The origins of common sayings

Added: 2026-05-04

[00:00:00]Is there a goose in a wild goose chase?

[00:00:03]>> When did we start saying 24/7?

[00:00:05]>> And who was the first member of the Mile High Club?

[00:00:09]>> We'll go the extra mile as we discuss the red herrings and true origins of common idioms and even address the 800 lb gorilla in the room with some malaphors and anti-proverbs on this episode of Words Unraveled.

[00:00:29]Welcome to another Words Unraveled. I'm Rob Watts from the YouTube channel Rob Words.

[00:00:34]>> And I'm Jess Farah, author of etmology books, including useless etmology. And today we are back with another idiom extravaganza.

[00:00:42]>> Yes, indeed. We are going to be going the extra mile in this episode to explain the origins of some famous sayings.

[00:00:50]>> Mhm. I certainly have an axe to grind here, so I'm looking forward to getting in full swing by any chance.

[00:01:00]>> Getting in full swing. Do you know, by the way, what what is being swung in in full swing?

[00:01:06]>> Actually, I haven't got now you mentioned I haven't got a clue what is being swung when we're in full swing.

[00:01:11]>> Because of the frequency with which it is used, my first thought was sports, but it's like way older than that. It It's probably the swing of a sword. The earliest instance of In Full Swings is in a 16th century text with a bunch of Protestant history and martyology by an English historian who wrote about the time of Antichrist or the desolution of the church whose full swing containth the space of 400 years. But because it's been around so long, it seems to have picked up the notion of other swinging things like bells in some case too. So when it's talking about the full the full swing of something, it's it's almost like the full sort of cycle of the the slash of the the blade maybe from start to finish.

[00:01:55]>> The earliest instances we have of swing as a noun tend to be around swords like large long swords and to be in full swing is to be in the full arc or motion of the sword. But there have been a bunch of like there are a good amount of idioms from the same notion that could also apply to other things like to have swing and sway was popular for a while meaning to exert physical and social power over something which sounds more like a bell to me. Right? And then we've got like in a swing which means the same thing as in one fell swoop or to bear the swing which means to have full sway or control. And then to have one's swing, which means to have freedom of action or scope or license.

[00:02:39]>> Or there's just to to swing, which is to be hanged as well, which is dark one.

[00:02:45]>> Speaking of another slightly weapon-based idiom, I mentioned an axe to grind.

[00:02:53]>> Oh, yeah. We've had axe idioms before, haven't we? Cuz we we could recently fly off the handle from those Yes. poor quality axes used during is it the American Civil War homemade axes that whether the the head would fly off.

[00:03:08]>> Tell us about the axe you've got to grind.

[00:03:09]>> There is a frequently cited source of this idiom and it is not considered correct. The most likely source is an American newspaper essay written in 1810 by Charles Miner who was a journalist and a politician and he wrote a short piece called Who Will Turn the Grindstone? And it spread very rapidly into school books and things, moralistic stories and whatnot. And the the story goes that one winter morning a man is carrying an axe and he approaches a young boy and asks whether his father has a grindstoneone and he does and but he's not around. So the man compliments the child, says he looks strong, calls him a fine little fellow and asks if he would mind turning the stone while he sharpens the blade. And so he agrees.

[00:03:52]He's like, "Yeah, I can do that. I'm so strong." and he keeps going and going and then his hands start to blister. He realizes he's late for school and then the guy's like, "Thanks. Bye." And so the the idea here is that if you have an axe to grind, you have an ulterior motive for your flattery or whatever else you're doing. And it it was very immediately applied to politicians, right?

[00:04:13]>> Okay. So, actually, it has become slightly removed from that idea now.

[00:04:16]Now, it's sort of like having a chip on your shoulder or or something. Another phrase we've got to have to look up now.

[00:04:22]There are plenty of people who say that it is being used incorrectly because when people say like, you know, you've got a grievance of some kind, that has nothing to do necessarily with the original story and up until >> it should be like a hidden agenda for what you do.

[00:04:39]>> Exactly. And it is used that way sometimes, but often with that sort of chip on your shoulder thing. Now, the thing that I would note here is that somebody in the comments is going to be like, "Actually, that's a Benjamin Franklin story." But it isn't. A lot of quotes end up, of course, misattributed to Ben Franklin. But this is actually pretty fair. So, Charles Miner, who published the story, published it under the pseudonym poor Robert the Scribe, which looks a lot like Franklin's persona poor Richard of the Poor Richard's Almanac. So, it was mixed up just a little bit, but the po the story was published after Ben Franklin passed away.

[00:05:15]>> Debunked by Jay-Z.

[00:05:17]>> Where should we go next?

