bad hair day

A day when everything seems to go wrong. The term originally meant merely that one’s appearance, especially one’s hair, does not look attractive. Dating from about 1980, it soon was extended to mean having a bad day. The Denver Post had it in 1994: “Soon you will notice how much less complaining you do, even on bad hair days.”

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bad blood

Anger or animosity, between individuals or groups. The blood was long regarded as the seat of human emotion, and by the sixteenth century it was particularly associated with high temper and anger. “To breed bad (or ill) blood” meant to stir up hard feelings. In the late eighteenth century both Jonathan Swift in England and Thomas Jefferson in America wrote of ill blood in this way, and a few years later the English essayist Charles Lamb wrote of bad blood.

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back to the wall, with one’s

Hard-pressed; making a last-ditch defen- sive stand. The term embodies the idea that backing up against a wall pre- vents an attack from behind, but it also indicates that one has been forced back to this position and no further retreat is possible. Although it had been used since the sixteenth century and was already colloquial in nineteenth- century Britain, the term became famous near the end of World War I through an order to the British troops given by General Douglas Haig and reported in the London Times on April 13, 1918: “Every position must be held to the last man. . . . With our backs to the wall, and believing in the justice of our cause, each one of us must fight on to the end.

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all that glitters is not gold

Appearances can be deceiving. A proverbial saying since the late Middle Ages, it appears in numerous languages to this day. O. Henry wrote a story entitled “The Gold That Glittered,” and two other writers observed in addition that “all isn’t garbage that smells.”

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all systems go

Everything is ready for action. The term is relatively new, originating in the space launches of the 1960s, and became well known through widespread television coverage of these events. John Powers, the public information officer for the United States space program from 1959
to 1964, would announce, “All systems go. Everything is A-OK.” The phrase soon was extended to other endeavors.

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all’s fair in love and war

Any tactic or strategy is permissible. The idea was expressed for centuries by numerous writers, from Chaucer (Troilus and Criseyde) to Maxwell Anderson (What Price Glory?). Modern versions sometimes add or substitute another enterprise, such as “in love and war and politics”
(George Ade), or “in love and tennis (or any other competitive sport).”

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all roads lead to Rome

Any of several choices will lead to the same result. The metaphor is based on the ancient empire’s system of roads, which radiated from the capital like the spokes of a wheel. As a figure of speech it appeared as early as the twelfth century. It was used by Chaucer, and occurs in numerous other languages as well.

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