Lunatics Radio Hour
The history of horror and the horror of history.
Lunatics Radio Hour
Episode 168 - The Dark Roots of Everyday Expressions
Abby and Alan sit down to talk through the dark history of every day expressions and sayings. From mad hatter to taking it with a grain of salt, we get into all of it.
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Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another episode of the Lunatics Radio Hour Podcast. My name is Abby Branker, and I am sitting here with Alan Kudan.
SPEAKER_01:Hello.
SPEAKER_00:We as humans use a lot of different sayings and idioms and expressions in our everyday conversations. And sometimes the roots of those expressions are quite dark.
SPEAKER_01:Name one.
SPEAKER_00:And the origins have sort of been lost to history.
SPEAKER_01:Like what?
SPEAKER_00:Mad as a hatter, pulling my leg, saved by the bell.
SPEAKER_01:That was a TV show.
SPEAKER_00:Among other things.
SPEAKER_01:Uh, what was the actor who played Screech who got arrested?
SPEAKER_00:Justin Diamond? He passed away.
SPEAKER_01:From what?
SPEAKER_00:From lung cancer.
SPEAKER_01:Oh no.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. It's kind of a sad story.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Did I ever tell you that I met Mr. Belding one time?
SPEAKER_01:Who's that?
SPEAKER_00:Mr. Belding, the principal from Saved by the Bell.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, uh no, this has never come up organically in conversation.
SPEAKER_00:So the actor, obviously, Dennis Haskins, showed up. So let me take you through my my origin story a little bit.
SPEAKER_01:So there you are in Tinder.
unknown:No.
SPEAKER_00:Hoffshow where I went to college has these they don't anymore, but they had these crazy bars when I was there where you had to show ID to be 18 or have a student ID to enter, and they would essentially give you beer for free. It was like penny beer nights. The whole thing was crazy. But one night, Mr. Building came to one of those bars to like meet college girls, which was gross.
SPEAKER_01:But was he casting for a new season?
unknown:None.
SPEAKER_00:As we love to trace back the history of anything and everything on this podcast, today we are going to talk about everyday sayings that actually have quite horrifying origins. Today's sources we have a mental floss article, Eight Common Phrases with Surprisingly Dark Origins, by Michelle Debzak, an MPR article by Scott Simon, What is the origin of the word deadline? An exploration of its etymology, a historyextra.com article, Why Do We Say Run Amok, the Oxford English Dictionary, and this very fun website called PhraseFinder, which was created by someone named Gary Martin. It's a super fun website, and I'm going to link it, of course, in the description of this episode, along with our sources. Starting off with one of my favorite examples. People say mad as a hatter, as a synonym for somebody who is insane or acting insane or crazy, you know, quote unquote. But the term refers to actual hatters, people who made hats, especially people who made felt hats.
SPEAKER_01:Why?
SPEAKER_00:Because hatters used to use mercury nitrate in the felting process, which we now know causes serious issues when humans are exposed to it in a prolonged capacity. For example, it can cause both spikes in aggression and mood swings. But more seriously, it can cause tremors, shakes, issues with speech, and even confusion and hallucinations. Sometimes Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland is cited as the origin for this term.
SPEAKER_01:But that's false.
SPEAKER_00:It is false. It is not true.
SPEAKER_01:It's because hat makers used to use mercury.
SPEAKER_00:Uh but uh the the this is saying that the term is was first used as a term.
SPEAKER_01:Wait, why are they using what did the mercury do?
SPEAKER_00:It was used to make fur pelts easier to felt through this process that was called carroting.
SPEAKER_01:Wow. Yeah. I've always felt that my pelts are too stiff. Maybe I'll just bring them with me into my nightly mercury bath.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. That's a great idea. Two birds, one stone. Oh, another saying that I didn't look up. So the term Mad as a Hatter for the record already existed before Lewis Carroll wrote Alice in Wonderland. That was not the first use of it. Historian Christopher Hill claimed that a man from the 17th century named Roger Crab inspired Carroll's Mad Hatter character. It's debated whether or not this is true, but it's so interesting. We're gonna take a little mini side quest anyway. We do know that Crab was born in 1621 and died on September 11th, 1960. Crabbe was many things, including a soldier, an herbalist, a writer, and a businessman. But one of the more interesting parts about him is that he also was part of this like very niche religious lifestyle group. Essentially, he was somebody who believed he was Christian and he believed that all pleasure was sin. So he was what was known as a Christian vegetarian, meaning he was part of a group that cited Christianity as a reason not to eat animals. He also became an asceticist, someone who abstained from world pleasures. So he was abstinent, he didn't, you know, whatever. There was a list of things that he abstained from because he thought deriving any pleasure from life was sinful.
