Origin of Expressions/Phrases

GrizzlyMan

So people of AH, everyone uses expressions like "your ma", "hair of the dog" etc etc.... but do you know what the origin of some of these expressions come from....feel free to enlighten


Here is two:

Bite the Bullet
wounded soldiers would be given a bullet to bite while being operated on, so as not to scream with pain.

Pay Through the Nose
From the 9th century house tax imposed on the Irish by the Danes, called the Nose Tax because anyone who avoided paying their ounce of gold had his nose slit.

stupidusername

love this kinda stuff

Play it by ear:
Initially, this referred to the playing of music without reference to printed notation. More recently it is also used figuratively to mean 'handle a situation in an impromptu manner', i.e. without reference to pre-determined rules or guidelines.

Yakult

Ah sure, it will be grand;
The Irish attitude towards every matter.

tomplaya

boycott-
boycott entered the english language in 1880 during the irish land war and is derived from the name of captain charles boycott who was a land agent for an absentee land lord in county mayo.

craic-
apparently borrowed from the english word "crack" but used in ireland from the middle of last century onwards with the gaelicized spelled "craic".the word iscommonly used when referring to having` fun`-`good times` or can be used as a greeting-"how are you"!.--(whats the craic!!.)

Odysseus

Being roped in.

In ancient Athens, just before the assembly [The Dail] people walked through the crowds with a rope with red wax or paint on it. They pushed people in the direction of the assembly, and if you avoided it where marked with the paint or wax whatever it was they used. Hence the expression being roped in.

BizzyC

3 I learned in London...

Daylight Robbery:
In the UK during the 1690s they imposed a tax on having windows. People who couldn't afford the tax had their windows bricked up. You can still see these buildings with bricked windows around London.

Hangover:
Marble Arch in London city used to be a location for public hangings. Back in those days a hanging was a big event that people would come watch for the day and drink. As the crowd always got very drunk, they'd start to feel bad when the hanging was over.....

On the Wagon:
Prior to the hanging in Marble Arch, the prisoner would need to be transported from the jail. To make the prisoner easily handled, they'd get him very drunk and put him on a wagon. The only man who didn't get to drink was the wagon driver....

policarp

Lock, stock and barrel.

This refers to the parts of a musket.
Meaning the whole thing in it's entirety.

getz

when in rome ....,when the bishop of rome went on a visit to see the bishop of milan,he noted that in milan they had the sabath on a sunday,where as in rome saturday was the sabath,whe he asked why,he was told,when i am in rome i do as the romans do but when i am milan...

Fozzydog3

Whole nine yards

In WW1 machine gun ammunition belts where 9 yards long

syklops

tomplaya wrote: »

craic-
apparently borrowed from the english word "crack" but used in ireland from the middle of last century onwards with the gaelicized spelled "craic".the word iscommonly used when referring to having` fun`-`good times` or can be used as a greeting-"how are you"!.--(whats the craic!!.)

We all know what it means, but where does it actually come from? Why was it borrowed from the english word crack?

phill106

Bet your bottom dollar

Meaning

Bet your last coin (when stacked in a pile originally).

Origin

Unsurprisingly, this in an American phrase. First cited in the La Crosse Independent Republican, September 1856:

"I'm goin' to vote for you [James Polk] - you can bet your bottom dollar on that!"

Little Acorn

A Cock and Bull Story: - (An unbelievable story)

In the 18th century stagecoaches (horse led covered wagons) were a common means of transporting people and goods/deliveries.
A market town called Stony Stratford in Buckinghamshire England, was one of the main stopping areas for stagecoach travellers.
There were two inns in the town that were mainly used by these people, one was called The Cock hotel, and the other was called The Bull.
It is said that the travelling coachmen would tell each other wild stories about their journey, and many of these stories would be exaggerated. There came about a rivalry between the two inns, about who had the most interesting travelling stories.
So when a story seemed sounded like it was exaggerated or untrue, people would say that sounds like a "cock and bull story"

I heard Susie Dent explain this on Countdown, however with a quick google search ,some people think that it is not the true origin of the phrase.
I like the old version though.:)

--Kaiser--

http://www.snopes.com/

mikom

Saying:

"There was a thread on this recently in After hours."

Origin:
On the 6th of July 2011 mikom spotted a thread which was the exact same as on started recently.
That thread was titled "Expressions you know, that you never knew the story behind" ... http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?t=2056314216
Wondering why the OP did not carry out a search before stating the new thread he proclaimed "There was a thread on this recently in After hours."

ImpossibleDuck

policarp wrote: »

Lock, stock and barrel.

This refers to the parts of a musket.
Meaning the whole thing in it's entirety.

I prefer (in that thick london accent) "Lock, Stock, the fucking Lot!"

Toby Take a Bow

gleeamy

Showery, with bright intervals. From 'gleam': A hot interval of sunshine between showers.

swilking

Drunken. From 'swilk': the noise a liquid makes in a partially-filled bottle.

dunny

Hard of hearing. From 'dunt': a dull blow (?)

ratt-rime

Nonsense, from the old belief that, by rhyming, you could charm a rat to death.

(Wait, do they have to be common phrases?)

getz

young whipersnapper,comes from the time when the young used to race their horses up and down the village street,[like the young drive their cars today] whipping their horses to go faster.

Frank Black

Blast him in the face with piss:

Believed to have originated in the Ottoman Empire in the mid 16th century where rival traders were known to urinate forcefully in each other’s faces to express displeasure.

Da Shins Kelly

'You dig?' or 'I dig that.'

