{"id":81343,"date":"2021-11-03T11:12:30","date_gmt":"2021-11-03T15:12:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=81343"},"modified":"2021-11-05T09:24:44","modified_gmt":"2021-11-05T13:24:44","slug":"genealogy-tip-idioms-through-the-ages","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/genealogy-tip-idioms-through-the-ages.html","title":{"rendered":"Genealogy Tip: Idioms through the Ages"},"content":{"rendered":"

Introduction:<\/em><\/strong> In this article, Jessica Edwards describes the meanings and origins of idioms (figurative phrases) our ancestors used. Jessica has had a lifelong interest in her family\u2019s history \u2013 especially on her father\u2019s side, which goes back to the first settlers in Pennsylvania, Jamestown and New England \u2013 and has documented and added more than 21,000 people to her family tree!<\/em><\/p>\n

Idioms (figurative phrases) have been used throughout the centuries and may appear in what was said or written by our ancestors. Understanding these idioms will help you better understand what your ancestors were saying \u2013 and finding out the history of these sayings can be quite entertaining!<\/p>\n

Below is a list of 24 common phrases, followed by a chart showing their meanings and date of publication \u2013 or (if mentioned in correspondence) the date they were written. Can you put them in chronological order from oldest to newest? The answers appear in the following chart.<\/p>\n

Happy Hunting!<\/p>\n

Idioms:<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
_____ A) A piece of cake<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
_____ B) A taste of your own medicine<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
_____ C) Add fuel to the fire<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
_____ D) Big cheese<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
_____ E) Blessing in disguise<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
_____ F) Bring home the bacon<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
_____ G) Burning one\u2019s boats<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
_____ H) Call it a night<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
_____ I) A dime a dozen<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
_____ J) A piece of cake<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
_____ K) Actions speak louder than words<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
_____ L) Apple of someone\u2019s eye<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
_____ M) Bigger fish to fry<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
_____ N) Can\u2019t cut the mustard<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
_____ O) Caught between a rock and a hard place<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
_____ P) Clam up<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
_____ Q) Come hell or high water<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
_____ R) Costs an arm and a leg<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
_____ S) Couch potato<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
_____ T) Cut to the chase<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
_____ U) Dead ringer<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
_____ V) Don\u2019t judge a book by its cover<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
_____ W) Every dog has his day<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
_____ X) For the love of God (or something else)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Answers (oldest to newest):<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Idiom<\/td>\nMeaning and Origin<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
A taste of your own medicine<\/td>\nWhen someone receives the same treatment, usually negative, that they gave someone else (in \u201cAesop\u2019s Fables,\u201d written sometime between 620 and 564 B.C.)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Add fuel to the fire<\/td>\nSomething that worsens an already bad situation (first used about 1 A.D. by Roman historian Titus Livius in his \u201cHistory of Rome\u201d)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Burning one\u2019s boats<\/td>\nTo act in a way that destroys any chance of returning to the way things were (in 711 A.D. the Muslim army entered the Iberian Peninsula; their commander, Taria bin Ziyad, ordered his boats to be burned so that his men would have to conquer the country or be killed)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Apple of someone\u2019s eye<\/td>\nTo be loved and adored (attributed to King Alfred the Great of 885 A.D. in Wessex, England, in his translation of Pope Gregory\u2019s \u201cPastoral Care\u201d)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Bring home the bacon<\/td>\nTo make money (supposedly came from a story dated to 1104 in Great Dunmow, in Essex, England, of how a couple so demonstrated their marital devotion to the Prior of Little Dunmow that he awarded them a flitch \u2013 side \u2013 of bacon)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Big cheese<\/td>\nThe person in charge (first appeared in\u00a0English in roughly 1200 A.D.)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Every dog has his day<\/td>\nEveryone gets their chance to do something big (recorded as being said by Elizabeth I in a letter to her brother sometime during her reign from 1558 to 1603)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Actions speak louder than words<\/td>\nIt\u2019s better to do something than just talk about it (by John Pym, the English parliamentarian, recorded in 1628 in Hansard, in the record of the proceedings of the UK parliament)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Bigger fish to fry<\/td>\nI have more important things to do (first published in \u201cThe Memoirs\u201d by English writer and gardener John Evelyn in 1660)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Blessing in disguise<\/td>\nSomething good and beneficial that did not initially seem that way (in James Hervey\u2019s hymn \u201cSince All the Downward Tracts of Time\u201d in 1746)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Caught between a rock and a hard place<\/td>\nMaking a choice between two unpleasant choices (in Homer\u2019s \u201cOdyssey,\u201d which was written down sometime between 750-650 B.C.)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Call it a night<\/td>\nGoing to bed (it was originally \u201ccall it half a day,\u201d first recorded in 1838, which referred to leaving one\u2019s place of employment before the work day was over)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Come hell or high water<\/td>\nYou are willing to do everything to accomplish it no matter what obstacles in your path (the first printed reference comes from an Iowa newspaper, the \u201cBurlington Weekly Hawk Eye,\u201d dated May 1882)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Dead ringer<\/td>\nSomeone the same as someone else (this idiom was used in the \u201cManitoba Free Press\u201d in October 1882 to describe a horse that was substituted for another, similar in appearance, in order to defraud the bookies)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Can\u2019t cut the mustard<\/td>\nCan\u2019t keep up with the competition (it first appeared in the 1889 edition of the \u201cOttawa Herald\u201d referencing President Cleveland, saying he \u201ccouldn\u2019t cut the mustard\u201d<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Clam up<\/td>\nTo stop talking (first seen in the 1910s in print)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Cut to the chase<\/td>\nSkip the irrelevant parts, and go straight to the main point (believed to have come about in the era of the silent films in the beginning of the 1920s, when audiences preferred the chase scenes to those scenes involving dialogue (shown as captions on screen)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
For the love of God (or something else)<\/td>\nConsider what I\u2019m saying (usually said in frustration; \u201cPete\u201d and \u201cMike\u201d were euphemisms for God used since the early 1920s \u2013 this idiom used by James Joyce in his 1922 book \u201cUlysses\u201d)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
A dime a dozen<\/td>\nSomething that is very common (first published in 1931 in the \u201cNorthern Miner\u201d newspaper)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
A piece of cake<\/td>\nSomething that is easy to understand or accomplish (Ogden Nash is the first known to have used it, in a poem in his 1936 book \u201cPrimrose Path\u201d)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Don\u2019t judge a book by its cover<\/td>\nDon\u2019t judge someone or something by how it looks (attributed to a 1944 edition of the \u201cAfrican Journal of American Speech\u201d)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Costs an arm and a leg<\/td>\nSomething that is overpriced or very expensive (first published in a December 1949 edition of the \u201cLong Beach Independent\u201d: \u201cFood Editor Beulah Karney has more than 10 ideas for the homemaker who wants to say \u2018Merry Christmas\u2019 and not have it cost her an arm and a leg.\u201d)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Couch potato<\/td>\nA sedentary person who spends a lot of time seated, often watching TV (first seen in an American cartoon in the 1970s that showed two idle and inactive characters which were named \u201cCouch Potatoes\u201d)<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n

Note on the header image:<\/em><\/strong> \u201cGenealogy\u201d logo designed and copyrighted by Mary Harrell-Sesniak.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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