O.K. So how rich was Croesus + how high did they hang Haman. Also how about the old declaration "As sure as a gun's iron".

A common phrase in the 30s "That guy is so low he could sit on a cigarette paper + swing his legs."

F.U.C.K. (Fornication under control of the King.) Referencing Times and Dynasties of Kings and nobility.

we may never know but the way I read it was by the nomenclator used by Scotland Yard. I.E. "For unwed carnal knowledge". /from that /I suppose we can progress to the situation of "shooting the bird". /We all know as giving the middle finger as a form of up yours, etc. Word has it that in the 1300s the English had archers + the French did not. (That we KNOW to be true).That is why the English kicked their french asses over the years. Of course, the french were pissed so whenever they captured an archer, before blinding him + castrating him they would cut off his 2 fingers of his right hand. That's how it started; when the English Bowmen showed the french with pride of their middle finger extended that they still has use of their bow.

"Another Day, Another Dollar". The phrase goes back to the 1850s apparently. Popular with sailors of that era, and moving forward, soldiers in World War I. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sG9OavEOxnc

A retread, "There ain't no free lunch". Up until 1919 + the Volstead act (read prohibition) went into effect up until that time the bars set out a free lunch on the counter if you bought a drink. When the amendment was repealed in 1933 there was no liquor available but no more "Free Lunch". Oh + BTW, we now had the mafia, etc. firmly entrenched due to that 1st bill that was mainly put through by the women's (1st) vote. Well. they had good cause. Drunkenness has ruined many a family + those teetotalers were on a crusade. God save me from people on a mission.

"Hodgepodge"

"Dating back to the 14th century, there is an earlier form of hodgepodge, hotchpotch, that is still used in Britain, and this is a form of the Middle English hotchpot, which before that was hochepot.

The origin of hodgepodge is ultimately French, however. The Middle English Hochepot derived from the same word in French, and was formed from the verb hocher, meaning “to shake,” and pot which meant the same thing in French as it does in English: a large, deep pan for cooking.

So, the word referred to a stew with a whole bunch of different ingredients all shaken together in a pot.

A bit off + on the subject. "Underneath a starry flag, civilize 'em with a Krag." Cuba 1898.

I just finished reading an article on the Blair Mountain war in 1921 West Va. between the Coal companies + the unionizing coal miners. And it was indeed a war. Machine guns, bombs dropped from planes on the "protesting" coal miners by the government, etc. Seems they were upset by not having any rights from the company that paid them 40cents a ton for coal mined but then stretched the meaning of a ton to 2500 lbs.ad nauseum. Anyway, when they finally had enough + it turned into violence in the confrontation the mine officials (read strikebreakers, guards,etc.) wore white armbands to differentiate them from the miners who wore a red bandana around their neck + thus earned the name "redneck". That turned into a derogitory term for a backwoods hillbilly.

"...see the handwriting on the wall."

From the Old Testament, in reference to Daniel. "While a king was holding the Jews captive in the foreign land of Babylon in the sixth century b.c., a mysterious hand appeared, writing on the wall of the king's palace. The king called upon Daniel, who interpreted it to mean that God intended the king and his kingdom to fall. The king was slain that night."

Figuratively, the expression means that some misfortune is impending. “His firing came as no surprise. The handwriting was on the wall."

We had a term growing up that I'm not sure that it originated anywhere but with us. When you went to force something that could result in it breaking, someone would yell: "Don't bull hunch it! Or, someone would say: "Make sure that you don't bull hunch it!"

That does sound homemade.

"As pure as the driven snow" first appeared in writing in the early 19th century. But, in the early 1600s Shakespeare used phrases very similar; "white as driven snow" and "Macbeth will seem as pure as snow".

As Mae West said, "I used to be as pure as the driven snow, but I drifted."

And as W.C. Fields quipped, "I'd rather have 2 girls at 21 each than one girl at 42."

Many years ago I worked with some older men who had grown up during prohibition (I pieced this altogether later) whose common term of disdain was to call someone a jackleg SOB. It seems that during the Volstead hell when bathtub gin as prevalent as quality control was not; one could drink tainted spirits + not only go blind but the other result was a loosening in the leg bones that caused a shuffling + was called jake leg. On an aside, several years ago on the job, there were a couple of painters that needed their daily high so they got a loaf of Italian bread + cut off both ends + drained paint thinner through the loaf. They claimed that the process took out the poisons + just left the pure alchol coming ouy of the bottom. I would'nt know.

There Is More Than One Way To Skin A Cat - There are many ways to do something. There are many ways to achieve a goal. The oldest known use of the phrase dates back to 1854. However, "there’s more than one way to skin a cat" has its roots in older, similar phrases such as, "there are more ways to kill a cat than choking it with cream", found in the 1830s. It seems that originally the animal in question was a dog, as a seventeenth-century proverb is, "there are more ways to kill a dog than hanging".

