Get on the Gravy Train with Cliches! Quiz

Answer: Go haywire

"Go haywire", when referring to a machine or apparatus or event or undertaking, means that something has gone wrong, perhaps even in a bizarre manner. However, when using the expression to refer to a person, the speaker means that individual is behaving in an uncontrolled if not unbalanced manner.

In a 1956 book called "Holy Old Mackinaw", Stewart H. Holbrook explains that the expression comes from Maine logging camps, where workers saved the wire from baled hay and used it for repairing things and for makeshift tools.

He writes, "A camp that was notoriously poor in its equipment came to be known as a 'haywire camp'; and from this usage it spread to mean broken, busted, sick, crazy, no-good and a score of other things, none of them praiseworthy".

However, in an earlier 1946 book--"The American Language: Supplement I"--H. L. Mencken explains, "No one who has ever opened a bale of hay with a hatchet, and had the leaping wire whirl about him and its sharp ends poniard him, will ever have any doubt as to how 'to go haywire' originated".

Answer: the sack

To be fired or dismissed from one's job is to "get the sack" (or "get the bag" in older versions of the expression). Roving workmen carried their tools in a sack or bag, and when the work ended or a workman was dismissed, the worker picked up his sack or was handed his sack by the employer, and he moved on.

Originally, to "get the sack" was not necessarily a negative thing; it just meant that the job was finished and the employer had no more need of the workman. One of the earliest written recordings of the expression occurs in a 1576 publication entitled "Common Conditions".

Answer: Othello

In 1604's "Othello" the chiefest of Shakespeare's villains--Iago--tries to make Othello doubt the loyalty and love of his own wife Desdemona. Iago drops hints about her sexual relations with Othello's friend and trusted lieutenant, Cassio. He warns Othello of jealousy and thus subtly suggests Othello has something of which to be jealous: "O, beware, my lord, of jealousy; / It is the green-eyed monster, which doth mock / the meat it feeds on . . . ".

Apparently the allusion here is to cats and tigers and other green-eyed animals, which toy with their victims before eating them, just as a jealous lover may both love and hate his or her beloved, particularly if that beloved becomes the source of great stress and anxiety.

Shakespeare had used a variation of this phrase in an earlier play "The Merchant of Venice", which appeared in 1596. The character Portia refers to "green-eyed jealousy".

Answer: confession and absolution of sin

"Shrift" is the noun form of the verb "shrive", which is the act of a priest hearing a confession of sin and then offering forgiveness and absolution. The participle form of "shrive" is used in the name of the Christian holiday Shrove Tuesday, the day before Ash Wednesday, the beginning of Lent. Shrove Tuesday is meant to be a day of reflection on one's shortcomings and sinfulness so that one may achieve a more penitent mood as one enters into Lent.

The expression "give shrift" was originally used to refer to a blessing or sacrament bestowed by priests on those condemned to die by execution.

While the opportunity to absolve oneself of wrongdoing seems generous, to give someone only a short amount of time to do this or to rush that person through it seems most unsympathetic or indifferent. Again, William Shakespeare is most likely responsible for the existence of this variation of a cold-hearted offering of shrift.

The earliest written recording of "short shrift" is found in "Richard III". Sir Richard Ratcliff is trying to hurry Lord Hastings, who appears to be delaying his execution with prayers and bemoanings. Ratcliff finally remarks, "Dispatch, my lord; the duke [Richard III] would be at dinner: / Make a short shrift; he longs to see your head".

Answer: gets my goat

Something that "gets your goat" annoys you quite severely. This origin of this widely familiar expression is lost, but it probably began to be used in the early twentieth century. In the 1945 publication "American Language", H. L. Mencken claimed that he was told that the saying originated in a practice among certain horse trainers of soothing a nervous horse by putting a goat in its stall. If someone wanting to see that particular horse lose a race came by the horse's stall and took the goat away, the horse would presumably return to its nervousness and not run very well.

The earliest written recording of the expression is in Christy Mathewson's "Pitching in a Pinch", which was printed in 1912: "Then Lobert . . . stopped at third with a mocking smile which would have gotten the late Job's goat".

Answer: gall

"Gall" is bile, the bitter secretion of the liver, and "wormwood" is a medicinal plant with a notably bitter flavor. Thus, to say "gall and wormwood" is really to say "bitter and bitter". The expression appears several times in the Old Testament of the Bible, particularly in the books of Jeremiah and Lamentations. Jeremiah 9:15 reads, for example, "Therefore thus saith the Lord of hosts, the God of Israel; Behold, I will feed them, even this people, with wormwood, and give them water of gall to drink" (King James Bible translation).

Answer: Robin Hood's

To "go around Robin Hood's barn" is to travel, often unnecessarily, a long or winding route that takes one out of the way of or nowhere near one's destination before finally reaching it. Robin Hood, of course, has represented since the 14th century the free spirit who roamed the forests of Nottingham to rob the rich so that he could give to the poor. Obviously, as an outdoorsman he had no need for a barn, or so goes the logic behind the expression. To go around Robin Hood's barn would take a great deal of effort indeed since he didn't have one in the first place; one would be constantly and pointlessly roaming.

The expression is much more recent than the legend of Robin Hood. It appears to have first turned up in J. F. Kelley's "Humors of Falconbridge" in 1854: "The way some folks have of going around 'Robin Hood's barn' to come at a thing". Given this use of the expression, one can see that it can refer to a figurative journey as well as a literal and physical one.

Answer: to improve the appearance of something already sufficiently beautiful

To "gild the lily" is to add ornament to that which does not need any because it is already quite beautiful. Therefore, use of the expression can also mean "to make a superfluous gesture" or "to go beyond what is required or necessary". Again, we have William Shakespeare to thank for this cliche, although our current expression is a mangled or contracted version of what Shakespeare actually wrote.

In the play "King John", the title character has seized the English throne and has decided to hold a second coronation, hoping to reinforce his weak position. Lord Salisbury comments on this event: "Therefore, to be possess'd with double pomp, / To guard a title that was rich before, / To gild refined gold, to paint the lily, / To throw a perfume on the violet / . . . / Is wasteful and ridiculous excess".

Answer: candle

To say the "game is not worth the candle" is to say "whatever you're doing is not repaying the money, time, or effort you're investing". In the days when people played card or dice games by candlelight, they sometimes paid a nonplayer to hold the candle so that the light fell on the cards or the dice rather than in the eyes of the players. Of course, they also had to pay for the candles.

When a player was having a run of bad luck, he might well remark that the game was not worth what he had paid for the candle or what he was paying someone to hold that candle or both.

A 1603 English translation of the "Essays of Montaigne" contained these words: "The horror of a fall doth more hurt me, then the blow. The play is not worth the candle".

Answer: goody two-shoes

The expression comes from the title of a story, "The History of Little Goody Two-Shoes", which was published in 1765. It is thought to have been written by Oliver Goldsmith for John Newbery, the famous publisher of books for children, and the individual for whom the Newbery Medal is named.

The tale is a "Cinderella story" in which the main character is a little orphan girl named Margery Meanwell, who lives in such poverty that she has only one shoe to wear. However, when a rich man feels sorry for her and gives her a brand new pair of shoes, Margery is so overwhelmed with happiness that she goes around exclaiming to everyone she encounters, "Two shoes! Two shoes!" In the end of the story, she marries a rich widower and her earning of wealth at last is a lesson to the children reading the story that being good has its rewards.