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"Born with a silver spoon in their mouth"
Refers to a teething technique for babies in the past.
In the days of old the wealthy people owned silverware and would put the spoon on ice as a teething tool for cranky babies cutting their teeth (cold medal to suck on). The folks without money had no silver and no ice; they would use wooden spoons.
Refers to someone of privilege, usually in a condescending manner.
BTW, I also thought nine yards one referred to football. Shame on the Saints for hurting Brett Favre.
I found another one today: "Armed to the teeth". Came from the Jamaican pirates in the 17th century--their firearms only carried one shot so they'd bring along as many weapons as they could carry, including a holding a knife in their teeth.
There were twin brothers living in Paris who had both unfortunately been born without any arms.
They were desperate to find jobs, and one of them learned that Quasimodo had died and there was an opening for a bellringer at the Cathedral of Notre Dame. He went to the church to apply for the job, but the priest was dubious. "How are you going to ring those bells when you have no arms?" The man replied that he could ring them using only his head. The priest took him up into the bell tower for a tryout, and sure enough the man took his head and banged it against the biggest bell, but it barely moved. He tried a little harder and the bell moved a little further, but it still didn't make a sound. The priest started to tell him he couldn't have the job, but the determined man gathered all his strength and ran straight at the bell. Sure enough, the bell swung and rang out, but it came back so fast that it hit the man straight on the forehead. He went flying out of the tower and lay dead in the road below. A couple happened by a minute later and came across the dead man. "Oh my", said the wife. "How sad. Do you know who he was?" "No," said her husband, "but his face rings a bell."
Well, his twin mourned and buried his brother, but he still needed a job, so he went back to the priest and said he would like to try out for the bellringer job. The priest took him up to the tower, and the same thing happened, the man couldn't ring the bell with his head until he hit it so hard that it swung back, smacked him in the head and sent him flying out of the tower to his death in the street below. It just so happened that the same couple was passing by and found him. "Oh my," said the wife, "here's another dead man in the same spot!" "Yes," said her husband, "and he's a dead ringer for the guy who was here last week!"
Said to have originated in the 1800's with oil portraits. To have the whole body in a portrait was more expen$ive (head, shoulders, arms, legs) as opposed to having only the shoulders and head done.
During the American Civil War, the two cent piece was the standard "ante" when playing poker. If you wanted to play, (have a say) you had to PUT IN YOUR TWO CENTS.
Many people take the nautical origins of "S.O.S." for granted--or are completely unaware of it. The standard call for help was born as save our ship.
Now I thought that was one of those things that sounded good but wasn't true. We were always told that it meant "save our ship", but I remember reading somewhere that SOS replaced the previous code for distress because it was so easy to remember and could be done fast - 3 dots, 3 dashes - 3 dots. As a matter of fact, I think the Titanic was one of the first shipwrecks to use the new code.
I'm going Googling and I'll get back to you.
Edit: Found it. Here's a nice little history on maritime distress calls.
This famous phrase is thought by many to have been said by Marie Antoinette. It is a phrase from "The Confessions of Jean Jaques Rousseau" about a French princess. In short the French princess was naive to her peoples plight.
In short, cake requires more butter then bread and the poor people could not afford butter.
A Red Herring refers to a topic or event or person that is falsely used to divert attention from a real subject such as in a mystery story where a red herring would be a person set up to look guilty of a crime to divert the reader from suspecting the real criminal.
Red herring refers to a particularily pungent cured herring that turns red during the curing process.
A writer in the 1800s likely wrote a fictional account that he used a red herring to divert hunting dogs off the scent of the animals they were tracking, although this was never likely used in real life to train dogs.
Once in a blue moon, denoting an event that occurs only very rarely, derives from a specific atmospheric condition that causes the moon to appear literally blue. It doesn't happen very often.
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