dead weight

An oppressive burden or heavy responsibility. The physical attributes of such a weight were noted early on, but the figurative use of the expression dates from the early eighteenth century. The English philosopher Lord Shaftesbury (the third Earl) wrote (1711), “Pedantry and Bigotry are millstones  able  to  sink  the  best  Book, which  carries  the  least  part  of  their dead weight.”

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carte blanche

Complete freedom, unlimited power. The term is French for “blank paper,” used in the same sense as “blank check” — that is, anything may be filled in. In the 1600s it was used in the military for unconditional surrender. After World War I it was broadened to civilian contexts, such as “He’s the best mechanic we have; the boss gave him carte blanche to handle all the repairs.”

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basket case

An individual too impaired to function. This term dates from World War I, when it denoted a soldier who had lost both arms and legs and had to be carried off the field in a basket or litter. In civilian usage the term was applied to an emotionally unstable person who is unable to cope. Today it is used still more loosely to describe an attack of nerves, as in “The mother of the bride was a basket case.”

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an open book, he/she is (like an)

Very  obvious. See  READ  SOMEONE LIKE AN  OPEN  BOOK.

another  day, another  dollar      Another  day’s  work  is  done. The  expres- sion  became  current  in  the  United  States  in  the  early  twentieth  century, presumably when a dollar a day was a living wage.

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hand in glove

On very intimate terms; allies. This metaphor for a close fit (as glove fits hand) was already a proverb in John Ray’s 1678 collection, although it originally was put as hand and glove. “Connected as the hand and glove is, madam, poetry and love,” wrote David Lloyd (Epistle to a Friend, c. 1792).

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get down to brass tacks, to/let’s

To arrive at the heart of the matter. Some think this late nineteenth-century term comes from Cockney rhyming slang for hard facts. Another possible and perhaps more likely source is the American general store, where a countertop was marked with brass tacks at one-yard intervals for measuring cloth, and “getting to brass tacks” meant measuring precisely. Still another theory is that in upholstered furniture, brass tacks were used to secure the undermost cloth, and to reupholster properly one had to strip the furniture to that layer. A mid-twentieth-cen- tury American synonym is to get down to the nitty-gritty, alluding to the detailed (nitty) and perhaps unpleasant (gritty) facts of the case. It was bor- rowed from black English, where it signified the anus and alluded to picking body lice (nits) from that body part. This association had been largely for- gotten by the time the term was popularized by the 1964 hit song “The Nitty Gritty” by Shirley Ellis.

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familiarity breeds contempt

Overexposure to or knowing something or someone too thoroughly can turn liking into hostility. The idea behind this expression dates from ancient times—the Roman writer Publilius Syrus used it about 43 B.C.—and approximately twelve hundred years later Pope Innocent III repeated it, also in Latin. The first record of it in English appeared in Nicholas Udall’s translation of Erasmus’s sayings (1548): “Familiaritye bringeth contempt.” Later writers often stated it with humor or irony, notably Mark Twain in his unpublished diaries (Notebooks, c. 1900): “Familiarity breeds contempt—and children.”

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