[00:05:19]>> We could go up the river. So, this is I I don't think we use this phrase actually very much in the UK, but I came across it. I thought it was an interesting trade-off with the phrase sell down the river, which we'll also we'll also talk about. But up the river refers to Sing Singh Prison. And that's why, you know, to go up the river or to be up the river is to be be in jail. And sing Singh is up the Hudson River from New York City. And I was looking well firstly I was looking at why Sing Singh was called Sing Singh.

[00:05:50]Bit of a strange name. And it comes from actually I I'll tell you what I'll read it from their own website from the the museum's website there. Singh comes from the name of the sint sinks, a native American people who inhabited this area for thousands of years. It roughly translates to a stony place. And so actually it was the name of the village in which the ground in which the grounds of the prison which was previously called something else. Yeah. It was called Mount Pleasant State Prison before it was called Sing. But they they started calling it singing.

[00:06:23]>> But actually the village isn't called Singh anymore. They changed the name of the village in 1905 to disassociate it from the name of the prison. And obviously the place is still there. It's called Oining which means you know also something very similar to what sinks meant but since were the were the people um after which the area was named but on their website singing prison lays claim to two other idioms as well. the big house probably because Singh prison was a you know a big building with a lot of prisoners in it rather than rather than sprawling and it also lays claim to the last mile which is interesting because that's a phrase that is used in telecommunications to refer to laying sort of the last mile of of cable the final connection being the most difficult bit. It's used in other circles as well, but also it was used a long time ago to talk about pilgrimages and how the last mile could be the most difficult. I read some law about it, you know, people taking their shoes off for the last mile. I don't know if that's actually true, but in Sing's case or in, you know, in the case of prisons where the death penalty is carried out, the last mile is the final walk from your cell block or wherever. I don't know. She goes straight from your cell to to the chair or to wherever you know the >> the sentence is being carried out. Yeah.

[00:07:54]That's the last mile.

[00:07:55]>> Fortunately, I don't know.

[00:07:56]>> Yeah. And and very few people who've done it uh are available to tell us.

[00:08:01]That's the last mile. And then you've got the the green mile, by the way. I was thinking the green mile. Did that phrase exist before the Stephen King book of that name and the film based upon that book? No, it didn't. No, the the green mile is about the lenolium floor in the floor prison. Yeah. In the Steven King book. The prison's called uh cold mountain penitentiary. It's fictional in the >> Louisiana. Yeah. And that final walk along that green lenolium to the electric chair.

[00:08:33]>> Yeah. I I I I after looking at mile, the green mile and the last mile, I ended up looking at a load of other milebased idioms which I'll I'll get I will force you to have to listen to me talking about though. I've got like >> Oh, I'm excited about it.

[00:08:48]>> Mile High Club and go the extra mile.

[00:08:50]Both of which have got really interesting origins. But I we should talk about sell down the river. Now I've talked about up the river.

[00:08:55]>> This one is also quite dark.

[00:08:57]>> Yeah, it is very dark. It refers to the practice of slave owners selling troublesome slaves further down the Mississippi River where basically the further south you went sort of the more supposedly more cruy slaves were treated. So it would essentially be a punishment to be sold down the river.

[00:09:20]>> My understanding is it's also in real life it was the Mississippi and the Ohio River, but it's often affiliated with the Mississippi in particular. thanks to Uncle Tom's Cabin, which was the most popular the bestselling American novel of the 19th century.

[00:09:35]>> And the phrase is in there, is it?

[00:09:37]>> Uh, yes, absolutely. The they specifically it it is about cruel slave owners. It's a it's a an abolitionist novel by Harriet Beerto.

[00:09:45]>> I see. Yeah. So, we've got Down the River and and Up the River. You don't really want You don't really want either.

[00:09:57]You are a marathoner, right? You ran one recently.

[00:09:59]>> I know I haven't done one for a while.

[00:10:01]I've not done one since I had since I became a father and I've piled on the pounds. Basically, I've just sat at home eating and and and cleaning up mess. Uh so I haven't done any big runs for a while.

[00:10:12]>> Last time you were at my house, you looked like you were we went running and and you looked like you were ready for a race.

[00:10:18]>> That's true. Actually, we had got a half marathon scheduled, but I managed to duck out of it by going off to a I did not do it. and uh she had a horrible time with it as well because it was in the south of France and it's very windy. Very very windy.

[00:10:31]>> The go go go the extra mile is is from the Bible specifically. It's from a passage of the Bible that has given us lots and lots of different phrases because it's from the sermon on the mount.

[00:10:43]>> Oh, interesting. Yeah, I didn't realize that.

