{"id":82421,"date":"2022-01-10T10:50:25","date_gmt":"2022-01-10T15:50:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/?p=82421"},"modified":"2022-01-17T13:13:45","modified_gmt":"2022-01-17T18:13:45","slug":"do-you-know-these-expressions-your-ancestors-used-part-4","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/do-you-know-these-expressions-your-ancestors-used-part-4.html","title":{"rendered":"Do You Know These Expressions Your Ancestors Used? (Part 4)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong><em>Introduction<\/em><\/strong><em>: In this article (Part 4), Jessica Edwards continues her discussion of the meanings and origins of idioms (figurative phrases) that 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<p>Idioms (figurative phrases) have been used throughout the centuries and may appear in what was said or written by our ancestors. Understanding these expressions 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<p>I hope you enjoy this series, and perhaps it will allow you to better understand what your ancestors may have meant in their letters and diaries, or in newspaper articles written about them \u2013 as well as increase your knowledge and vocabulary.<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Break a leg:<\/strong> to wish someone luck in starting an activity; especially, to wish an actor good luck before a play begins. I have found four possible origin explanations: (1) If the audience stomped long enough, they would break a leg; (2) The term originated during\u00a0Elizabethan\u00a0times\u00a0when the audience would bang their chairs on the ground \u2013 and if they liked the play or actor enough, they would bang until the leg of the chair would break; (3) The most common theory refers to an actor breaking the \u201cleg line\u201d of the stage; (4) When John Wilkes Booth leaped from the theater box (where he assassinated Abraham Lincoln) onto the stage, he broke a leg when he landed.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Cat\u2019s got your tongue:<\/strong> a person is oddly quiet. This idiom has two suggested origins. Origin 1: Liars and blasphemers in ancient Egypt faced severe punishment for speaking out of turn, bearing false witness, and saying something against the government or the established religion. Authorities would cut out people\u2019s tongues as retribution for their crimes. Then they fed those tongues to cats. The offender never lied or blasphemed again. Origin 2: In the 18<sup>th<\/sup> century, the English Navy had the practice of whipping erring sailors with a whip which had multiple endings which was nicknamed \u201cthe cat\u201d because it commonly had nine endings. After receiving a beating, while the poor sailor lay in a corner sulking or not speaking, other sailors would walk up to him and tease \u201cDid the cat get your tongue?\u201d referring to the whip. As time went on, this became shortened to \u201cCat got your tongue?\u201d<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Jack of all trades: <\/strong>someone who is good at doing a variety of things. \u201cJack of all trades\u201d was a generic term rather than a living and breathing individual. In fact, the very long list of expressions that include \u201cJack\u201d exceeds that of any other name in English, and this reflects the fact that, as a derivative of the common name \u201cJohn,\u201d \u201cJack\u201d has been used to mean \u201cthe common man.\u201d This idiom dates back to the 14<sup>th<\/sup> century; an example is found in John Gower\u2019s Middle English poem\u00a0<em>Confessio Amantis<\/em>, 1390.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Raining cats and dogs:<\/strong> it is raining heavily. There are several origin possibilities that all claim to be the correct one. Origin 1: Odin, the Norse god of storms, was often pictured with dogs and wolves, which were symbols of wind. Witches, who supposedly rode their brooms during storms, were often pictured with black cats, which became signs of heavy rain for sailors. Therefore, \u201craining cats and dogs\u201d may refer to a storm with wind (dogs) and heavy rain (cats). Origin 2: \u201cCats and dogs\u201d may come from the Greek expression\u00a0\u201ccata doxa,\u201d which means \u201ccontrary to experience or belief.\u201d If it is raining cats and dogs, it is raining unusually or unbelievably hard. Origin 3: \u201cCats and dogs\u201d may be a perversion of the now obsolete word\u00a0catadupe. In Old English, \u201ccatadupe\u201d meant a cataract or waterfall. A version of catadupe existed in many old languages. In Latin, for example,\u00a0\u201ccatadupe\u201d\u00a0was borrowed from the classical Greek \u201c\u03ba\u03b1\u03c4\u03ac\u03b4\u03bf\u03c5\u03c0\u03bf\u03b9,\u201d which referred to the cataracts of the Nile River. So, to say it\u2019s raining \u201ccats and dogs\u201d might be to say it\u2019s raining waterfalls. Origin 4 (false): A false theory stated that cats and dogs used to snuggle into thatch roofs during storms and then be washed out during heavy rains. However, a properly maintained thatch roof is naturally water resistant and slanted to allow water to run off. In order to slip off the roof, the animals would have to be lying on the outside \u2013 an unlikely place for an animal to seek shelter during a storm. The first recorded use of a phrase similar to \u201craining cats and dogs\u201d was in the 1651 collection of poems\u00a0<em>Olor Iscanus<\/em>. British poet Henry Vaughan referred to a roof that was secure against \u201cdogs and cats rained in shower.\u201d One year later, Richard Brome, an English playwright, wrote in his comedy\u00a0<em>City Witt<\/em>:\u00a0\u201cIt shall rain dogs and polecats.\u201d (Polecats are related to the weasel and were common in Great Britain through the end of the 19<sup>th<\/sup>)<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<ul>\n<li><strong>Rule of thumb:<\/strong> means something to represent a basic rule or principle. It is an approximate method for doing something, based on practical experience rather than theory. This usage of the phrase can be traced back to the 17<sup>th<\/sup> century and has been associated with various trades where quantities were measured by comparison to the width or length of a thumb. Another \u201crule of thumb\u201d in history uses that term for the size of a branch that a man could use to punish his wife or children; the stick could not be thicker than his thumb without social censure.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>More to come!<\/p>\n<p><strong><em>Note on the header image:<\/em><\/strong> \u201cGenealogy\u201d logo designed and copyrighted by Mary Harrell-Sesniak.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Related Articles:<\/strong><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/curiosity-killed-the-cat-or-what-your-ancestor-really-meant.html\">\u2018Curiosity Killed the Cat\u2019 or What Your Ancestor Really Meant<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/genealogy-tip-idioms-through-the-ages.html\">Genealogy Tip: Idioms through the Ages<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/do-you-know-these-expressions-your-ancestors-used-part-1.html\">Do You Know These Expressions Your Ancestors Used? (Part 1)<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/do-you-know-these-expressions-your-ancestors-used-part-2.html\">Do You Know These Expressions Your Ancestors Used? (Part 2)<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/blog.genealogybank.com\/do-you-know-these-expressions-your-ancestors-used-part-3.html\">Do You Know These Expressions Your Ancestors Used? (Part 3)<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In this article (Part 4), Jessica Edwards continues her discussion of the meanings and origins of idioms (figurative phrases) that our ancestors used.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":82429,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[12713],"tags":[58073,58053],"class_list":["post-82421","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-genealogy-research-tips","tag-genealogy-search-terms","tag-idioms"],"acf":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2022\/01\/illustration-1024-2019-featured-graphic-genealogy-logo.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82421","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=82421"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82421\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":82427,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/82421\/revisions\/82427"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/82429"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=82421"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=82421"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.genealogybank.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=82421"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}