Phrases-Where do they come from?

[PoliteSuccubus]

In a pub you can get a Pint or a Quarter Pint on your bill, called a scot sheet.

If the bartender is drunk he'd "better mind his P's and Q's", and if he loses your bill you can drink "scot free".

Back in Olde England there was a leather bag called a poke that you would put small farm animals in, like piglets. Some crooks would put kittens in instead. So the smart shopper would look and see if the had a "pig in the poke", if not he "let the cat out of the bag."

It was believed once that dyads lived in the trees, and even after the tree was cut down and made into things you could still get luck from them by invoking the dyad. Let's "knock on wood" that the dyads don't give us bad luck for cutting them up!

A Cop might know that old police uniforms used to have large copper buttons....

Lice lay very small eggs called nits, and before the invention of the speical shampoos and combs a mother and child might spend long painful hours "nitpicking".

In sailing when there isn't a wind in the direction you want to go, you can use what wind there is by tacking;sailing back and forth diaganally. When someone does this in a conversation he's "taking another tack."

I know more of them, but I can't seem to think of any right now....

 

[phrodeau]

What about "Shock and Awe"?

https://forum.literotica.com/showthread.php?s=&threadid=159429

 

[PoliteSuccubus]

I read that, and thought it was a cool and appopiate tie in before you linked it here.

 

[HeavyStick]

Here's one:

Q. Fat fucking ugly clown.













A. Frimost

 

[PoliteSuccubus]

While your imput is always welcome, I was shooting for like common everyday phrases or idioms we use and don't think about the historical roots.

Which is not to say you and F. don't have history, but it's not exactly universaly used.

 

[pointless]

i blame stalin.

 

[entitled]

If the bartender is drunk he'd "better mind his P's and Q's"...

i actually know where this one came from! Back in the day typesetters had to work very quickly, setting each letter by hand before anything was run through a printing press. They didn't have time to stop and recheck every letter they set - they just memorized where each little box for each letter (upper and lower case were separated) was and went through the job as fast as they could.

There was usually another person, an apprentice of sorts, usually a young child, who would go through after the printers had enough of one page done and would clean the ink from the lettered stamps and put them into their rightful place so the typesetter could get to them quickly. The lower case p's and q's were (are) very similar and could easily get mixed up if this apprentice was being lazy or working too quickly, so they were often told to "mind their p's and q's" so they wouldn't be punished for a misprint.

 

[HeavyStick]

While your imput is always welcome, I was shooting for like common everyday phrases or idioms we use and don't think about the historical roots.

Which is not to say you and F. don't have history, but it's not exactly universaly used.

ok.

 

[Topher]

This could be a fun thread, but, please, before posting an explanation, check it out in the Web or something in order to make sure that it isn't a folk etymology or similar. (Tip: you can search on entire phrases with search engines such as Google by enclosing the phrase in quotes, e.g. the whole nine yards )

Let's not have a disaster such as submitting "For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge" as the etymology of "fuck".

Thank you

 

[PoliteSuccubus]

What, may I ask, is the fun of that?

It's like Urban Legends. The ones I know I got from a lot of places; acting camp, the "scot free" one was from the radio on St. Pat's day....

But honestly, if you want to be very correct you can look up what someone else looked up about what someone else said something ment and they agreed.

I dont' mind.