[00:10:45]>> No, I didn't realize it either. This is this is why I thought I'll mention it because it's quite it's quite surprising. So I'll just read a bit from the this is the King James version because the phrase goes back to sort of about the 1600s. So it's nice to use a historical version of the the Bible and it's Jesus saying this isn't it sermon on the mount. Uh ye have heard that it hath been said an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. Ding. There's one.

[00:11:08]But I say unto you that ye resist not evil. But whoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. Ding. Turn the other cheek. And if any man will sue thee at the law and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. We haven't idomized that one. I don't think maybe some people say that. But then, and whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. So what that means is go two miles.

[00:11:42]>> And it's a reference to a practice among the ancient Greeks and the Romans of compelling civilians to carry soldiers equipment or or officials equipment.

[00:11:53]Right? So at any one moment a Roman soldier can say you there carry this.

[00:11:58]And the sort of story that gets told is that they could compel them to carry it a mile. Uh a Roman mile being a thousand yards. And what Jesus is saying here is if you're ordered to carry someone's stuff a mile, carry it too.

[00:12:16]And this whole passage is all about I it's sometimes called antithesis.

[00:12:21]This whole piece is about Jesus contrasting his maxims with the actual law and saying this is what the law says you should do. This is how you should actually behave. And it's produced all of those idioms.

[00:12:34]>> Idiomatic Jesus.

[00:12:35]>> Yeah. I feel terrible about going from that origin story to the next one I'm going to go to. But >> do we have another dark one?

[00:12:46]>> It's a mile high club, Jess. Is it?

[00:12:50]>> It could be dark to if someone turns the lights off.

[00:12:55]>> Yeah, exactly.

[00:12:57]>> All right, so when did we first start saying this? Obviously after the invention of airplanes.

[00:13:02]>> Yeah. Yes. But okay, hold on a second there, though. Yes. Oh, yeah. And batteries. So, the phrase t takes off, if you will, in the 1960s. Yeah. With with sort of widespread use of commercial airplanes, but potentially the first entrant into the Mile High Club was a guy called Lord Derby who was wagered. So, this this is in the what's called the the betting books. So like the literally a book that recorded wages that people made of a gentleman's club in London that's still going. It's called Brookses.

[00:13:44]And in there is written, "Lord Chumley has given two guineies to Lord Derby to receive 500 guineies whenever his lordship and it genuinely says a woman in a balloon 1,000 yards from the Earth."

[00:14:01]>> Oh my god, that's amazing. Yeah, exactly. So, we don't know whether uh Lord Darby tuck up the wager and more importantly took up a lady in a hot air balloon because hot air balloons had just been invented then. Obviously, there were no airplanes in 1785, but there was >> Oh, that's even better.

[00:14:18]>> A hot air balloon. And supposedly supposedly he went through with it, but there's no there's no record in this book of whether or not the the way the um yeah, the payout >> I'm not sure what your proof there is.

[00:14:30]very readily basket.

[00:14:38]>> Why are we gaining so much height? It is very hot in here now. It's very very hot.

[00:14:45]>> But Jess, if you go to I'm actually blushing. This is I've done this to myself, you know. Um if you go to milehighub.com, >> well, firstly the first thing you have to do is you have to say you are over the age of 18.

[00:14:57]>> Um okay, to get in. But actually the you know it's it's a a very simple website very innocuous um about the Mile High Club. To anyone who doesn't know the Mile High Club is is the phrase used for the collective of people who have had sex in an air airplane or or in some means of transport more than a mile high.

[00:15:22]Right. So >> balloons etc. >> Yeah. Yeah. It tends it tends to be airplanes. You know, if you're in a passenger plane flying at what 35,000 ft or whatever, you're safely a mile above the ground. So, you know, have at it and you get to join the Mile High Club. But the person that milehighub.com credits with being the first member of the Mile High Club is a guy called Lawrence Sperry who invented the automatic pilot. The story goes that he took a certain socialite up for a flight. This was in 1916. A woman called Mrs. Waldo Pulk who was married but her fellows out of town. And she was she was trying to get her pilot's license. And actually in the end she did. Good for her.

[00:16:13]>> More than one way to get things.

[00:16:17]>> She earned it. I'm sure. I'm sure she earned it. But anyway, apparently while they're flying over New York, Mr. Sperry decides he wants to show off his automatic pilot. And with great confidence, he activates it. And they get up to something. They get up to something. And during the getting up to something, he accidentally knocks the automatic pilot off and they come down in the South Bay off Long Island and are recovered from the water without any clothes on. Amazing. Amazing.

[00:16:50]>> This is the story of the first member of the Mile High Club. Although >> he wasn't actually flying high enough technically to join the Mile High Club.

