Cliches English

In e 20:02 Comments

eat one’s cake and have it, too, to

To have it both ways; to spend something and still possess it. This metaphor was already a proverb in the sixteenth century, included in John Heywood’s collection of 1546 (as “You cannot eat your cake and have your cake”) and has reappeared with great regularity ever since, probably because, as A. C. Benson wrote (From a Col- lege Window, 1907), “There still remains the intensely human instinct . . . the desire to eat one’s cake and also to have it.”

In e 20:01 Comments

eat like a bird/horse, to

To eat very little/very much. The first comes from the misconception that birds don’t eat much, and indeed, they seem to peck away at tiny bits of seed and other food. In fact, however, they do eat quite a bit relative to their size, some birds actually consuming their weight in food each day. In print the term appeared only in the twentieth century, as in Barnaby Ross’s The Tragedy of X: Drury Lane’s Mystery (1930): “She ate like a bird, slept little.” To “eat like a horse,” based on the idea that horses eat a great deal, dates from the eighteenth century.

In d 20:00 Comments

dead ringer

A person or object that exactly resembles another, an exact counterpart in appearance. The usage of “ringer” for look-alike has been around since the late 1800s, when it was used for a horse that was fraudulently substituted for another in a race. It also was applied to the person who made such a substitution, but this usage has died out. However, in 1891 the term was made more emphatic with the addition of “dead,” here used in the sense of “exact,” as it is in DEAD HEAT for an exact tie.

In d 19:59 Comments

dead on one’s feet

Extremely tired. This graphic hyperbole, with its use
of “dead” in the meaning of “utterly fatigued,” is probably related to dead
tired, where “dead” means “very” or “absolutely.” This locution has been
traced to Irish speech and appears in such clichés as dead wrong for “com-
pletely mistaken,” dead right for “absolutely correct,” dead certain for “totally
sure,” and others. “Dead on one’s feet” became common in the mid-
twentieth century. John Braine used it in Life at the Top (1962): “Honestly,
I’m dead on my feet.”

In d 19:59 Comments

dead of night/winter, the

The time of most intense stillness, darkness, or cold. This usage dates from the sixteenth century. Shakespeare had it in Twelfth Night (1.5), “Even in the dead of night,” and Washington Irving used the alternate phrase in Salmagundi (1807–08), “In the dead of winter, when nature is without charm.”

In d 19:58 Comments

dead in the water

A failure. The analogy here is to a dead fish floating. The cliché dates from the second half of the 1900s and is most often applied to a struggling business that is about to fail completely.

In d 19:52 Comments

dead horse, to beat/flog a

To pursue a futile goal or belabor a point to no end. That this sort of behavior makes no sense was pointed out by the Roman playwright Plautus in 195 B.C. The analogy certainly seems ludicrous; what coachman or driver would actually take a whip to a dead animal? The figurative meaning has been applied for centuries as well; often it is used in politics, concerning an issue that is of little interest to voters. However, some writers, John Ciardi among them, cite a quite different source for the cliché. In the late eighteenth century British merchant seamen often were paid in advance, at the time they were hired. Many would
spend this sum, called a dead horse, before the ship sailed. They then could
draw no more pay until they had worked off the amount of the advance, or
until “the dead horse was flogged.”

In c 19:50 Comments

cards on the table, to lay/put one’s

To be completely candid, to hide nothing. The term comes from numerous card games in which the players must at some point turn their cards faceup and show their hands. The expression was transferred to a more general meaning in the late sixteenth century.

In c 19:50 Comments

cardinal sin

A major transgression. It is interesting that this phrase should have become a modern cliché, in that “cardinal” appeared in a much earlier medieval concept of the cardinal virtues (justice, prudence, temperance, and fortitude, on which all other virtues depend). Their counterpart in evil was known as the seven deadly sins, described by Chaucer (among others) in The Persones [Parson’s] Tale: “Of the roote of thise seyene sinnes thanne is Pryde, the general rote of alle harmes; for of this rote springen certein braunches,
as Ire, Envye, Accidie or Slewthe, Avarice or Coveitise (to commune under- stondinge), Glotonye, and Lecherys”—that is, pride, anger, envy, sloth, avarice, gluttony, and lechery. By Shakespeare’s time the term had less spe- cific meaning; in Henry VIII (3.1) Queen Katharine chides Wolsey and Campeius, “Holy men I thought ye . . . but cardinal sins and hollow hearts I fear ye.”