Church Key - The term appears to have originated around 1900. The beer opener, particularly the oval open end to pop the cap off the bottle, looked a lot like the handle on the keys used to open heavy church doors of that era. (The early beer openers did not have a can opener (punch) on the other end, as shown in the photos in the following link.) https://www.quora.com/How-did-...rch-key-get-its-name

quote:

Originally posted by bentaframe:
F.U.C.K. (Fornication under control of the King.) Referencing Times and Dynasties of Kings and nobility.

In fact, the word is a Victorian-era London police short form when booking prostitutes and/or their "Johns." Its long form is: For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge.

You are correct; I don't know why I typed unwed.

F.U.C.K.: For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge. A charge in court for the criminal act of fornication.

Cold Enough to Freeze the Balls Off a Brass Monkey:

The brass monkey is a brass triangle capable of coraling round iron cannon balls, preventing them from rolling around the deck of a ship at sea. When it got really cold, the iron balls and the brass monkey would contract at different rates. This discrepency was enough to cause the brass monkey to contract more than the cannon balls and the cannon balls would roll out of the brass monkey.

When Churchill was Admiral of the Navy, he was quoted as saying, "The three traditions of the Navy are rum, buggery and the lash".

Splice the Main Brace: There was no such thing as a main brace in the Navy. It was a phrase used by the Captain to tell the men that drinks will now be served, free. As in, job well done men. Drinks all-round for the afternoon.

Can't remember "Davy Jone's Locker"

Cat is Out of The Bag: Meaning you are in for it now or, youv'e been caught and punishment will be forthcoming.

The cat refers to the cat-o-nine tails. A multi tailed whip used to administer said punishment.
The cat was kept in a bag and only taken out of the bag for punishment. It was said the cat was kept in a red bag to hide the blood the cat would soak up.

Keel-Hauling: The offending party was bound with two ropes. One at the hands and the other at the feet. One rope was pulled under the length of the ship. The offending party was then thrown overboard and the ropes were pulled from bow to stern pulling the poor soul under the keeel of the vessal. Depending on the severity of the infraction, he would be pulled bow to stern and stern to bow until death overcame him. Death was not necessarily by drowning. The rough texture of the keel, including barnacles and other bits of debris would tear the man to shreds.

Kind regards,

Carpediem

And one more for ya landlubbers.

Three Sheets in the Wind:

Sheets aren't sails, but ropes (or occasionally, chains). These are fixed to the lower corners of sails, to hold them in place. If three sheets are loose and blowing about in the wind then the sails will flap and the boat will lurch about like a drunken sailor.

The phrase is these days more often given as 'three sheets to the wind', rather than the original 'three sheets in the wind'. The earliest printed citation is in Pierce Egan's Real Life in London, 1821:

"Old Wax and Bristles is about three sheets in the wind."

Sailors at that time had a sliding scale of drunkenness; three sheets was the falling over stage; tipsy was just 'one sheet in the wind', or 'a sheet in the wind's eye'. An example appears in the novel The Fisher's Daughter, by Catherine Ward, 1824:

"Wolf replenished his glass at the request of Mr. Blust, who, instead of being one sheet in the wind, was likely to get to three before he took his departure."

Kind regards,

Carpediem

Pretty close + still on the mark; Churchill said when speaking to the admiralty, who opposed his usurpation of the rank to which he replied, the tradition of the royal navy was rum, sodomy, + the cat of 9 tails. I think I might start a Churchill quotes forum; that would be great fun + knowledge for others.

I was taught in the navy that the quote was, "rum, buggery and the lash".

Will have to look it up and get back to you

Well, you learn somthing new everyday:

As quoted by Edward Hewlett, Bexhill-on-Sea, E Sussex

"When and why did Winston Churchill say: 'The traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy and the lash'?
CHURCHILL'S description of the Royal Navy is included in the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations as having appeared in the book, Former Navy Person, by Sir Peter Gretton. The Oxford Dictionary suggests that Churchill's phrase should be compared with naval phrases dating from the 19th century - 'Rum, bum and bacca' and 'Ashore, it's wine, women and song, aboard it's rum, bum and concertina'.
It looks as though here, as elsewhere, Churchill took an earlier quotation and improved upon it. In The Irrepressible Churchill, compiled by Kay Halle (Robson Books, 1985), Churchill is said to have used the phrase in 1913, when he was First Lord of the Admiralty. According to 'an ear-witness', he was having trouble with some of his admirals at a strategy meeting. One of them accused him of having impugned the traditions of the Royal Navy, provoking the reply: 'And what are they? They are rum, sodomy and the lash'."

Edward Hewlett, Bexhill-on-Sea, E Sussex

Also from the internet:

Winston Churchill on Royal Navy Traditions
According to several published histories of the Royal Navy, and of Winston Churchill, the former First Lord of the Admiralty once said, “The only traditions of the Royal Navy are rum, sodomy, and the lash”. Churchill liked the quote, though he never cited it in his work, and when asked about it he remarked to his private secretary, Anthony Montague-Browne, that he wished he had said it, but that he had not. A second version of the quote included prayers as one of the traditions of the Royal Navy. Both versions of the quote emerged at a time when the First Lord was attempting to modernize the British Fleet by converting it to burn fuel oil rather than coal, and concentrate on smaller ships.