The word 'dig', used in African American vernacular (meaning to 'get' something or understand it) has its roots in the Irish language. When Irish immigrants first arrived in the US, obviously many of them couldn't speak English. As time went by they came into contact with African Americans, and the languages began to overlap. The Irish phrase 'dtuigeann tú?', as in 'do you understand?', eventually found its way into African American vernacular in the form of the word 'dig', and related phrases such as 'you dig?', 'I dig that', etc. which are still widely used by the African American community.

I think it's an interesting example anyway.

ImpossibleDuck

Da Shins Kelly wrote: »

'You dig?' or 'I dig that.'

The word 'dig', used in African American vernacular (meaning to 'get' something or understand it) has its roots in the Irish language. When Irish immigrants first arrived in the US, obviously many of them couldn't speak English. As time went by they came into contact with African Americans, and the languages began to overlap. The Irish phrase 'dtuigeann tú?', as in 'do you understand?', eventually found its way into African American vernacular in the form of the word 'dig', and related phrases such as 'you dig?', 'I dig that', etc. which are still widely used by the African American community.

I think it's an interesting example anyway.

.....if this is true..... mind = blown

Da Shins Kelly

ImpossibleDuck wrote: »

.....if this is true..... mind = blown

It also has roots in African languages too, obviously, given most African Americans at that time would have been slaves taken from Africa. The word is a hybrid of African languages and the Irish language. I think it's a good example of the evolution of language though.

The Irish language is also responsible for the coining of other American terms, such as 'jazz', which was originally spelt as 'teas', and meant heat or passion in a sexual sense. It then became a word used to describe sexual passion, and eventually came to describe jazz music. The word 'jazz' itself came to have strong sexual connotations, which the original jazz musicians objected to and pointed out that it used to be originally pronounced 'jass', which would be a direct reference to the Irish word. However, the word 'jazz' then evolved from being a word of a sexually explicit nature, to being a word that simply described anything passionate or 'soulful' and now we know it almost exclusively as a genre of music.

Funny how words can so completely change in meaning over such a short period of time, considering the origins of the word 'jazz' and the birth of jazz music in the early 20th century, and now in the early 21st centruy we read the word completely differently.

maupat

'galore'

from the Irish words 'go leor' meaning 'a lot'

Acoshla

That's so interesting about "dig"!

I heard before that the word phony had similar origins, Irish immigrants in New York would sell "gold" rings there to make a living, which they called fáinne (ring or circle in Irish). Obviously the rings were fakes which was where they were making their money, so anything fake became known as phony, which came from the word fáinne.

Mr. Manager

Splitting image

Not what most call it (spitting image,which makes no sense), splitting image, refers to splitting a piece of wood to get two exact identical pieces.

--Kaiser--

Acoshla wrote: »

That's so interesting about "dig"!

I heard before that the word phony had similar origins, Irish immigrants in New York would sell "gold" rings there to make a living, which they called fáinne (ring or circle in Irish). Obviously the rings were fakes which was where they were making their money, so anything fake became known as phony, which came from the word fáinne.

Apparantly much of American slang is derived from Irish,
e.g.

'So long' from Slan
'Gee Wizz' from Dia Duit
'Slick' from Sliocach
'Gimmick' from Camog

More here

MagicSean

Just ask Marina

wonton

The reason gypsies are so called because they were thought to be egyptians when they first came to europe.

The origin of the term "lynching" came from Irish american Charles Lynch,a planter and american revolutionary who headed an irregular court in Virginia to punish supporters of the British during the the american revolution.

Big Nasty

wonton wrote: »

The reason gypsies are so called because they were thought to be egyptians when they first came to europe.

That would make sense as Roma Gypsies (the people many Irish call Romanians) are supposed to be originally from either Egypt or India.

positron

GrizzlyMan wrote: »

Bite the Bullet
wounded soldiers would be given a bullet to bite while being operated on, so as not to scream with pain.

According to Stephen Fry and the guy at Battle Of Boyne site, this expression comes from the fact that back in the days soldiers had to bite an end of the bullet casing and pour the gun power into the barrel of the gun. So once you have bitten the bullet (that is, loaded the gun), you have committed to firing the gun, and hence the expression.

deise go deo

tomplaya wrote: »

craic-
apparently borrowed from the english word "crack" but used in ireland from the middle of last century onwards with the gaelicized spelled "craic".the word iscommonly used when referring to having` fun`-`good times` or can be used as a greeting-"how are you"!.--(whats the craic!!.)

I heard a very different oragin for that one.

Craic.
From the Irish word 'craiceann' meaning skin. An old Irish term for sex was 'Ag bualadh craiceann' or Slapping skin. Hence 'Hows the Craic' or 'Any Craic' ment 'Hows the Talent' or 'Any ride'

mikemac

wonton wrote: »

The origin of the term "lynching" came from Irish american Charles Lynch,a planter and american revolutionary who headed an irregular court in Virginia to punish supporters of the British during the the american revolution.

Lynching

There is another theory on that, any Galwegian could tell you it.

Lynchs Castle is on Shop St, it's now an AIB branch
Galway always had a connection with Spain through trade and the Spanish Arch is a well know part of Galway

The Mayor of Galway, James Lynch Fitz Stephen, had a son who in a drunken state murdered a Spaniard.

The Mayor was so dedicated to the law he would not make an exception and pardon his son

So Lynch followed the letter of the law and hanged his own son and so the word lynching came about

deise go deo

Shanty Town.


Comes from the Irish 'Sean Tí' or Old house

deise go deo

Its 'Smashing' (Great)

From the Irish phrase 'Is maith é sin' or 'that is good'