[00:16:59]>> So they call him that, but really he wasn't. But but he's, you know, potentially the first person, the first pilot anyway, to have sex in an airplane.

[00:17:07]>> It did not end well for him. And there's accident reports since then of of similar ideas, you know, being people being pulled from the wreckages of planes with no clothes on.

[00:17:18]I'm sure.

[00:17:19]>> Uh yeah, it's one way. It's one way to go.

[00:17:22]>> If it had gone well, we probably wouldn't know about it.

[00:17:26]>> Well, this is Yes, exactly. It is.

[00:17:27]That's true. Everyone's going to come crashing down to earth. There's a really funny newspaper headline. So, I couldn't actually find the newspaper itself, but everywhere this newspaper headline is quoted, which is aerial petting ends in wedding.

[00:17:43]>> Lovely.

[00:17:43]>> Oh dear. Quite quite the going down at the end. Um anyway, in 2007, Singapore Airlines uh banned people having sex on its Well, I mean, was it not already?

[00:17:56]>> Yeah, exactly. Exactly. Singapore Airlines officially asked passengers in the suits of its brand new A380 Super Jumbos to stop having sex in them. And there they couched the language a little bit more than that. They said, "All we ask of customers, wherever they are on our aircraft, is to observe standards that don't cause offense to other customers and crew. Nothing different applies to our Singapore Airlines suites customers." But then a spokesperson was also quoted, "If couples used our double beds, they had these lush, and this probably still do, double beds in the suit, the Singapore Airlines A380. If couples use our double beds to engage in inappropriate activity, we would politely ask them to desist." The reason given is that though these seem private, these suites, they are not soundproof and yeah, >> anyone can hear hear what you're doing in there. That's a bit of a side step from Idiom origins, but I went down something of a rabbit hole with that one.

[00:18:56]>> I'm uh I'm taken aback.

[00:18:58]>> Taken a back. Okay, so we know about this one because I think we mentioned it before, but I I I forget because there's a lot of sort of falsehood around this one, but we're not in the air now. We're on the water, right?

[00:19:08]>> We're on the water. Yes. So, and I think we did bring this up in our nautical idiom episode or our nautical word origin episode, but taken aback is a nautical term. The first instances of it mean that the takenback means that a sail is suddenly pressed back against the mast or filled from the opposite side which prevents further progress.

[00:19:30]Even the first instances of taken aback in more general contexts, meaning to be shocked or surprised into inaction, reference the nautical origin. I was taken aback as the sailors say. What I like about this one as an idiom is that it doesn't immediately read as being idiomatic, right? It's it almost reads as one of those like conversational collocations, which is when we pair words together, even though we don't necessarily need to be using those words together. Like when we say pay attention, we could just as easily say give attention. But over time, because we say things used together, some of those words used together, it is more common to hear pay attention. But this is an actual idiom idiomatic phrase that isn't just that.

[00:20:13]>> Yeah. Because we don't use a back in any context other than other than that that couplet, right?

[00:20:18]>> It's a fossil word. Well, kind of.

[00:20:20]>> Yeah. Sort of >> semi fossilized.

[00:20:22]>> Yeah.

[00:20:22]>> Cuz you could say like flung a back or something, but we just we don't very often.

[00:20:27]>> And why wouldn't it still be used in sailing, right? Because that could still happen, right? Your sail could suddenly be blown in the opposite direction to the one it was going in, right?

[00:20:37]Presumably it still happens. I wonder if the phrase is knowingly used in sailing circles. Let us know if you do know.

[00:20:52]>> Your mile adventure could also be termed a wild goose chase. I guess we found things like >> we're going to ring the Shakespeare bell with this one, right?

[00:21:00]>> Yes, we do. Well, kind of. In the late 16th century that this is frequently this is used in Romeo and Juliet.

[00:21:06]Marushio says to Romeo, "Nay, if our wits run the wild goose chase, I am done. For thou hast more of the wild goose in one of thy wits than I have in my whole five." God, love that line. So, he's saying Romeo's wits are scattered and unpredictable like a wild goose chase. But did you know that there wasn't a goose involved at all?

[00:21:23]>> Is that not implied by the phrase wild goose chase? is the that you don't catch the goose.

[00:21:28]>> There was something called a wild goose chase that before this that did not involve geese >> sake.

[00:21:35]>> It's a type of horse race where one horse sets the course and the others have to follow its often erratic lead at prescribed distances in a pattern that ends up looking like a flight of wild geese. So you've got this one horse in the lead and all of the other ones trying to do the same thing spread out behind it set in certain distances apart. And the erraticness of the horse race and the fact that it's unpredictable is the like it's a 16th century ga guides to gentleman's recreation described rules and in none of them is there an actual goose involved. Also chasing a goose on a horse would wouldn't wouldn't be very useful, right?

