What's the Cat's Meow? Cliches, That's What! Quiz

Answer: decided to pursue a particular male for a mate

"To set her cap for him" means a woman is seeking to turn a male acquaintance or a man she has only recently seen into a suitor. English women at one time almost always wore some sort of hat or headdress--even when indoors. If she put on a particularly fancy or extravagant one, particularly when a man was present, most would assume that she was deliberately attempting to get that man's attention. One can find a reference to this expression as early as 1773 in Oliver Goldsmith's play "She Stoops to Conquer": "Instead of breaking my heart at his indifference, I'll . . . set my cap to some newer fashion, and look out for some less difficult admirer".

Answer: I was performing a superfluous action.

Carrying or taking "coals to Newcastle" means "to perform a superfluous, pointless, or foolish action". In other words, my wife was trying to inform me, as many others often do, that washing dishes before I put them into the dishwasher is a waste of effort and time.

The origin of the idiom is an English one. Newcastle was once considered the heart of the coal industry in England; thus, it would be the last place one would want to work so hard to carry or tote a load of coal (obviously, more than enough coal would already be there). John Heywood, a compiler of common English sayings, listed it among his collected expressions during the 1500's, and Thomas Fuller, an English historian, explained the term in 1662: "That is to do what was done before; or to busy one's self in a needless imployment".

Answer: The Bible

The writer of the Book of Matthew, one of the Gospels in the Bible's New Testament, records that Jesus spoke the following words during the Sermon on the Mount: "Do not give dogs what is holy, and do not throw your pearls before swine, lest they trample them under foot and turn to attack you". Generally, speakers of English will use this expression either to declare someone has made a foolish or inappropriate gesture or to remark that someone has offered something of value to someone else who cannot appreciate what is being offered.

Answer: Has the cat got your tongue?

The origin of this expression is unknown, but it seems to have surfaced in the 1800's. Most scholars agree that the saying is not referring to a feline that has removed a human being's tongue from his or her mouth. Beyond this conclusion, there is no universally agreed upon explanation for just what is the source of this expression.

Some argue that the "cat" is a reference to the instrument of torture, the whip referred to as a "cat-o'-nine-tails." The speculation is that anyone about to be whipped by this painful instrument would be paralyzed due to fearful anticipation and thus unable to speak.

Others argue that the "cat" is a reference to kat or khat or chat, a drug primarily used in Africa and the Middle East. The stimulants from the khat plant--cathine and cathinone--can often create a sense of euphoria and speed up the heart rate.

The speculation here is that the expression may be derived from someone's momentary inability to speak while under the climactic experience of the drug. Finally, some argue that the expression is simply referring to how house cats will often sit quietly and motionlessly while staring at birds, mice, their owners, etc.

Answer: living flesh

Though hardly used anymore as a word for "living flesh", "quick" is still associated by some with just that. One may hear some people use the word to refer to the fleshy, tender part beneath the fingernails and toenails or to refer to being alive, as in "the quick and the dead". Sir Thomas More was using a phrase similar to "cut to the quick" as early as 1551 in his book "Utopia": "Their tenants . . . whom they poll and shave to the quick, by raising their rents".

The idea is, of course, that if a person were physically to cut someone through his or her skin to the deepest part of his or her flesh, then that someone would definitely experience a great amount of pain.

Some people, however, possess the ability to use their words as they would a sharp blade to cut people just as deeply and painfully.

Answer: Her business had failed or suffered a severe setback.

"Come a cropper" means "to suffer a setback or a fall, either literally or figuratively". The expression is derived from yet another expression--"neck and crop"--which was often used in England in the early 1800's to mean "completely". "Neck and crop" originated as a description of the direction a rider took after being tossed over the horse's head and thus completely off the horse.

In this sense, "neck and crop" referred to the horse's neck and throat. "Come a cropper" seems to have been derived from this idiom. To suffer a misfortune, whether in business or any other aspect of one's life, is like experiencing a fall from a horse.

Answer: He had a chip on his shoulder.

To have a "chip on the shoulder" means "to be edgy, snappish, or ready to fight". The expression is derived from a custom in the past that involved a boy's placing a chip of something on his shoulder and then daring or challenging another boy to knock it off. Perhaps some of us remember the old Eveready battery commercial in which Robert Conrad would set a battery on his shoulder and dare anyone to knock it off.

He would then challenge anyone to find a battery that could compete with Eveready's brand.

Answer: a triangular sail of a boat

A jib is a triangular sail that is attached to the foremast of a boat and to either the bowsprit, the bow, or the deck between the bowsprit and the foremast. The expression "don't like the cut of his jib" means one is suspicious of another, usually because of that person's appearance. One seems to sense intuitively that someone seems untrustworthy.

The expression stems from the skill displayed by someone who had enough experience to tell the nationality of a ship by the way its jib looked. By 1823, Robert Southey was using the metaphorical meaning of the expression when he was arguing that one might discern the likability of certain people by depending on one's interpretation of "the cut of their jib".

Answer: a fable by Aesop

One translation or adaptation of Aesop's fable "The Shepherd's Boy and the Wolf" reads as follows: "There was once a young Shepherd's Boy who tended his father's sheep at the foot of a mountain near a dark forest. It was rather lonely for him all day, so he thought upon a plan by which he could get a little company and some excitement.

He rushed down towards the village calling out, "Wolf, Wolf," and the villagers came out to meet him, and some of them stopped with him for a considerable time. This pleased the boy so much that a few days afterwards he tried the same trick, and again the villagers came to his help.

But shortly after this, a Wolf actually did come out from the forest, and began to worry the sheep, and the boy of course cried out, "Wolf, Wolf," still louder than before.

But this time the villagers, who had been fooled twice before, thought the boy was again deceiving them, and nobody stirred to come to his help. So the Wolf made a good meal off the boy's flock, and when the boy complained, the wise man of the village said: 'A liar will not be believed, even when he speaks the truth'".

Answer: cut from whole cloth

In the fifteenth century, a whole cloth was dependably a certain size, and anyone buying a piece of whole cloth would know with certainty that he or she was buying a piece as it had been originally manufactured. However, as time passed, some manufacturers and sellers began to cheat their customers, and the cloth that was bought was less than it was intended to be or less than the buyer assumed it would be. Thus arose this expression, which originally would have been spoken with irony or sarcasm.

It became somewhat of a joke to say that something was "cut from whole cloth" when what one really meant was anything except that. Eventually, the expression came to be used in situations beyond being misled as a consumer.