SPEAKER_01:I know all about ascetists.
SPEAKER_00:You do?
SPEAKER_01:Yep.
SPEAKER_00:Tell me more.
SPEAKER_01:I read Siddhartha.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I haven't read that since like eighth grade. What? Why? It's so good. You how often do you read it? It teaches you how to wait and how to fast. That's right. Important lessons for eighth graders. So essentially, Crab was vegan and abstinent, right? Just like Siddhartha. Eventually, he also willingly became a hermit because he felt that any money was sinful. But before that, before he gave up his business, he was a haberdasher and a hatter in Chesham.
SPEAKER_01:What's a haberdasher?
SPEAKER_00:A haberdasher is somebody who deals clothing, essentially. Like a business owner who sells clothing and makes clothing and whatever.
SPEAKER_01:How come that term isn't ubiquitous today?
SPEAKER_00:I think it's a bit of a mouthful.
SPEAKER_01:What do they call them today?
SPEAKER_00:Clothesmakers, shop owners, tailors.
SPEAKER_01:I feel like those are very different things though.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, yeah. Crab gained a reputation for his eccentric behavior. Some blamed this on an injury that he had sustained in battle, and we do know, right, that brain injuries can change your personality. But we also now know that if he did indeed work with Mercury, it could have had an impact on him as well. Crab died at the age of fifty-nine. He's buried at Stepney Churchyard. His gravestone says the following quote Tread gently, reader, near the dust, committed to this tombstone's rust, for while 'twas flesh, it held a guest, with universal love possessed, a soul that stemmed opinions tied, did over sex in triumphs ride, yet separate from the giddy crowd, and paths tradition had allowed. Through good and ill reports he passed, oft censored, yet approved at last, wouldst thou his religion know? In brief 'twas this, to all to do, just as he would be done unto. So in kind, nature's law he stood, a temple, undefiled with blood, a friend to everything that's good, the rest angels alone can fitly tell. Haste then to them and him, and so farewell. I'm also not gonna say much about this because it is a spoiler, but one of my favorite podcasts of all time, S Town, is worth a listen if you're interested in this topic at all. S Town? S Town.
SPEAKER_01:Is that Seattle?
SPEAKER_00:No, it takes place in the South, but it's it's incredibly Sarasota. No, in the middle south.
SPEAKER_01:Seattle?
SPEAKER_00:Alright. Let's talk about riding shotgun.
SPEAKER_01:I know all about riding shotgun.
SPEAKER_00:Tell us.
SPEAKER_01:So it comes from the days of transporting things by wagon.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:Because someone had to sit next to the driver with a shotgun to stop like bandits and wolves and stuff.
SPEAKER_00:That's exactly correct.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, okay. Next one, please.
SPEAKER_00:Well, and also someone would sit there just as a show of force. Like they would hold the shotgun. So literally the person in the passenger seat would be holding the gun like a security guard. And sometimes they were, you know, actually, of course, ready to fire, but sometimes it was kind of like you'd be a a a moving target if you didn't have a body in that seat.
SPEAKER_01:Well, yeah, because you you're just walking around with the big Scrooge McDuck money signs all over your wagon.
SPEAKER_00:Exactly. The saying all but disappeared until the 1920s and 30s when Hollywood revived it with the rise of the Western.
SPEAKER_01:That makes sense.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. I think that's an interesting one. The term actually really became popular when newspapers started using it. And then another version was shotgun messenger, but obviously riding shotgun became the thing that we say today when we want to sit in the front seat of a car, but we don't want to drive.
SPEAKER_01:And how did that evolve from providing security roadside to shotgunning a beer?
SPEAKER_00:It's actually not super clear where that has come from. The the articles online are sort of like, yeah, it's from the mid-20th century when it was likely popularized by college students.
