chew the fat/rag, to

To converse, or to chatter in informal fashion. In Great Britain chewing the rag originally (late nineteenth century) was a col- loquial term for complaining or grumbling, although one source holds it was

an army term for persisting in an argument. Another source reports that the rag in question was a piece of cloth used when soldiers ran out of tobacco. Chewing the fat, more common in America, may have meant chewing on salt pork  or  fatback  when  supplies  were  low. Today  both  are  colloquial  clichés that simply mean talking in a relaxed manner.

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chew the cud, to

To  ruminate, to  deliberate  over  something. For  more than four centuries, to chew on something has meant to think it over. Liken- ing  human  chewing  to  that  of  cows  and  other  ruminants,  which  bring  up food  in  a  cud  that  is  chewed  and  swallowed  again, goes  back  even  further. John  Wycliffe’s   translation   of   the   Book   of   Hosea   (1382)   reads,  “Thei chewiden  cud  upon  shete,  and  wyne,  and  departiden  fro  me”  (7:14);  the

King James Version (1611) differs (“They assemble themselves for corn and wine, and  they  rebel  against  me”). Nevertheless, half  a  century  before  that translation was published, chewing the cud in the sense of deep thinking had

made its way into a book of homilies (1547).

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cheek by jowl

Close, intimate, side by side. The term is a very old one, dating  back  to  the  sixteenth  century  (when  it  apparently  replaced  the  still older cheek by cheek: “I’ll go with thee, cheek by jowl,” wrote Shakespeare in

A  Midsummer  Night’s  Dream,  3.2).  Eric  Partridge  deemed  it  a  cliché  by  the mid-eighteenth century.

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check out, to

To  die. This  slangy  phrase  transfers  other  kinds  of  depar- ture to leaving this life, as in “He’s had several heart attacks and could check out any day.” It dates from the 1920s. To check something/someone out, on the other hand, meaning to investigate something or someone, as in “Let’s check out this new restaurant,” dates from the 1940s.

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check is in the mail, the

A delaying tactic. Originally addressed to  cred- itors to assure them their money was on the way, even if it was not, the term dates from the second half of the 1900s. PublishersWeekly (Jan. 31, 2005) used

it in a headline for a piece about a wholesaler’s cash problems: “Is Baker & Taylor’s Check in the Mail?”

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chasing rainbows

Pursuing illusionary goals, trying to achieve impossible things. The term comes from the old tale about finding a crock of gold if one digs  at  the  end  of  the  rainbow, where  it  touches  earth. The  idea  of  chasing rainbows  as  equivalent  to  a  fruitless  quest  was  expressed  in  the  nineteenth century; those  who  did  so  were  called “rainbow  chasers.” A  popular  song,

“I’m Always Chasing Rainbows,” with words by Joseph McCarthy and music by  Harry  Carroll  (based  on  Chopin’s  C-sharp  minor  Fantasy  Impromptu), was published in 1918. It was used in several motion pictures, among them Ziegfeld Girl, with Judy Garland, and was revived with considerable success

in 1946.

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best foot forward

See PUT  ONE’S  BEST  FOOT  FORWARD.

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