The Origin of Common Sayings

We use sayings and clichés every day, but seldom wonder where they came from. When you stop to think about it, some of the words we string together each day are awfully odd-sounding. So here are some of the stories behind the weird phrases we use.

Cat got your tongue? This originated way back in history when it was common practice to cut out the tongue of criminal and feed it to the animals kept by the King. The cat would literally have your tongue if you were unable to speak!

It´s raining cats and dogs. Back in the 1500´s, cats and dogs would sleep up in the thatched roofs. This got very difficult when it rained, since the straw would become slippery and they would slide right off the roof, making it appear that it was indeed raining animals.

Flying by the seat of your pants. Before sophisticated instruments were introduced in airplanes, pilots were required to "feel" the plane in order to fly well. Obviously the seat of the pants was where the most contact with the plane was, hence the saying.

Son of a gun. Babies born on ships were often put to sleep in hammocks swung from the cannons. In many cases, the father of the child was uncertain, so a male baby was called a "son of a gun".

A dead ringer. This comes from gambling at the racetrack. To build up betting pools, they would run a slow horse, substituting a fast look-alike runner in the last round to clean up. The dead refers to dead or abrupt stop.

Bought the farm. In the first World War, the Army would give compensation to the family of a dead soldier. It was just enough to buy land for a farm.

My two cents. Again refers to gambling. The two cents or two bits is for the money put on the table in order to enter a poker game. The same idea goes with adding your two cents to the conversation, allowing you to enter the conversation.

Flash in the pan. This refers to the brief burst of light caused when the gunpowder in the "pan" of a musket would go off without actually firing the gun. It was brief and useless.

A square meal. On ships in the old days, meals were simple affairs for the first two meals of the day. But the last, supper, was a full on meal and was served on a square tray.

Bite the bullet. Back before anesthetic, surgeons often had to operate on soldiers without any pain relief except a shot or two of whiskey. To keep the soldier from crying out, they would often give him a lead bullet to bite down on. This helped him resist the pain being inflicted.

Over the top. The act of charging over the barrier that ran alongside foxholes in World War I was called "going over the top". It was usually a suicide mission and came to be known as an excessively stupid move.