[00:22:14]>> I would like to see it. So, so that's funny, isn't it? Right. What animal is associated with a wild goose chase with a horse? There's a horse, right?

[00:22:22]>> Horse. So, we were discussing before we started recording what idioms we might like to cover, and both of us turned up with the same one that we should talk about next. Red herring.

[00:22:32]>> A red herring, of course, is something that misleads you or distracts you from something relevant or an important question.

[00:22:38]>> Yeah. Like a false clue.

[00:22:39]>> There are tons of these in mysteries.

[00:22:41]Like Murder on the Orient Express has a ton of them in it because you're trying to figure out which of these people who all had motive actually killed Ratchet until the big reveal at the end. And then like the usual suspects has like major red herrings throughout until you reveal who Kaiser is, things like that.

[00:22:58]But anyway, there aren't actual live fish that are called red herrings, but it is a name for fish, typically herring, that is kippered by curing it in brine and heavily smoking it until it is reddish brown and then they were very stinky. And that's that's the key part here, right?

[00:23:15]>> I've been to one of these um these buildings where they do the smoking and they're just all sort of it's just it was just a ceiling of of dangling fish.

[00:23:25]I remember them being a very bright yellow color, but but yeah, the ones we're talking about here, they were they are just known as red herring. You know, it's not it's not a description of a herring. The this fish prepared this way was known as red herring. And we had to bring the horses back for >> Yeah. the origin of the the idiom surrounding red herring, you know, describing something as a as a red herring because that that stinky fish as you described it was used to create trails for hunting dogs to follow so that hunters could train their horses to follow the dogs. So, you've got a person on a horse following a dog following a fish. you'd like go out in the morning and like smear fish along the trail and then the dog would go after it. But the the misleading part, do you know where that part came from?

[00:24:15]>> I mean, I I just assumed and and what I read about it said that it's because there is ultimately no game at the end of it, right? The dog gets to the end of the trail and there is nothing to kill.

[00:24:27]So there are a few instances that explain exactly why it became a misleading thing that takes you off of the trail because you know that would just imply like f following the trail to nowhere. But it's not following a trail to nowhere, it's following the wrong trail. So the the >> earliest instance we have of it is in in that context is in 1807 in an article by William Kovitt.

[00:24:48]>> Yeah. Okay. So I I'm going to I'm going to tell you what I read about this.

[00:24:53]>> Okay. So, I read a debunking of of of Okay. of his piece >> because it's politically motivated.

[00:25:01]Yeah. Well, it's also it's also it's a politically motivated piece of fiction.

[00:25:06]>> And so, the idea if you're going to go where I think you're going to go, which is the idea that it's deliberately used to distract uh distract the dogs. So, I was reading in the OED here. It was it it says specifically, it says there's no actual evidence of that practice. and that the 1807 article is a misleading piece of basically political propaganda.

[00:25:31]>> That's what I was going to say though.

[00:25:32]So the the story it's a little different. So So Kabett wrote this piece. He had an anecdote which is entirely apocryphal probably from his childhood where he used a piece of cured unsalted herring to lead dogs off of a hair's trail. and he uses that story to criticize the London press for publishing false news accounts about Napoleon that distracted from more important and fat fact-based narratives.

[00:25:55]So he is saying that the London press is being is is essentially following the path of this red herring.

[00:26:01]>> Right? Okay. So the phrase having the meaning it has perhaps goes to that article, right? Even even if that actual practice described in it maybe maybe never happened.

[00:26:15]>> Exactly. Yes. The OED does sort of connect it to that the the other there's one other possibility and it it's it's by no means what we use to what inspired the wider use of that idiom. But there is also a story from the 17th century about a clergyman who bequeathed a trunk to his servant saying that it contained something that would cause him to drink and inside was very smelly red herring. And so it's just a just a deception there.

[00:26:43]>> Very salty as well.

[00:26:44]>> But yes, the notion with Kobitt is that the he is using it idiomatically or the the story idiomatically to describe the press publishing distracting news accounts.

[00:26:55]>> That makes a lot of sense. Yeah. M.

[00:26:58]>> Oh, I like that. That's That's good.

[00:26:59]>> But yeah, probably they probably did not drag fish away from the trail actually to to distract the hounds. I'm sure someone did maybe. I don't know. But >> I in in England now, England and Wales, I guess it isn't. I don't know about the rest of Britain. Um the only type of fox hunting you're allowed to do is trail hunting, right? You're not actually supposed to you you're not supposed to hunt boxes. You're supposed to hunt trails. Yeah. But obviously if you're out with a load of hunting dogs and they encounter a fox, there's a fairly good chance they're going to go after the fox.