SPEAKER_01:So it is popularized by college students. So we need to contact a college, like Oxford because they're smart.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Yeah. It's a good research project. Yeah. We need to know. If you're listening and you are an Oxford uh research fellow, give us a ring. The term pulling my leg comes from criminal slang.
SPEAKER_01:Speaking of slang, do you know what it stands for?
SPEAKER_00:No. Do you?
SPEAKER_01:You c you can guess.
SPEAKER_00:It's something language.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:Silly language.
SPEAKER_01:Silly language, that's it. Yeah. It's street language.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, well, that makes sense. So pulling my leg dates back to criminal slang in the 18th and 19th century in England. Something that it originally was related to this act of like tripping somebody as a way to rob them. Like literally, you know, like you would tug their leg to make them stumble, and then you would take their wallet or whatever. Over time, though, as typical with these things, the violent meeting evolved, and now it's, you know, as we know, it's kind of like you're pulling my leg, you're tricking me, you're lying to me, you're pulling one over on me. There's another sort of alternate origin which dates back to the theater and the circus.
SPEAKER_01:Uh no, that makes sense. It originated in the Cirque de Paleg.
SPEAKER_00:That's good, Alan. Uh again, very similarly in this one, it it came from the act of one performer literally pulling on someone's leg to trip them or distract another performer, which seems pretty mean-spirited.
SPEAKER_01:Why would they do that?
SPEAKER_00:And it kind of evolved into like a playful teasing. I don't know, maybe if you were trying to look better than them in the circus. There's also an old English expression that sort of means to entangle somebody or hinder them in some way, metaphorically extending to tricking or fooling somebody. So it's all, you know, that one's pretty close. That one you can kind of see the through lines to where we are today.
SPEAKER_01:Thy grasp mine pantaloons.
SPEAKER_00:Okay, Alan, if you had to guess where kicking the bucket came from, this one's a little bit dark.
SPEAKER_01:Uh it's from hanging a pig in a barn.
SPEAKER_00:How do you know everything? That's so crazy.
SPEAKER_01:How do you not know it?
SPEAKER_00:I spent so many hours researching this, and you I could just sit down and serve these to you and you would know them. What a waste of my time. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:100%.
SPEAKER_00:So the idiom to kick the bucket, which now of course we use it to mean to die in kind of a callous way, like, oh, Oscar kicked the bucket. There's there's a few different theories behind it, but Alan is right. One of those, and the strongest theory, involves animal slaughter.
SPEAKER_01:I can't believe you've never strung up a pig.
SPEAKER_00:You've certainly never strung up a pig.
SPEAKER_01:You would know all these things if you just, you know, grew up on like a dairy farm or something.
SPEAKER_00:Don't even start with me. One of our biggest fights as a couple is that Alan doesn't believe that I grew up on the country's oldest dairy farm, which I did. It doesn't exist. It does exist. It still exists now.
SPEAKER_01:Cows aren't real.
SPEAKER_00:Okay. So typically when you would kill a pig, the animal would be hung from a wooden beam, which was also known as a yoke or a bucket. So the bucket was not a bucket as we know it today. Technically, it's a rafter. Yeah, but okay. And then as the poor creature died, as it I guess it was not totally strung up before.
SPEAKER_01:Poor creature. You don't know this, maybe it's a criminal.
SPEAKER_00:It w the pig?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah.
SPEAKER_00:It would often, you know, struggle and kick, of course, against um the bucket beneath it. Okay, so we just looked this up. So a beam bucket or a bucket beam is this sort of custom-made steel connection in wood construction, so in wooden barns, which is when people would be, you know, talking of using this phrase. There would have been wooden barns. As opposed to what? And it transfers vertical load from one wooden beam to another.
SPEAKER_01:What have you seen? A not wooden barn.
SPEAKER_00:I've seen aluminum metal barns, certainly.
SPEAKER_01:I feel like that their boy, they're like hangers.
SPEAKER_00:Alright, well, we're splitting hairs. So another theory points to a Catholic practice. So this would involve a bucket of holy water, and it would be placed at the feet of a deceased, and so visitors would sort of sprinkle the water along the deceased for as part of like a last last rites ritual. But sometimes if the bucket was accidentally kicked, it was, you know, bad omen, bad vibes.
SPEAKER_01:Was it on the bed or on the floor?
