day of reckoning

The time when one is called to account. The idea no doubt comes from the biblical Day of Judgment, when Jesus is supposed to return to earth for God’s final sentence on mankind. The day of reckoning came to have a somewhat more benign meaning, referring to paying one’s debts, or accounting for one’s actions. The expression became common in the nineteenth century. “There will be a day of reckoning sooner or later,” wrote Dickens (Nicholas Nickleby, 1838).

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day in, day out

All day and every day, regularly, constantly. The expression was so defined in a dialect book by W. Carr in 1828 and was widely used by the end of the century. It was a cliché by the time C. Day Lewis used it in describing his school days in his autobiography, The Buried Day
(1960): “One boy . . . was kicked around, jeered at or ostracised, day in day out for several years.”

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dawn on (someone), to

To perceive or understand for the first time. See LIGHT DAWNED.

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dawn on (someone), to

An unexpected potential winner. The term dates from the nineteenth century and comes from racing, where a horse is termed “dark” when its ancestry and history are unknown. It was so used by Benjamin Disraeli in his novel, The Young Duke (1831), but the precise origin is obscure. Some think it comes from the owner’s dyeing a horse’s hair to disguise it and so get better odds; others cite the practice of a particular American horse trader who made his fast black stallion look like an ordinary saddle horse, rode into town, set up a race, and consistently came out a winner. The term was soon transferred to political candidates on both sides of the Atlantic. The first American presidential dark horse was James Polk, who won the 1844 Democratic nomination only on the eighth ballot and went on to become president.

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can’t call one’s soul one’s own

To be very much in debt or bondage to another; to have lost one’s independence. This turn of phrase dates from the sixteenth century and has been repeated ever since. In Dickens’s The Old Curiosity Shop (1841, Chapter 4), “She daren’t call her soul her own” is said of Mrs. Quilp, wife of the tyrannical dwarf, Daniel.

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can of worms, it’s a/like opening a

Introducing a complicated prob- lem or unsolvable dilemma. The metaphor alludes to the live bait of fisher- men. In a jar or other container, they form an inextricable tangle, wriggling and entwining themselves with one another. The term is American in origin, dating from the mid-twentieth century.

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cannot

See entries beginning with CAN’T; also YOU CAN’T.

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