[00:27:32]>> Right.

[00:27:39]>> You mentioned the wild goose chase which does get a reference in Shakespeare.

[00:27:43]Another one that gets referenced in Shakespeare is Hian days.

[00:27:47]>> Oh yeah. What is Hian?

[00:27:49]>> Yeah. So, what is what is Hian? Or rather, what is a Hian, which I think is kind of interesting because I I think I'd always imagined it as being an an adjective, but in this case, it's it's not. It's talking about a specific thing. It's talking about a specific organism. It's talking about a specific bird. It's talking about the kingisher.

[00:28:10]A houseian is a kingisher. Although the name Houseian goes back to to ancient Greek where there is a myth surrounding the king fisher which is that it is able to through magic calm the sea itself for 14 days while it nests or not the sea water. That makes sense.

[00:28:32]>> Right. Exactly. So, so your your Hian days refers to this period of seven days either side of the winter solstice usually when there is a period of calm and therefore a period of prosperity and that phrase goes back to you know way before Shakespeare was using it goes back to the the 1500s so actually I suppose not way before Shakespeare was using it but it's very early has this transferred meaning of you know your own personal sort of calm period or prosperous period or or you know not even just a personal one just any any period of time when things are just a bit more relaxed everything is a bit be calmed obviously king fishes cannot calm the water but but so goes the story >> so hian is from the Greek word for a kingisher right >> yeah well so the hian which is the this mythical Greek bird. The the bird is probably a kingfisher, right? And we do call like the Latin name for the kingfisher in invokes the word hian as well. So Hian is a kingfisher. Here's a funny thing.

[00:29:48]A kingfisher in French is called a a Martan pesure, which means a Martin Fisher. There's also a phrase that I don't think I've ever heard being used, but it came up in my research because it is in the same breath as the use of Hian days in the Shakespeare quote. So it's Jon of Arc uses it in which is it Henry the something which one is it? Henry yeah Henry V 6th part one Jonavar or or Joan Lap Lapusel Joan Maiden >> says expect St. Martin's summer hian days so this phrase St. Martin's summer refers to a period of unusual warmth at the end of autumn specifically St. Martins's day is the 11th of November now, although in the old time car calendar it was uh October the the 31st. So it's sort of quite similar to the idea of an Indian summer which is another origin that we've talked about before but maybe you can remind us of it. So one of the theories behind why the French call a king fisher St. Martins's bird or a Martin fisher, which they do, is because the king fisher supposedly has this ability to calm the waters and calm the sea, much like the calming weather that comes with St. Martin's Day.

[00:31:19]I mean, there's loads of theories why they call it martes, but that's one of them.

[00:31:23]>> The theories around Indian summer are also relatively vague, too. But the the notion is probably that it was first seen in this this warm spell after the first frost was first observed in areas of the of what is now the United States occupied by Native Americans in the Mississippi River Valley or in in Appalachia.

[00:31:43]>> There we go. Because before you'd explained it to me last time, I had thought the India in question was the country India. Yeah. I never questioned why you don't. It's I mean, this is the thing with idioms. you're we're all very welcome to take them for granted, but when you do actually understand where they came from, it does enable you to use them with a bit more accuracy.

[00:32:03]>> We also have the dog days of summer if we're going back to warmer months. And we've talked about this one before, also known as canicular days. The notion is that the season is attributed to the influence of the dog star Sirius in the sky, which is visible during late summer.

[00:32:21]>> Canicula does mean doggy, right? Or or related related to Canis. Is it uh what's the name of the dog star? It's something like that, isn't it?

[00:32:32]>> Canis Major.

[00:32:33]>> What what what else have you got, Jess?

[00:32:36]>> Very briefly, if we're talking about time, this is this is way out of left field, you might say. Um but, uh I would love to note that 247, I learned this today, 247 was not a thing that people said until the 1980s.

[00:32:51]>> Oh, really? And it is well, okay, according to the OED anyway, but the OED cites the following quote from Sports Illustrated as the first instance of 24/7 or 24/7 365. Jerry Ice Reynolds, one of the SEC's two best freshmen by the end of last season, a basketball player, calls his jump shot 24/7 365 because it's good 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, 365 days a year. And people did say things like that, like 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. But the shortening to 24/7, although probably conversational at that point, isn't recorded in print until the 1980s.

[00:33:29]>> That's amazing.

[00:33:30]We've had 24 hours to the day and seven days to the week >> for a very, very long time.

