Idioms and where they come from

a vote counted with beans

Members dropped white or dark beans into a jar. Knock the jar over and the secret result spilled out early.

💡 Did you know? The phrase has kept exactly that sense: no great damage done, but something private out in the open at the worst moment.

hat making

Mercury nitrate softened animal fur for felt. Hatters breathed the fumes for years.

💡 Did you know? The tremors, slurred speech and confusion were an occupational disease, not an eccentricity. Lewis Carroll only made it famous.

following the wrong trail

From hunting with dogs: the quarry has moved on through the branches while the dog keeps barking at the tree it climbed.

💡 Did you know? The phrase is American and first appears in print in the 1830s, when hunting raccoons by night was common.

the theatre

In 1709 the playwright John Dennis built a machine to make thunder for his play. The play flopped and was withdrawn.

💡 Did you know? Weeks later Dennis heard his own thunder used in a rival production of Macbeth and shouted that they had stolen his thunder. The phrase stuck; the play did not.

blood on their hands

Scottish law used the term for a poacher taken with the evidence still on him.

💡 Did you know? It is the oldest kind of proof: caught in the act, with nothing left to explain away.

measuring with the thumb

Craftsmen used the first joint of the thumb as a rough inch when no instrument was to hand.

💡 Did you know? The often-repeated story that it referred to a permitted width of stick for beating one's wife has no basis in law; it was invented in the 18th century as a joke about a judge.

shipping

Small ships were sent ahead to open a passage so trade could reach a frozen harbour.

💡 Did you know? The image survives in the icebreaker: the first move that makes everything after it possible.

a cat instead of a piglet

Animals were sold in sacks at market. Swindlers swapped the valuable piglet for a cat.

💡 Did you know? German has the same pair of phrases: buying the cat in the sack, and letting the cat out of it. The market trick evidently travelled.

stagecoaches

The man on the box next to the driver carried a shotgun against robbery.

💡 Did you know? The phrase is younger than the practice: it spread through Western films rather than the Old West itself.

superstition in the theatre

The stage has a long tradition of reversing wishes; the German equivalent tells you to break your neck and your leg.

💡 Did you know? The German version is not a curse at all but a misheard blessing: hatslokhe un brokhe, Yiddish for luck and blessing.

to ignore something on purpose

The story attaches to Admiral Nelson at Copenhagen in 1801, who is said to have raised his telescope to his blind eye to avoid seeing the signal to withdraw.

💡 Did you know? Whether he really did it is disputed. The phrase outlived the doubt.

rescued at the last moment

From boxing: a fighter in trouble survives the round when the bell ends it.

💡 Did you know? The popular tale of bells on coffins for the buried-alive is a later invention; the boxing sense is the documented one.

the pipe organ

The stops control which ranks of pipes sound. Pull them all and the instrument plays at full power.

💡 Did you know? So it is not about removing obstacles but about using everything available at once.

a victory that costs too much

King Pyrrhus of Epirus beat the Romans twice, losing so many men that he could not replace them.

💡 Did you know? He is said to have remarked that another such victory would ruin him: which is precisely what happened.

the last moment

The image comes from a parable in Matthew's gospel, where workers hired at the eleventh hour are still paid a full day.

💡 Did you know? The working day ran twelve hours, so the eleventh was the last one that counted.

the point

The phrase comes from early Hollywood: audiences wanted the chase scene, not the romantic set-up before it.

💡 Did you know? It appears in film scripts of the 1920s as a literal instruction to the editor.

a hut or shelter

Soldiers and prospectors used shebang for the rough shelter they lived in: so the whole shebang meant everything you had.

💡 Did you know? The word may go back to the Irish shebeen, an unlicensed drinking place.

a hard experience

The image is of grain between millstones: everything that goes in comes out changed.

💡 Did you know? The phrase is close to the German through the mangle, which uses a wringer instead of a mill for the same idea.