See HAVE A GOOD/HALF A MIND.
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half a loaf is better than none
Something is better than nothing, even if it is not all you wanted. This expression was already a proverb in John Heywood’s 1546 collection. G. K. Chesterton repeated it in his essay, What’s Wrong with the World: “Compromise used to mean that half a loaf was better than no bread. Among modern statesmen it really seems to mean that half a loaf is better than a whole loaf.”
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hale and hearty
Healthy and vigorous. This term, which dates from the mid-nineteenth century, is redundant, since hale and hearty both mean “healthy.” It survived, no doubt, because of its pleasing alliteration. Thomas Hardy used it in The Dynasts (1903): “We be the King’s men, hale and hearty.”
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hair shirt
A self-imposed punishment or penance. The term comes from the medieval practice of doing penance by wearing a shirt made of coarse haircloth (made from horsehair and wool), mentioned from the thirteenth century on in numerous sources, including Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (The Second Nun’s Tale). It also appears in a couplet by Alexander Pope (1737), “No prelate’s lawns with hair-shirt lin’d is half so incoherent as my mind.” See also SACKCLOTH AND ASHES.
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hair of the dog
A small amount of what made one ill might be used as a remedy; recipe for curing a hangover. This expression appeared in John Heywood’s Proverbs of 1546 (“I pray thee let me and my fellow have a haire of the dog that bit us last night”) and alludes to the even older folk remedy of treating a dog bite by placing the burnt hair of a dog on the wound.
Although having a drink is a dubious cure for the aftereffects of alcoholic
overindulgence, the expression is still used, and occasionally is transferred
to other matters.
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Although having a drink is a dubious cure for the aftereffects of alcoholic
overindulgence, the expression is still used, and occasionally is transferred
to other matters.
get away from it all
Escape one’s responsibilities, problems, or work. This phrase, enlarging on the much older to get away (from c. 1300), dates only from the twentieth century. It generally denotes a temporary respite rather than a permanent escape, as in “I’m going off for a long weekend—I need to get away from it all.”
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get a rise out of someone, to
To provoke to action or to anger. This term probably comes from fishing, in which the angler drops a fly in a likely spot and lets it float, hoping that the fish will rise to the bait. It was transferred to figurative use—that is, getting someone to lose his or her temper—early in the nineteenth century. Thackeray wrote, “Oh, but it was a rare rise we got out of them chaps” (Catherine, 1840).
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get a load of something/someone
Look at/listen to that. This slangy verbal phrase dates from the 1920s. It is often put as an imperative to call attention to something or someone, as in “Get a load of this!” (Edmund Wil- son, The Twenties, 1929). It is also put straightforwardly, as in “Just wait till Jane gets a load of your new car.”
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get a life
Find some interests, social life, or concerns of one’s own. This slangy term is quite new, dating only from about 1980, but has quickly caught on. It is often put as a disdainful imperative, as in “Don’t just sit around complaining—get a life!”
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get a kick out of (something/someone), to
To derive pleasurable excite- ment from. This twentieth-century American expression achieved immortality in Cole Porter’s song, “I Get a Kick out ofYou” (from Anything Goes, 1934).
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fall on one’s feet, to
To make a lucky recovery from potential disaster. The term alludes to the cat, which has a remarkable ability to land on its paws after falling or being tossed from a height. The analogy was made long ago, appearing in John Ray’s proverb collection of 1678 (“He’s like a cat; fling him which way you will he’ll light on ’s legs”) and was certainly a cliché by the time William Roughead wrote (Malice Domestic, 1929), “That lady had indeed, as the phrase is, fallen on her feet.”
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fall from grace, to
To lapse into sin; to lose favor. The term comes from the Bible, in which St. Paul says that those who lose faith in God are “fallen from grace” (Galatians 5:4). “Grace” here, and in subsequent ecclesiastical writings, means God’s grace, which is necessary to be saved from eternal damnation. However, the expression later was transferred to any kind of temporal decline or disgrace.
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fall for something/someone, to
To be taken in or deceived; or to be captivated by or enamored of. Originating in American slang in the late nineteenth century, the expression was adopted on both sides of the Atlantic. The two meanings are differentiated by the context. The first sense is meant in “The mayor fell for it” (R. L. McCardell, Conversations with a Cho- rus Girl, 1903), and the second in “I fell for her the first time I seen her” (Saturday Evening Post, 1914).
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fall by the wayside, to
To drop out, fail to finish. The term comes from the Bible, specifically Jesus’s parable of the sower as related in the Gospel of Matthew, Chapter 13: “Behold, a sower went forth to sow and when he sowed, some seeds fell by the wayside, and the fowls came and devoured them up.” The seeds then are likened to the word of God, and the fowls to the wicked who “snatch up” the word from those who do not understand it. Subsequently, persons who strayed from the STRAIGHT AND NARROW were said to fall by the wayside. Jonathan Swift included it in his Polite Conversa- tion (1738), “If you fall by the way, don’t stay to get up again.”
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fait accompli, a
A deed or action already completed. The term is French for “accomplished action” and was adopted into English in the early nine- teenth century. The French critic Nicolas Boileau, exponent of the classical style, may have been one of the first to popularize the term in French, in his treatise L’Art poétique (1674), expounding the classic unities of drama:
“Qu’en un lieu, qu’en un jour, un seul fait accompli tienne jusqu’à la fin le théâtre rempli” (One place, one time, one single action will keep the audience in the theater to the end).
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“Qu’en un lieu, qu’en un jour, un seul fait accompli tienne jusqu’à la fin le théâtre rempli” (One place, one time, one single action will keep the audience in the theater to the end).
eat out of someone’s hand, to
To be quite submissive. This expression, referring to a tame animal eating from a person’s hand, dates from the early twentieth century. “He’s like that,” wrote Joseph Conrad (Victory, 1915), “sometimes that familiar you might think he would eat out of your hand.”
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eat one’s words, to
To be forced to retract a statement, usually in a humiliating way. The term first appeared in a sixteenth-century tract by John Calvin on Psalm 62: “God eateth not his word when he hath once spoken.”
In 1618 Sir Walter Raleigh wrote in his memoirs, “Nay wee’le make you confesse . . . and eat your own words,” and in 1670 the expression appeared in John Ray’s collection of English proverbs.
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In 1618 Sir Walter Raleigh wrote in his memoirs, “Nay wee’le make you confesse . . . and eat your own words,” and in 1670 the expression appeared in John Ray’s collection of English proverbs.
eat one’s heart out, to
To worry excessively. “Eating our hearts for weariness and sorrow” appeared in Homer’s Odyssey (c. 850 B.C.). Presumably here, as in later usage, eating one’s heart is analogous to consuming one’s inmost self with worry or anxiety. Later English writers, including John Lyly and Sir Francis Bacon, ascribed the saying to the Greek philosopher Pythagoras, who also used it (“Eat not thy heart,” Praecentum, c. 525 B.C.). A modern slangy variant invoking a different feeling is the spoken imperative eat your heart out, meaning “doesn’t that make you jealous.” A translation from the Yiddish es dir oys s’harts, it originated in America in the
1960s and was popularized by the television show Laugh-In.
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1960s and was popularized by the television show Laugh-In.