[00:33:38]>> We never thought to abbreviate it in a consistent way like that.

[00:33:43]>> Yes, indeed. It had to have come from America that it it's one of those that >> Oh, yeah. Definitely.

[00:33:48]>> It does sound like, you know, shortened uh American slang.

[00:33:53]>> Anyway, could we talk about malaphors and anti-proverbs really quickly?

[00:33:58]>> Yeah, absolutely. I, you know, whenever I need to come up with a malaphor, I never can.

[00:34:04]But let's we can combine a couple that we've already done like uh to sell down the extra mile or something like that.

[00:34:10]>> Yeah. Right. The typical one you hear is we'll burn that bridge when we come to it.

[00:34:15]>> There we go. So this is mixing up your well I suppose mixing your metaphors but not in the sort of broader sense but very you know in terms of actually mixing the words of two metaphors together right >> it's a blend of like malipropism and metaphor for a malaphor and usually a malaphor is considered to be an error uh like an unintentional use or blending of terms like it's not rocket surgery or something but they're often used in an intentional and humorous way like uh the 800 and gorilla in the room or stirring the apple cart.

[00:34:50]>> Stirring the apple cart.

[00:34:51]>> Let me do some intentionally funny metal which I found in Giles Brandit's word play book. Uh I can read him like the back of my book.

[00:35:00]>> The the sacred cows have come home to roost with a vengeance.

[00:35:04]>> Very good. Oh, so you can have more than two in there.

[00:35:07]>> We can stand here and talk until the cows turn blue.

[00:35:10]>> Very good.

[00:35:12]But the other one, which there's a lot of overlap here, is the anti-proverb, which is a dark twist on a proverb, which is also often idiomatic. So, uh, there, where there's a will, there's a lawsuit. This one's really dark. It's time to swallow the bullet.

[00:35:26]>> O, >> and then it's easy as falling off a piece of cake.

[00:35:30]>> I like that one. That doesn't sound too >> That sounds more malaphory than anti-proverbial.

[00:35:35]>> That's about all I had on that. I just think they're fun.

[00:35:37]>> It's a very, very fun diversion. Very fun diversion. Give us your best ones in the comments.

[00:35:49]I was looking up where the phrase 7-year itch comes from. I'm sure a lot of people are aware of the play the seven-year itch, which was, you know, George Axelrod's play of 1952, but it became a movie in 1955 and it's more famous for that. And the key aspect of it is that, you know, 7 years into a relationship, people get itchy feet, which is probably something else we should go into. And and basically, there's a sweet spot seven years into a relationship where you're most likely to be unfaithful, actually. So, I can read a quote from the play actually. An awful lot of customers are going to get an awful big kick out of Tom Mule's small amorous interlude with the gal who lives upstairs when events conspire to give him the seven-year itch after a happy marital span of a like number of years.

[00:36:46]>> But the phrase does not originate in the play nor the film. And >> how much older is it?

[00:36:52]>> It's about a century older. So it's from the earliest citation is from the 1830s.

[00:36:59]says the first time gets written down.

[00:37:01]And I don't think it's a stretch to guess what it originally refers to, but it it does refer to skin complaints, right? It's it's US slang for scabies or some other skin complaint that was said to last for seven years or to keep coming back every year >> for seven years. So, it's known as the seven-year itch. And then later people notice this sort of sweet spot in or whatever the opposite a sour spot in a relationship about seven years into a marriage where you do start to get uncomfortable dissatisfied and your eyes may start to wander. And so that's how it's got the meaning it has now. We don't really talk about scabies as the seven-year rich anymore.

[00:37:47]>> Both of them are unpleasant in different ways.

[00:37:50]>> In a recent episode I talked about idioms that Brits use that Americans don't. Among them was Bob's your uncle.

[00:37:58]I'm not sure if we explained where that came from though.

[00:38:01]>> We did mention other uncle related idiomatic phrases, but I don't think that we talked about this one. So, where does that come from?

[00:38:07]>> For context, we use Bob's your uncle uh to mean like and there you have it, you know, and and you know, from that moment everything is is easy. It's in the in the bag, so to speak. And so the story that gets told is that the barb in question is the British Prime Minister Robert Gascoin Ceil, third Marquis of Salsbury, who um rather nepotistically, quite literally, appointed his nephew Arthur Balfura to the position of chief secretary for Ireland in 1887.

[00:38:38]However, that's the story that gets told, but the phrase doesn't actually appear in print until the 1920s.

[00:38:46]So what is going on there? So it's actually more likely that there is no Bob, no single bob. But there is because there are older uses going back to like the 1700s of Bob just meaning good. It's just like slang for something being good. Uh there's a quote here from 1721.

