 1. Born with a silver spoon in their mouth
This phrase typically means that someone was born in a wealthy family. No one really knows where it first originated but it was first seen in the U.S. Congress in, 1801. The content said, “It was a common proverb that few lawyers were born with silver spoons in their mouth.” Another scenario it may have came from was, in the middle ages, people used to carry around spoons to show their spot on the social ladder. The common people carried around wooden spoons, while the rich people carried silver spoons. 2. A penny for your thoughts We have all probably heard the term, a penny for your thoughts. It is a fun way to ask someone how they are feeling or what they are doing. Well, it first originated in 1535 when a writer, Sir Thomas More, used it in writing his new piece called Treatise Upon The Last Thynges. The phrase is pretty self-explanatory, you offering someone money to hear their thoughts or opinion. 3. A watched pot never boils We all those moments, when you stare at your pot of water, waiting for it to boil. Somehow, it takes forever if you just stare at it. Apparently, this scenario was so meaningful to some people that made a phrase out of it. A watched pot never boils. This phrase means, time seems much longer when you are expecting something to happen. The first recorded use of this word was by Benjamin Franklin. He was given the task of writing a research project on “animal magnetism.” In the article he included the phrases a watched pot never boils. 4. Break a leg You have probably all have heard the expression, break a leg, but what does it really mean; it’s a little odd to wish someone a injury. The expression actually comes from theater. They used superstition to have a good performance. If you wished someone something, they believed it would it reverse and give that person bad luck and they perform poorly. So, on the other hand, they would wish them negative things so it would be the opposite of what they wanted, good luck. 5. A taste of your own medicine This expression typically is used to represent revenge. If someone plays a nasty trick on you. You can simply trick them back with their own little prank. This is can be called a taste of your own medicine. According to Ginger, This idiom was a thing due to, an Aesop’s fable where a doctor hands out fake medicine saying it can cure anything, although he knows it can’t. When he finally gets sick, the people give him his so called medicine and since it isn’t real, he dies and gets a taste of his own medicine. 6. Cat got your tongue Awkward silence can be fixed you simply saying, “Cat got your tongue?” It is usually used when someone is unusually quiet. People still occasionally say it today but in the 1970’s and 1980’s it was frequently used. It wasn’t an old saying. “Cat got your tongue” was actually first written by children and by adults much later. 7. Spill the beans Is a phrase worth using when someone is holding a secret from you. Some people think it came from Ancient Greece, when the voting system depending on beans. White beans meant positive votes, while black beans meant negative votes. If the beans were spilled, than the secret of who won the election was out. Others think that it was first a thing much later in the 15th century. Spill had started to mean let out and wasn’t just used to refer to an object. But why beans? Well, nobody knows for sure, because there are many other sayings like, ‘spill your guts’ or ‘spill the soup’ so beans were pretty random. 8. Hold your horses I’m sure that your mom has told you countless times to hold your horses, meaning to be patient or to hang on a second. The originality of the phrase was ‘hold your horses’ which is a slang for saying horse. It was used in the 1800’s, in America, for the same meaning and I think that it was just one of those things where it just evolved out of thin air. 9. Bought the farm This term isn’t used often but it makes sense because people don’t like to talk a lot about dying either. These two go together because bought the farm means to die. The meaning comes from the scenario when a pilot accidently crashes into some crops and dies. He pays for the trashed land with his life. 10. Head over heels You can use this expression in a couple of ways. You can either be hurt and in an uncomfortable position or in love. It originally meant upside and the started to go down the path of love. If someone was in so much love than they were helpless and felt like they were in that uncomfortable upside down position. This phrases also resembles someone’s excitement through cartwheels or any other position where you heels are over your head. Story by Liv Suydam Sources: -https://owlcation.com/humanities/10-Strange-Idioms phrases 1,4,9,10 -https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/phrases-and-sayings-list.html phrases 2,3,6,7,8 -http://www.gingersoftware.com/content/phrases/a-taste-of-your-own-medicine/#.WqluNWinG00 phrase 5 Comments are closed.
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