Where Did You Learn That Expression?

[campanula]

Slow children of slow parents living in Slow city full of slow drivers, slow runners and slow thinkers....

 Must be nice place to live... No one is really in a hurry. 

[Lilac Isosceles]

Something going at Nineteen to the Dozen is operating very quickly. Back in the 18th century coal-fired, steam driven pumps were used to clear water out of Cornish tin and copper mines. Hand-powered pumps were slow and ineffective but at full power the steam version could clear 19,000 gallons of water for every dozen bushels of coal burned, which is how the expression became used.

[Lilac Isosceles]

Eating Humble Pie is used to indicate somebody who has to admit to being wrong in public, perhaps in humiliating fashion, and is looked down upon by those once considered equal. This hierarchy was established during the medieval hunts and the subsequent banquets. During the feast the lord of the manor, and his peers, would be served the finest cuts of venison. But the entrails and offal, known at the time as 'umbles', would be baked into a pie and served to those of a lower standing or out of favour. It was common practice for people to be humiliated by finding themselves sat at the wrong table and served 'umble pie'.

 

In David Copperfield, the Charles Dickens novel published in 1850, one of the characters, Uriah Heep, said, 'I got to know what umbleness did and I took to it. I ate umble pie with an appetite.' That's how the phrase was popularised in Britain.

[Lilac Isosceles]

Sour Grapes is a phrase used to describe someone who is sulking or jealous of not having something that others do have. It stems from a simple and popular fable of Aesop called 'The Fox And The Grapes', in which the fox spends a long time trying to reach a bunch of grapes high on the vine, but eventually fails. The fox then comforts himself by explaining he didn't really want them after all, as they looked sour. 

[Lilac Isosceles]

A White Elephant is an expression used to describe something useless that has, or will, become a huge burden to those who possess it. For this we travel to Thailand, in the days when it was known as Siam. According to the legend white elephants were so widely prized that whenever one was discovered it automatically belonged to the King. It was considered a serious offence to neglect, to put to work or even to ride a white elephant so they were no use to an owner, yet still highly revered. The King, it appears, was a wily old devil and used them in ruthless fashion. He decided that any subject causing him displeasure would be given a white elephant as a special royal gift. The subject was obviously unable to refuse a royal gift but the beast had to be cared for and could not be made to pay its way. Such gifts could ruin a man financially! The phrase arrived in England in the mid-18th century after the Empire builders brought it home with them, applying it to expensive but otherwise useless public buildings or monuments.

[campanula]

Thanks Br. Ashley for this funny story!

Seems we have plenty of white elephants here since Soviet times.

(I also like another expression about  "a wily old devil"  never heard before....  ) 

[campanula]

Sour Grapes is a phrase used to describe someone who is sulking or jealous of not having something that others do have. It stems from a simple and popular fable of Aesop called 'The Fox And The Grapes', in which the fox spends a long time trying to reach a bunch of grapes high on the vine, but eventually fails. The fox then comforts himself by explaining he didn't really want them after all, as they looked sour. 

Here we say "Green grapes" in the same circumstances... 

[Lilac Isosceles]

Red Herring is used to describe something that provides a false or misleading clue, often in a detective story. In the 18th and 19th centuries herring was one of the most widely caught fish in the seas around Britain. In those pre-refrigerated days it would be preserved by salting and smoking. This smoking process would turn the herring a deep brownish red colour. Heavily smoked herring would also have a particularly strong and pungent smell. For the origins of the phrase we turn to hunting in the early 1800s and hunt saboteurs. It's true: there must have been an early version of the modern fox lover. On hunt days the strong-smelling fish would be dragged along the hunt route and away from the foxes. This confused the hounds, which followed the scent of the 'red herring' rather than that of the fox. So effective was this tactic that the phrase passed into common English usage.