[00:39:07]Yesterday at Marle Bone, although they spelled it Mary bone. Okay. Yesterday at Marley Bone, they had me all bob as a robin. So, you know, you know, in a in a good mood.

[00:39:18]>> I see the logic there. It's rhymyy and >> Yeah.

[00:39:21]>> Yeah. There's a a little idiom bobber than a bobtail. So, Bob's your uncle. I I was probably just invoking the idea of something being good, right? Um the but the uncle reference is really obscure and not not clear where it comes from because it it doesn't really make any sense for the the nepotistic hiring of a prime minister's nephew. what almost 40 years earlier to, you know, resurface and become an idiom. That's not how these things tend to work. There must be something else behind it.

[00:39:55]>> I was wondering if there could be some sort of like rhyming slang something something.

[00:39:58]>> It does sound like it, doesn't it? I would bet you any money. Oh, no. I was going to say I bet you any money it's in uh Gross's dictionary of the vulgar tongue. I wrote these notes a while back and I can see actually I did take a note saying yes the word bobbish is in the dictionary of the tongue meaning smart clever that can't be right spruce spice I don't know anyway it means smart or clever >> excellent >> yeah there was another phrase about uncles that you you told me about >> Oh yeah we talked about crying uncle which means it it it's from an Irish word it's not the word uncle it's it's anish word that sounds like uncle that means like mercy.

[00:40:40]>> Yeah, I remember you telling me about that one because I actually hadn't heard the phrase crying uncle.

[00:40:44]>> That's like if the bully the playground bully has your arm twisted behind your back and you're you're crying uncle because you've lost.

[00:40:51]>> You're actually just begging for mercy.

[00:40:53]I see.

[00:40:54]>> Speaking of schoolyard terms, have you heard of the phrase goody two shoes? To be to be called a goody two shoes.

[00:41:02]>> Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I've come across that one a lot. I mean, not so much these days, right? I mean, you'd be more likely to call someone like a tryhard or something like that than a than a goodie two shoes. Is is the goodie thing is that anything to do with the way that in the States they used to refer to like wives as goodies?

[00:41:21]>> Exactly. Exactly. It is a polite Puritan American way to address a woman, which if you read the play, you know, The Crucible, I saw Goody Proctor with the Devil, that kind of thing.

[00:41:30]>> It's exactly what I was thinking about.

[00:41:33]And in fact that that quote >> the term goody two shoes is from a different story. It's from the 1766 children's story the history of little goodie two shoes. Uh so the in the story goody two shoes is Marjorie Meanwell who is an orphan who's so poor that she has only one shoe until a wealthy gentleman gives her a new pair of shoes. and she's so excited. She tells everyone she has two shoes and she becomes Little Goodie Two Shoes. She's curious and clever and she loves reading, but the village doesn't have many books. So, she carves a set of letters out of wood and uses them to teach the other kids to read, read and spell. And then she adopts an abused raven named Ralph and then a lamb and then a puppy and a dove and a skylark. and she grows up to be a teacher. And her wealthy patron, Sir Walter, Walter Weldon, makes her the mistress of her own school. And she's kind and helpful to everyone and predicts the weather using her weather glass, which unfortunately leads everyone to arrest her for being a witch. But then the patron defends her and she's released. And then after that, she starts taking care of a rich widowerower when he gets sick. And when he recovers, they get married and they live happily ever after. So, it's a little bit of a sermon. Be a good girl.

[00:42:47]And there is a universe where that life is your life, isn't there? Like teaching the kids to read, adopting a pet raven, getting accused of being a witch. This is all very Jessa Ferris behavior.

[00:43:02]>> It is. It is. The the the unfortunate part of it is that it's very much like be a good girl and you'll go from being an impoverished orphan to marrying a rich man. And she's always rescued by these charitable men, but very much so otherwise. I love her.

[00:43:17]I always harsh to criticize someone for having two shoes. I mean, it's >> it's not so tryh hard.

[00:43:26]>> Right. How dare you have properly shaw feet.

[00:43:30]>> So, Jess, we reached the last mile of this episode.

[00:43:34]>> I think the full swing of this episode has come to a close.

[00:43:39]>> The full what was it? Swish and swing.

[00:43:40]Sway. Swing and sway. Swing and sway.

[00:43:42]>> Swing and sway. Right. In full sway.

[00:43:45]Well, thank you for informing me on some more of these idioms. Now I'll be able to wield them like a sharp sword with greater accuracy and you know with the full force of the knowledge of knowing where they came from.

[00:43:56]>> And uh everyone who's listening let us know your favorite idioms and perhaps they will appear on our next collection on words unraveled.