One Idiom Leads To Another Trivia Quiz

Answer: The theatre

Actors are very superstitious. It was thought that wishing a person good luck would actually bring them bad luck, so telling an actor to "break a leg" was a way to express one's well wishes without tempting fate. There are other theories about how this expression came about, but almost all relate to the theatre in some way. "Break a leg" should not be confused with "shake a leg",
which means to get up or to hurry.

Answer: Hunting

"To beat around the bush" is a very old expression, dating back at least to the 1500s. Hunters would hire men to flush out game from thick undergrowth by beating the bushes with wooden sticks or paddles. If the game was of a dangerous sort - say a bear, or a wild boar - the beaters would be reluctant to enter the area, and instead of "beating the bush," they would beat the area around it.

This eventually came to mean to avoid or delay getting down to business by discussing minor details at length.

Answer: No

"Skinny," or sometimes "the straight skinny," means truth or factual information, as in "I'll give you the skinny on why Joe got fired." It is a rather recent term, dating back to only the 1930s, and there doesn't seem to be any information about its origins, other than it seems to have started in the United States military. "Scuttlebutt" is a much older term and usually means something that is rumored or unverified.

A scuttlebutt was a keg of drinking water on a ship; when sailors went to get a drink, they would exchange rumors on various topics. An example of usage might be, "No one knows why Joe got fired, but the scuttlebutt is that he was drinking on the job." The term "straight dope" means the same thing as "skinny."

Answer: As a last resort

When "push comes to shove" means as a last resort, or final option. As in, "If push comes to shove, we'll have to sell the family silver to pay the mortgage." It can also refer to a critical time or situation: "If push comes to shove, I'm sure John will be on our side." This phrase has only been in the English language since about the 1930s, and opinion is divided about its origins. One theory is that it comes from the sport of rugby, another that it originated from subway or bus passengers jostling each other on crowded vehicles.

Answer: Minced oaths

Back in the olden days, when the Third Commandment was taken a bit more seriously than it is today, even a mild oath involving God or Jesus could earn you a flogging or a stretch in the pillory. People being what they are, they still liked to swear, so they coined words that were basically shortened versions of longer and more virulent phrases. "Zounds" is a shortened form of "God's wounds," "gadzooks" means "God's hooks" (the nails used during the Crucifixion of Christ), and "bloody" has nothing to do with blood - it's a contraction of "by our Lady." We call these words "minced oaths".

There are a surprising number of them: "geez" or "gee whiz" for "Jesus," and even "egad" for "on God."

Answer: Another matter entirely, something different

"A horse of a different color" means something entirely different, often used in contrast to a previous topic of discussion. "I think the Royals may win their division, but the World Series, well, that's a horse of a different color." This is sort of a strange phrase in that it seems to evolved from one of precisely the opposite meaning: "a horse of that color", which meant "alike" or "identical". Shakespeare used the phrase "a horse of that color" in "Twelfth Night", but that phrase has died out and been replaced with its opposite.

Answer: To get something exactly right

"Hit the nail on the head" is very old idiomatic expression, dating back to at least to the 16th century, and it is probably even older than that. In 1559, in "The Cosmographical Glass", William Cuningham wrote: "You hit the naile on the head (as the saying is)", indicating that the phrase was already in common use.

At least the origin of this phrase isn't hard to figure out; it comes from carpentry, where hitting the head of a nail squarely with a hammer produces the exact effect desired.

Answer: To become very angry

"To hit the ceiling" (sometimes heard as "hit the roof") means to become very angry. The phrase first appeared in print with this meaning in 1914, but its origins are unclear. One source says that it calls to mind someone so angry that they are jumping up and down so hard that their head literally hits the ceiling, but there is evidence that the phrase originally meant to fail in an attempt to do something, so this explanation doesn't sound too believable. Wherever it came from, this idiom has managed to stay in the language for over one hundred years.

Answer: Riverboats

Early riverboats were steam-driven, and used coal-fired boilers to produce the steam. Soot would build up in the the smokestacks of these vessels, and periodically their captains would clean them out by blowing steam through the stacks. This would cause the boat to shake, and soot and other debris to fall on the decks, so it was a good idea for passengers to go inside while this being done. Eventually the term "blow your stack" came to mean to lose one's temper and become very angry.

Answer: Medieval knights

Wikipedia, or, as I call it, the accumulated ignorance of the masses, says this saying originated with native American tribes who wore a feather in their headdress for every enemy they killed. But the phrase is a very old one, and certainly predates any contact by English speakers with any of the tribes who may have followed this practice. Neither is it true that it comes from Edward, the Black Prince, who fought valiantly at the Battle of Crecy in 1346, and was supposedly awarded the crest of John of Bohemia, one of his slain enemies, by his father, King Edward III. It is true that the badge of the Prince of Wales consists of three ostrich feathers, but this badge, or some variation of it, was in use by the English royal family prior to Crecy.

What is true is that knights were often awarded plumes to wear in their helmets as a token of some brave deed on the battlefield. This practice was common not only in England, but across Europe. In 1599, Richard Hansard wrote: "It hath been an antient custom among them [Hungarians] that none should wear a fether but he who had killed a Turk, to whom onlie yt was lawful to shew the number of his slaine enemys by the number of fethers in his cappe." James G. Blaine, the Republican presidential candidate in the election of 1884, was known to his followers as "the Plumed Knight". Eventually "plume" was replaced by "feather" and "cap" supplanted "helmet", so a plume in one's helmet became a feather in one's hat.