 1943:

Its quarter to three
There's no one in the place 'cept you and me
So set em up Joe
I got a little story I think you oughta know

Were drinking my friend
To the end of a brief episode
So make it one for my baby
And one more for the road

The phrase has proven popular as a title. It has been used for a 1984 Harold Pinter play, a Stephen King short story and an album title by The Kinks (1980), April Wine (1984), Trouble (1994) and Ocean Colour Scene (2004). It was also the name of a 1995 British television series, starring Alan Davies.

The Australians, ever linguistically inventive, prefer to have 'one more for the bitumen'.

 

[Iconoclast]

thank you, interesting link.
bookmarked.

 

[PepperFritz]

Thanks for the link, Buddy.

I just love anything to do with the origin of words and phrases. I bought an excellent dictionary of phrases in the 1980s titled To Coin a Phrase (now out of print, unfortunately), and it has been a treasure-trove of useful and entertaining information....

 

[Z...]

Great link Buddy, wish there was more time to explore it properly. I too have passion for phrases, their origins and meanings.


I always use to think that my favorite phrase- as mad as a hatter has origins in Carroll's Alice in Wonderland but it seems it was vice versa - sometimes life is more strange then fiction :) :

Mercury used to be used in the making of hats. This was known to have affected the nervous systems of hatters, causing them to tremble and appear insane. A neurotoxicologist correspondent informs me that "Mercury exposure can cause aggressiveness, mood swings, and anti-social behaviour.", so that derivation is certainly plausible - although there's only that circumstantial evidence to support it.

The use of mercury compounds in 19th century hat making and the resulting effects are well-established - mercury poisoning is still known today as 'Mad Hatter's disease'. That could be enough to convince us that this is the source of the phrase. The circumstantial evidence is rather against the millinery origin though and, beyond the fact that hatters often suffered trembling fits, there's little to link hat making to the coining of 'as mad as a hatter'......

 

[Mountain Crown]

I also love resources such as this, thanks Buddy!

 

[Vulcan59]

Adding to the list;

The next time you are washing your hands and complain because the water temperature isn't just how you like it, think about how things used to be in England. Here are some facts about the 1500s:

Most people got married in June, because they took their yearly bath in May and they still smelled pretty good by June.

However, since they were starting to smell, brides carried a bouquet of flowers to hide the body odour.

Hence the custom today of carrying a bouquet when getting married.

Baths consisted of a big tub filled with hot water.

The man of the house had the privilege of the nice clean water, then all the other sons and men, then the women, and finally the children.
Last of all the babies.

By then the water was so dirty you could actually lose someone in it. Hence the saying, "Don't throw the baby out with the bath water!"

Houses had thatched roofs, thick straw piled high, with no wood underneath.
It was the only place for animals to get warm, so all the cats and other small animals (mice, bugs) lived in the roof.
When it rained it became slippery and sometimes the animals would slip and fall off the roof.
Hence the saying "It's raining cats and dogs."

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people, so they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house and reuse the grave.

When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realised they had been burying people alive.

So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, thread it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell.
Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift) to listen for the bell;
thus someone could be, ''Saved by the Bell'' or was considered a ''Dead Ringer''.

 

[Bernardo GA]

Adding to the list;

England is old and small and the local folks started running out of places to bury people, so they would dig up coffins and would take the bones to a bone-house and reuse the grave.

When reopening these coffins, 1 out of 25 coffins were found to have scratch marks on the inside and they realised they had been burying people alive.

So they would tie a string on the wrist of the corpse, thread it through the coffin and up through the ground and tie it to a bell.
Someone would have to sit out in the graveyard all night (the graveyard shift) to listen for the bell;
thus someone could be, ''Saved by the Bell'' or was considered a ''Dead Ringer''.

I always thought that the popular saying: "the bell saved you", was linked to boxing.
Specifically, when a boxer is taking a beating, and just before he gets knocked out, he rings the bell! marking the end of the round, thus saving himself.
I thought it was about that, because I always saw the saying applied when a person was about to suffer a fatality, and just before some event happens that avoids it.
Obviously this event that avoids the fatality would be the "bell", so it is said "the bell saved him".
Although it may seem silly, I am surprised, and doubly so.
First, because the true origin of the saying had nothing to do with what I supposed.
And second but more importantly, because of the great difference between the circumstances where the saying would apply today, and the circumstances in which in that past the saying would apply.
I suppose the difference is very great.
For one thing, when they realized back then that they had been burying people who weren't really dead, they did something about it. They devised a device, the pin attached to the wrist of the perhaps dead person, connected to the bell on the outside, which if it rang would be heard by a worker entrusted with that, etc.
In other words, if someone was saved it was not by chance.
However, nowadays the saying is applied to indicate a moment of pure luck that someone had to save himself.
Do you get the point?
Who knows in what context or circumstances this expression was applied at that time.
Now that I think about it, it is also possible that in different regions of the world, the same expression is used in different contexts, that is, specific to each region.
Anyway, the truth is that studying these topics must be something fascinating and enriching in terms of knowledge of the culture of peoples, and of humanity in general through the ages.
Thanks Buddy for this thread, and to all.