To the more hidebound senior British Admirals this activity by the First Lord, particularly the reliance on smaller ships rather than great lines of battle filled with battleships and battlecruisers, was a threat to the Navy in which they had built their careers. The British Navy of the time, early in the twentieth century, had two main missions; control of the Mediterranean and its links to India, and control of the North Sea. The main threat in the former were the Italian and Austro-Hungarian fleets, in the latter it was the Imperial High Seas Fleet of the German Empire.

When one of these Admirals complained in a somewhat heated meeting with Churchill of the need to maintain the traditions of the Navy Churchill, according to the Admiral, responded with the above quote, belittling both the Navy’s storied past and endangering its future, or so he told fellow officers and reporters. The quote itself is a derivative from an old British Navy chanty which referred to what can be expected ashore and at sea. One line of the chanty went, “Ashore its wine, women, and song; aboard its rum, bum, and bacca (bacca referring to tobacco).

The first recorded reference to the quote is found in the diary of Harold Nicolson, a British diplomat, author, and politician who worked for a time in Churchill’s government during the Second World War before he was asked to resign his position by the Prime Minister. Nicolson was an anti-Semite, a married man who confessed to his wife that he feared he would infect her with a venereal disease he had contracted from a same-sex encounter with a colleague (he didn’t) and who once wrote a column during the Italian campaign in which he declared human life expendable, but works of art irreplaceable.

The quote was, like many others, widely spread by political enemies and supporters of those opposed to change in the 1910s, when it was allegedly uttered, and again in the 1940s, when Churchill was the Prime Minister. Churchill, who had written of the history of the Royal Navy and would again after the war, expressed some admiration for the line, probably due to its pithiness, but clearly stated that it was not a sentiment which he expressed. Nonetheless many books of quotations attribute the quote to Churchill without making note of his comments denying that it was original to him.

O.K. I'll admit that this is more in the direction of the humor forum but I can't resist. When Prince Charles married Camilla, there was a day-long parade + the poor girl was wearing new shoes that gave her great pain so at the end of the day in the honeymoon suite at the palace she asked Charles to remove her shoes from her swollen feet. Next door Phillip the prince regent was listing with his ear to the wall. Charles tries to remove the 1st shoe + says,y Jove this is tight. The prince regent mutters, Of course, with a face like that she'd have to be a virgin. Then Charles starts on removing the 2nd shoe + says, Oh my this one is tighter than the last. The prince regent just beamed + said: "Ah yes, once a navy man always a navy man."

O.K. despite redundancy woes I will reinsert the term "The whole 9 yards". In War 2 the B-17 waist gunners had a belt of 50 cal. ammo that measured 27' + thus when you gave the ME 109s all your belt you gave him the "Whole 9 Yards".

Maybe this really happened. "Don't shoot until you see the whites of their eyes."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h3QIZEZ0avk

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lvsQp878qh8

"If looks could kill."

A possible origin of the phrase comes from the legend of Medusa, who had the power to turn anyone who looked at her into stone.

"If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound?"

From 1710, in relation to philosopher George Berkeley. His treatise "Concerning the Principles of Human Knowledge", proposes, "But, say you, surely there is nothing easier than for me to imagine trees, for instance, in a park [...] and nobody by to perceive them. [...] The objects of sense exist only when they are perceived; the trees therefore are in the garden no longer than while there is somebody by to perceive them."

In June 1883 in the magazine The Chautauquan, the question was put, "If a tree were to fall on an island where there were no human beings would there be any sound?" They then went on to answer the query with, "No. Sound is the sensation excited in the ear when the air or other medium is set in motion.

Agreed; therein lies the difference between 'sound' + 'noise' Noise happens regardless but the sound is only registered by other creatures. On a lighter note (kinda) Bill Murray said, "If Helen Keller fell down in the forest would she make a noise?" I met him once + his humor is very droll, to say the least.

I heard the saying about 50 years ago,when I was working in the big factories, There was a guy complaining about his job and the foreman said if you want sympathy THAT'S BETWEEN SHIFT AND SYPHILIS IN THE DICTIONARY.

OOPS I MEANT TO SAY SHIT

OOPS I MEANT TO SAY SHIT

Yeah, I remember that one from many years ago too.

"What's Good For The Goose Is Good For The Gander." was derived from the earlier (1670s) "What's Sauce For The Goose Is Sauce For The Gander".

Another earlier form in England, "..As Deep Drinketh The Goose As The Gander" (somewhere around 1570)

The 1st sentence of that poem was "Twas known from here to Menander".

Kiss Of Death - "Most people believe that the term kiss of death has its roots in the kiss that Judas gave to Jesus as a betrayal to the Romans, though the term kiss of death doesn’t appear until the 1940s. Some believe that the phrase kiss of death refers to a practice among the American Mafia of bestowing a kiss on someone who has betrayed the Mafia don and is therefore marked for death. However, it is easy to see the connection between the practice of the American Mafia and its roots in the kiss of Judas."

I can believe that.