Cliches to Make Your Mouth Water! Quiz

Answer: the use of locomotives and railroads

To "make the grade" is "to come up to a standard" or "to achieve a desired result". When building railroads, those responsible for their construction must consider the angle or steepness of an incline when laying track up and over a hill or across a mountainous terrain. Americans referred to this incline as the "grade". If a locomotive could successfully pull its weight and that of the train of cars it was pulling up a particular incline, then it was said to have "made the grade".

The transferred meaning, describing success at anything, seems to have occurred later in the twentieth century.

In 1930, an article in "Publishers Weekly" contained the following words: "Can the seasonal bookshop make the grade . . . ?"

Answer: Sundays

"A month of Sundays" is a relative long time. The exact origin of the expression isn't known, and the specific length is unknown as well. If only the length of a day is considered, then a month of Sundays would be around thirty days. Originally, the expression seems to have been a week of Sundays, and that would have been only seven days.

It's unlikely that the originator of the expression meant such short periods of time. Therefore, most assume that the expression refers to how long it would take to live through thirty different Sundays, which would have been about seven and a half months. Still, many argue that this time period doesn't seem to be exceptionally long either. Ultimately, many have decided to focus on the word "Sunday".

They ask why the expression relies on "Sundays" and not on any other day of the week. Why not a "month of Mondays", which would certainly be more alliterative? Their argument is that Sunday takes a relatively long time to get through, particularly for those who are religious.

The day, at least for many Christians, is spent attending Church and then resting without being allowed to do any labor. Furthermore, many places that one might visit are closed. To some of the faithful, Sunday seems like an extremely long day--a day that seems never to end. Thus, the expression was never meant to refer to any specific amount of time but rather to suggest the relative long passage of time for those who are impatiently waiting for something to pass or occur. However, the first occurrence of the expression in print happened in 1759 in Hamilton Murray's "Life and Real Adventures": "The commander . . . swore he should dance to the second part of the same tune, for a month of Sundays". The use of the expression here suggests that the passage of time is a pleasant one.

Answer: Hamlet

At the beginning of Scene IV of Act I, Hamlet, Horatio, and Marcellus have walked out around midnight to await the arrival of Hamlet's father's ghost. Suddenly, they are startled by the flourish of trumpets and the blasting of cannons. Hamlet explains to the curious Horatio that various individuals are making such noise to celebrate King Claudius's swallowing the last drink of wine in his cup. Horatio asks if this is a custom, and Hamlet responds that it is but that it would be honorable to practice the custom "in the breach than in the observance", for Claudius is embarrassing the nation as people from other nations consider his behavior "swinish".

We can see here that Hamlet intends his words to mean that some customs are bad ones and that the more honorable thing to do is to break the custom rather than follow it. However, many people use the expression in the wrong way by using it to mean to express the opposite of Hamlet's intention. Many use the expression to suggest that a good rule rather than a bad one is being broken and that the perpetrator finds more glory in breaking the rule than in being good and lawful. For example, you might hear someone say, "We are now required to offer equal pay for equal work to our female employees, but, apparently, this directive is more honored in the breach than in the observance", meaning whoever is in charge of deciding the employees' salaries or wages isn't following this new policy.

Answer: the first and last days of the year

The "ends" mentioned in the expression "make ends meet" referred originally to the "ends" of the year. The idea was that one would or should take in, from the start of the year to its end, enough money to cover one's expenditures. Earlier versions of the saying were worded thusly: "to make both ends of the year meet". Tobias Smollet wrote in his 1748 novel "The Adventures of Roderick Random" the following: "He made shift to make the two ends of the year meet".

In the past, workers and farmers had no regular salary and no predictable income; obviously, surviving financially from the beginning of the year to its end was not a certainty.

Answer: Jesus

A literal millstone is one of two large round stones between which grain is ground in a mill. The typical millstone from the past was about four feet in diameter, was around ten inches thick, and weighed several hundred pounds. In Matthew 18:6, Jesus contributes to the birth of the millstone's figurative meaning, a heavy and inescapable responsibility or feeling of responsibility. Responding to the disciples' question concerning the greatest in Heaven, Jesus has answered that a child is the greatest.

He then warns that " . . . [W]hoso shall offend one of these little ones which believe in me, it were better for him that a millstone were hanged about his neck, and that he were drowned in the depth of the sea" (KJV). Imagine, if you can, the weight of a several-hundred-pound millstone around your neck.