In c 19:49 Comments

captive audience

An audience that cannot escape a particular presenta- tion—a speech, play, sermon, or the like. For example, “The preacher always makes his sermon twice as long on big holidays—he knows he’s got a captive audience.” This phrase originated in the United States about 1900.

In c 19:39 Comments

can’t see the forest/wood(s) for the trees

Focusing on small details makes one overlook the large picture. John Heywood’s proverb collection in
1546 has it, “Ye cannot see the wood for the trees.” A modern twist was pro- vided by C. S. Lewis in a critique of William Golding’s novel, The Inheritors:
“All those little details you only notice in real life if you’ve got a high tem- perature.You couldn’t see the wood for the leaves.”

In c 19:38 Comments

can’t see beyond the end of one’s nose

One cannot turn something inherently inferior into something of value. This proverbial metaphor dates from about 1500, and with some slight variation (“silk” is sometimes “vel- vet”) makes its way from proverb collections (by Howell, Ray, Dykes, et al.) into literature (Samuel Richardson, Laurence Sterne, Jonathan Swift, Charles Lamb, Robert Browning, George Bernard Shaw, and Clifford Odets, among others).

In b 19:36 Comments

baptism of fire

One’s first encounter with a severe ordeal or painful expe- rience. The term is believed to come from the death of martyrs, especially those who were burned at the stake. In the nineteenth century it acquired a more specific meaning in France, that is, the experience of a soldier’s first battle. It was so used by Napoleon III in a letter describing his son’s initiation into combat. Later it was extended to mean any initial encounter with a diffi- cult situation—as, for example, one’s first job interview.

In b 19:35 Comments

bane of one’s existence, the

The agent of one’s ruin or misery; a THORN IN THE FLESH. The earliest meaning of the noun bane was “murderer” and was so used in Beowulf (c. A.D 800). A somewhat later meaning was
“poison,” which survives as part of the names of various poisonous plants, such as henbane or wolf ’s bane. The current sense, an agent of ruin, dates from the late 1500s. Today it is almost always used hyperbolically, as in “The new secretary loses all my messages; she’s become the bane of my existence.”

In b 19:34 Comments

band-aid approach/solution

A stopgap measure, a temporary expedi- ent. This term applies the trade name for a small bandage, the Band-Aid, patented in 1924, to approaching or solving an issue in a makeshift way. It dates from the late 1960s and is approaching cliché status.

In b 19:32 Comments

balm in Gilead

Cure or solace. The expression comes from the Book of Jeremiah (8:22): “Is there no balm in Gilead; is there no physician there?” The King James version translator took as “balm” the Hebrew word sori, which probably meant the resin of the mastic tree; John Wycliffe translated
it as “gumme” and Miles Coverdale as “triacle” (treacle). By the nineteenth century the term was used figuratively for consolation in a time of trouble, by Edgar Allan Poe (in “The Raven”), Charlotte Brontë, and others.

In b 19:31 Comments

ball’s in your court, the

It’s your turn. The expression comes from sports and became current in the United States and Canada in the mid- twentieth century. It is sometimes put as “It’s your ball.” David Hagberg has
it in Countdown (1990): “‘No,’ the DCI agreed, ‘As I said, the ball is in your court.’”

In a 19:29 Comments

alpha and omega, the

The sum of something, the beginning and the end, symbolized by the first (alpha) and last (omega) letters of the Greek alphabet. The Book of Revelation (1:8) states: “I am Alpha and Omega, the beginning and the ending, saith the Lord.” The modern equivalent is a to z. See also FROM SOUP TO NUTS.

In a 19:28 Comments

along for the ride, to go/to come/just

To take part but passively. The phrase, originating in the United States in the mid-twentieth century, implies some of the acquiescence of go along with but makes it clear that one
is not IN THE DRIVER’S SEAT.

In a 19:27 Comments

a long face, to wear/draw/pull

To look sad or dissatisfied. A common expression in the nineteenth century, it no doubt came from the elongated look resulting from the mouth being drawn down at the corners and the eyes downcast.

In a 19:26 Comments

almighty dollar, the

The power of money; by extension, crass material- ism. The term was used by Washington Irving in The Creole Village (1836)
(“The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion”), perhaps echoing Ben Jonson’s sentiment of two centuries earlier (“That for which all virtue now is sold, and almost every vice—almighty gold”).

In a 19:23 Comments

all wool and a yard wide

Genuine, not a sham. The expression comes from the yard-goods industry, where a seller would claim that a piece of cloth was 100 percent wool and measured fully a yard, in contrast to infe- rior material and short measures.