do or die, to

To make a last-ditch effort. This extreme measure was first recorded in print in the seventeenth century. An early use occurs in John Fletcher’s play The Island Princess (1621), where a character says, “Do or die” (2.4). Before long it came to be used figuratively, although it reverted to lit- eral use (and changed form) in Tennyson’s “The Charge of the Light Brigade” (1854): “Theirs not to reason why, Theirs but to do and die. Into the valley of Death Rode the six hundred.”

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do one’s own thing, to

To find self-expression or self-fulfillment in some activity. Although this term is very old indeed—numerous references can be found in Chaucer, as in The Merchant’s Tale (“where as they doon hir thynges”)—it became hackneyed during the 1960s. Rebelling against the establishment, the unconventional “dropped out” of society and joined com- munes where they would “do their own thing.” One might wonder how many of them were familiar with Ralph Waldo Emerson’s essay, Self-Reliance (1841), in which he said, “I have difficulty to detect the precise man you are.... But do your own thing and I shall know you.”

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do one’s heart good, to

To cheer or be cheered up, to make someone feel good, to gratify. A cliché since the nineteenth century, it was known in the sixteenth century, and appeared in Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream (1.2): “I will roare that I will doe any man’s heart good to heare me.” See also WARM THE COCKLES OF ONE’S HEART.

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doom and gloom

See GLOOM AND  DOOM.

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don’t take any wooden nickels

Protect yourself (against fraud, loss, and so on). This warning against counterfeit coins dates from about 1900 and is distinctly American in origin, the nickel being a U.S. or Canadian five-cent coin. Why a wooden coin was selected is not known. Presumably making coins of wood would always have been more expensive than the intrinsic value of metal coins. Several writers suggest it replaced don’t take any wooden nutmegs, a now obsolete saying dating from colonial times when sharp traders sold wooden nutmegs mixed in with the real spice. In print the expression is found in Ring Lardner’s story, The Real Dope (1919), “In the mean wile—until we meet again—don’t take no wood nickles [sic] and don’t get impatient and be a good girlie.”

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don’t look a gift horse in the mouth

Accept a gift in good faith. This saying, which dates from St. Jerome’s biblical commentary (c. A.D. 420) on St. Paul’s Epistle to the Ephesians, is based on the fact that a horse’s age is revealed by its teeth. Looking inside a horse’s mouth therefore will tell you if someone is passing off an old nag for a spry colt. The same expression is found in French, Italian, Portuguese, and other languages.

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don’t let the grass grow under your feet

Act with dispatch; don’t delay. This expression dates from the sixteenth century. It appeared in print in 1607 in Edward Topsell’s natural history, Foure-Footed Beasts (“The hare . . . leaps away again, and letteth no grass grow under his feet”).

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