Reader Opinions
Anonymous – (on the other hand) November 17, 2024
Years late I will reply. Your sentence would just be “Bob was shy and Sam was outgoing.” Using the phrase, it would be more like: “Maybe Sam talked too much. On the other hand, he was friendly and outgoing.” The phrase talks about one thing from two different angles.
Chris – (touch off) November 15, 2024
A lot older than America; this comes from the Middle Ages and the use of petards to blow castle walls and gates; the handler would roll the barrel of explosive to the position, light the touch paper, and run (hoping not to get hoisted on it). So he “touched it off” and ran.
Chris – (turn over a new leaf) November 15, 2024
Leaf is still commonly used to refer to pages of a book or newspaper. Hence you have the phrase “leafing through a book/magazine” etc.
I believe this comes from the military, such as the navy, who would start the log each day on a new, clean sheet of paper. The first entry transcribed from the slate of the night before would require a new page. A new dawn, a new day, a new page.
Chris – (scapegoat) November 12, 2024
It was actually from the Jewish religion who, as Adam said, would “load the sins of the community” onto a goat. I don’t know about the ribbons, but the idea was everybody put their hands on it to give it their sins, and then it was released into the desert to die, taking away the sins; the foretelling of Christ.
Chris – (son of a gun) November 12, 2024
Good grief: again claiming an idiom as American. This phrase originated in the British Merchant navy, which – to keep the crew inline and also add rewards – the ship would host several “ladies of the night” (because your filters won’t allow the Pros word). Obviously, these ladies would suffer the mishap of becoming pregnant, and the only interior place they had space to deliver the baby was on the floor beside the cannons. As the father could have been any of dozens of sailors, the captain would enter in the log “Son of a gun” (or daughter, but it is the former that became a popular exclamation.
Daud – (within earshot) November 7, 2024
The earliest known use of the noun earshot is in the early 1600s. OED’s earliest evidence for earshot is from 1607, in the writing of Francis Beaumont, playwright. earshot is formed within English, by compounding. Etymons:
Chris – (rule of thumb) October 27, 2024
A rule of thumb originated with carpenters and joiners; oftentimes you would not have a ruler on you, and you wanted to have a piece of an approximate length, so you would literally use your thumb to measure off the inches (a thumb being close to 1 inch). then take the timber to where it was needed and cut it to the exact size. So a rule of thumb was something that was close to accurate, and we use it in a similar way these days “As a rule of thumb, adverbs end in ly” – true a lot of the time but not 100%
Paulie – (hot potato) October 17, 2024
Hot Potato is also used in training athletes by using a real hot potato that came our from a boiling pan. To check their reflexes like for baseball players.
Chris – (on board) October 10, 2024
Mid-60s? This phrase has been around for centuries, originating with ships most commonly (although it can be attributed to taking something on a carriage as they were originally just boards on wheels) You board a ship, you take things on board with you. So when you take something on board, in the figurative sense, you are loading it into your mind, just as you would your luggage (for i.e.) on board the sailing ship.
Paloma – (a bed of roses) October 9, 2024
I agree with Sam Addington.
Too many forget roses have thorns.
Not a comfortable bed.
