The crazy but true origins of 6 everyday idioms
Have you ever been halfway through using an idiom (a group of words that mean something very different from the sum of their parts) and wondered just how it began to be used? Us too! So we chose some of the most common idioms still in use and set out to discover their origins.
1. Pulling someone’s leg
This phrase originally described the way thieves would often trip victims in order to rob them. However nowadays, it is understood to mean that you are teasing someone, or lying to trick them for your own amusement.
2. Hands down
To do something “hands down” means that you can accomplish it easily, or there was no contest between two options. This idiom evolved from a common horse racing term from around the 19th century when a horse was so far ahead that the jockey could remove his hands from the reigns and still win.
3. Jump the shark
A phrase you don’t want to hear associated with a good television show, to “jump the shark” refers to the episode of Happy Days when Fonzie literally jumped over a shark while water skiing. It was said that this is the moment you can pinpoint when the quality of the show began a rapid decline. If a show has “jumped the shark”, it has lost sight of its original creative intentions and integrity, usually in favour of spectacle.
4. Pull out all the stops
Musicians might already know this one has its origins in organ playing. Pulling out the stops in an organ allows the full sound of the instrument to play, making it as loud as it could possibly be. Now we use it to describe putting in the most amount of effort possible to achieve the best possible end result.
5. Barking up the wrong tree
During hunts, dogs were used to flush out and track their prey. They “barked up the wrong tree” when they were indicating to their masters that the prey was in a tree, when it had actually moved onto another. Now we understand this phrase as meaning a person who has the wrong idea entirely.
6. Bite the bullet
While we use this phrase to encourage people to get an unpleasant task over with, it originally described the act of literally biting a bullet during a medical procedure during the 19th century, when anaesthesia wasn’t in wide use.
Which of these idiom origins surprised you the most? Did you already know any of them?