Reader Opinions
Rambunctious Pidcock – (full of beans) May 19, 2024
So, people said horses were full of prunes after they fed the horses with beans? Then later corrected themselves. Hmmm.
Philip Mc Lean – (dressed to kill) May 15, 2024
Wonder if dressed to kill may come from the Mafia when they usually wear a shirt and tie to snub someone out in a fancy restaurant? Probably not but possible I suppose !
Edward Norman – (raining cats and dogs) May 15, 2024
It absolutely did not come from dogs and cats hiding in thatched roofs being washed out by heavy rains. This could only have been surmised by someone that had no idea how tightly thatched roofs were woven. Think about it. If cats and dogs could hide in thatched roofs they wouldn’t keep out even the lightest rain.
Andrew – (put your foot in it) May 7, 2024
Donna’s offensive vernacular spelling aside, I think the use of this idiom for food cooked well is used in irony, not referring to how a dog eats. Similar to telling a waitress that the food was so bad, I had to make it disappear.
Mike – (on the line) April 3, 2024
O don’t see any rational argument that would be more convincing or intuitive than this being a gambling term. Blackjack or Craps, for instance, where you put the money you are gambling literally in the line drawn on the table to show that it is in play.
JJ – (fight like cat and dog) April 2, 2024
No one says, “like cat and dog,” even if the idiom is being applied to individuals. People say, “The married couple fought like cats and dogs the entire time they were together.” That’s just how it is.
Anthony – (not at all) March 29, 2024
Great learning from British way of saying thanks you.
John U. – (that’s the way the cookie crumbles) March 27, 2024
I have always assumed “That’s the way the cookie crumbles” refers to accepting with a shrug whatever is written on the little note inside a fortune cookie.
Patrick Mitchell – (scared to death) March 27, 2024
I once saw an old piece of film in which a parachute didn’t open, and the commentator said that the man knew that he was going to die, so his brain shut off, and the man was meant to have died of cardiac arrest, but I think that he was still alive because he was kicking his legs all the way down, so I believe he just used the footage as an example to describe the situation that he was scared to death. It was on a video called Faces of Death. So yeah, I do believe that it could happen that way.
George Burrell – (kick the can down the road) March 17, 2024
The expression is in the Randy Newman song, “I think it’s going to rain today.” In the song, we could interpret it as a metaphor for futility, a disassociation with the way the world is working.