This should increase your understanding of the weight of the burden another is carrying.

Answer: a mare's nest

A "mare's nest" is a discovery that is made by a proud individual who then discovers it was only an illusion or a disappointment. In other words, something that is too good to be true turns out to be just that. The expression makes sense when you think about it; mares don't make nests, which is why a claim to have discovered one is illusory. Originally, the expression was "a horse nest", but why it evolved to "mare's next" is not known. Perhaps, someone thought it made more sense to attribute the nest's existence to a female builder as opposed to a male. Of course, in nature many nest builders are male. Maybe the more interesting question should be concerned with why a horse was chosen at all. Why not a cow or an elephant? "Mare's nest" made its first appearance in print in Robert Preston's 1576 "Galateo": "Nor stare in a man's face as if he had spied a mare's nest".

The expression has also been used to denote a complicated mess. How or why this adaptation occurred during the mid-1800s is not clear, but some speculate that people may have confused the meanings of the expressions "rat's nest" and "mare's nest". Truth be told, the expression "rat's nest" to refer to an unsightly mess doesn't seem appropriate in the first place. If you've ever found a true rat's nest, then you would see that one is actually quite orderly.

Answer: your p's and q's

The origin of "mind your p's and q's" is not known. Nevertheless, there are quite a few explanations. The most likely one is that a child learning to read and write is apt to have trouble distinguishing "p" and "q" and has to be reminded by the teacher to be careful.

Others claim that the expression arose within the printing industry and for the same reason: the similarity between the letters "p" and "q". Another explanation is that tabs in British pubs once used "p" to indicate "pints" and "q" to indicate "quarts"; either the server or the drinker could be admonished to keep these two letters straight.

Some even argue that "p's and q's" refers to a pea coat and a kind of wig (a queue). Whatever you believe, if any of these, the saying was well established by 1779, when Hannah Cowley wrote in "Who's the Dupe?": "You must mind your P's and Q's with him, I can tell you".

Answer: the milk of human kindness

Again, William Shakespeare is the one to thank for the popularity of the cliched phrase "the milk of human kindness". He may have created the expression himself, for there is no record of its use prior to the existence of his tragic play "Macbeth". Lady Macbeth fears that her husband is too kind or soft-hearted to kill King Duncan and take the monarchy as his own. Referring to the powerful titles he has already achieved as well as the prophecy promising him even greater power, she says, "Glamis thou art, and Cawdor, and shalt be / What thou art promised: yet do I fear thy nature; / It is too full o' the milk of human kindness / To catch the nearest way . . . ", which to her is, of course, murder.

As milk is a source of nourishment for the infant human being as it struggles to grow and develop, perhaps the idea here is that Macbeth's nature has been nurtured by kindness so that he has grown to be a compassionate man rather than an unfeeling, opportunistic one. Thus, Lady Macbeth has to motivate and manipulate him so that he is able to accomplish something that goes against his nature.

Answer: mud

"Here's mud in your eye" is certainly a strange way to wish good fortune to the one you're toasting, as mud in the eye would certainly be an annoyance if not a discomfort or source of pain. Perhaps, the original speaker of this clichéd toast was thinking that mud in one's eye would blind that person so that he or she could not see any of the bad that was nearby. The assumption is that if one could not see anything bad, the situation to the perceiver would be the same as if there were no bad to be seen in the first place. Essentially, the toast would be a wish for not only good fortune but the lack of awareness of any ill fortune. Ignorance is bliss, to use another old cliché.

The toast was current by 1927 when H. V. Morton wrote in his "In Search of England": "'Here's mud in your eye!' said one of the modern pilgrims, tossing down his martini".

Answer: hay

"Make hay while the sun shines" is advice to act while conditions are favorable. It fits with the popular philosophy of "carpe diem"--seize the day. Any farmer can tell you that the grass that is cut for hay has to be left to dry for a day or two or three before it can be gathered or baled. Baling or storing damp hay leads to its rotting or to its being infested with mold, which is particularly dangerous for many of the animals that are supposed to eat it. Thus, a farmer was most concerned with the weather before mowing a field for hay; he hoped for a span of hot and dry days and gambled when cutting the grass that rain was not approaching. If the cut grass was rained on, then the process of drying it out took that much longer, and the risk of the hay spoiling on the ground before it could be gathered was increased.

The earliest known recording of the saying in print is 1546 when John Heyward wrote, "When the sunne shyneth make hey".