Famous phrases and their origins (meaning, quote, words)
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There are many common phrases we use everyday which have original meanings that have been lost in time to most people. I can think of a couple and I hope others will add more.
"The whole nine yards". I understand this was originally a sailing term that referred to the length of sails when they were completely unfurled as this was the complete length of the sails. So when a captain ordered the crew to unfurl the whole nine yards, he meant to completely unfurl the sails for sailing.
To "cut and run" is another sailing term. When a ship was anchored off a coast and had to leave quickly and did not have time to raise the anchor, the crew would cut the anchor rope and run.
There are many common phrases we use everyday which have original meanings that have been lost in time to most people. I can think of a couple and I hope others will add more.
"The whole nine yards". I understand this was originally a sailing term that referred to the length of sails when they were completely unfurled as this was the complete length of the sails. So when a captain ordered the crew to unfurl the whole nine yards, he meant to completely unfurl the sails for sailing.
To "cut and run" is another sailing term. When a ship was anchored off a coast and had to leave quickly and did not have time to raise the anchor, the crew would cut the anchor rope and run.
Wow, and here I always assumed "The whole nine yards" was a reference to football (which I hate).
"Scraping the bottom of the barrel" was a reference to the day when people would cure meat, particularly salt pork, in barrels to use for the winter months. When it was almost gone and there wasn't much left to eat, the person would literally be scraping the bottom of the barrel to get what he could.
From another thread: "sea change" e.g. "there's an entire sea change in the way people think." From Shakespeare's The Tempest. It means a radical and apparently mystical change. Ariel sings,
"Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes:
Nothing of him that doth fade
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell..."
"Cuckold" is interesting. There are species of cuckoo whose females lay their eggs in other males' nests. It's the suffix -old that's tacked on as a pejorative. In French it's related to -aud as in salaud, or a dirty (sale) person. In turn it's related to -ard in modern English words like bastard or coward or dullard or drunkard. The not-nice word retard is a false relation, but acquires power through that last syllable as a visceral curse.
"Rule of Thumb." It refers to an old law in England back in the 17th century when it was OK to beat your wife with a stick or a cane, as long as it was no thicker than your thumb.
Do ya think the ACLU would object if we tried to get a petition goin' to bring it back?
There are at least two other explanations of the phrase "the whole nine yards" in circulation. I don't think there is any particular reason to believe any of them, but they are:
==>Nine cubic yards is the volume of a standard cement mixer, so if you have a truckload delivered you are getting "the whole nine yards".
==>Belts of machine gun ammunition are twenty-seven feet long, so if a machine gunner exhausts an entire belt he has shot "the whole nine yards".
I haven't heard anything about a football reference; it wouldn't make sense, since I am not aware of any nine-yard increments in either football or soccer.
I thought of one more.
Tweekers is a nickname used for methamphetamine users. It was explained to me that this comes from combining the words "two weekers" because apparently meth heads get so hyped up on the drug that they go very long periods without sleeping, even up to 2 weeks.
Because the atmospheric conditions creating this phenomenon don't occur very often.
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