SPEAKER_00:It would be on the floor, but like if one of the passerby, not the corpse kicked it, but if like uh someone came in and got a little too enthusiastic and kicked it as they were walking around.
SPEAKER_01:Sorry, just this is like olden times. And if the bucket is on the bed and you know, the quote unquote corpse gets sprinkled and starts twitching a little bit, you're like, oh no, it's haunted. Quick, drive a spike through their forehead.
SPEAKER_00:Quick, we have a horror movie.
SPEAKER_01:And definitely not someone who's just really injured. Quick, bury them alive.
SPEAKER_00:But despite all of that, it seems the much more accepted version of the history is the animal.
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, the bucket beam.
SPEAKER_00:All right, Alan, you know everything. So tell us, do you know the origin of taking it with a grain of salt?
SPEAKER_01:No.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I've stumped him. This is one of the oldest phrases that we're going to talk about today. Taking it with a grain of salt dates back to ancient Rome. The phrase's first known use dates back to Pliny the Elder's Naturalis Historia from the first century AD. Shout out to Pliny the Elder. We have talked about Pliny from time to time on this podcast. Most recently, and probably the at the most at length, was during our dancing plague uh series, The Dancing Plague from 1518, which still remains one of my favorite series.
SPEAKER_01:Pliny the Elder dropped some fat beats and caused so many people to dance.
SPEAKER_00:Well, he really wasn't there. He was he acted as a secondhand source.
SPEAKER_01:No, he's like Banksy. You never know where he's operating.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. He's still here today. So back to taking it with a grain of salt, Pliny's use of the term comes in the form of a recipe. More specifically, an antidote, an anecdote to a poison. Pliny wrote that the anecdote should be taken with a grain of salt, which he claims will make the poison less potent and make the concoction easier to swallow. So here's the a quote of the translated passage. Quote, take two dried walnuts, two figs, and twenty leaves of roux, pound them all together with the addition of a grain of salt. If a person takes this mixture fasting, he will be proof against all poisons for that day. End quote.
SPEAKER_01:That's false. That is pure anaphylaxis.
SPEAKER_00:Well, you are indeed allergic to some of those ingredients. The saying became a metaphor over time. Instead of using salt to lessen the intensity of a poison, the saying, as we know, now implies that we should reduce the meaning or validity of what we are about to hear, which I don't know. I feel like that's a pretty similar evolution. Of all the kind of sayings and how they've evolved that we're going to talk about today, that one's pretty clear.
SPEAKER_01:Sure.
SPEAKER_00:It went from literal to metaphorical.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:Saved by the bell. So the phrase saved by the bell, Alan, do you know what it's from?
SPEAKER_01:Yeah, it's from the TV show.
SPEAKER_00:So there's two different paths. One is that it's often kind of thought of and associated with boxing, right? Where there was there's one fighter who's really down for the count, he's not doing a great job, and when the bell rings and the round ends, it's kind of a break for him, right? So that's obviously like saved by the bell. But there's folklore that dates back even further, connected to a phrase that's a little bit more spooky in origin. There was, which we've talked about many times on this show, but there was this fear from the Victorian era of being buried alive, so much so that they would put bells above coffins with strings, and the string would be around somebody's finger. So the idea was if somebody woke up and they were buried accidentally and they were still alive, they could move their hand and you would hear the ringing of the bell and you could save them before they got before they died from being buried alive.
SPEAKER_01:Well, that's pretty fun. I thought you were gonna say it's from executions where somebody would be like, you know, waiting in their cell and they hear the bell tower in the distance, and they're like, oh whew, saved by the bell. And then, you know, someone would have to be like, I got some bad news for you.
SPEAKER_00:I don't get why they would think that they were saved.
SPEAKER_01:That that's a for whom the bell tolls reference.
SPEAKER_00:Oh, I've never read that.
SPEAKER_01:I I thought you were a literary major. Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee. Did you even go to college?
SPEAKER_00:That's where I met Mr. Belding. This whole idea of like the bells outside of coffins and all of the Victorian era paranoia around being buried alive is loosely connected, right, to vampires. To vampires. Like literally to the origins of where we get that mythology, because people didn't quite understand what happened in the human body after it was buried. And so if they would reopen a grave and see that somebody's fingernails had grown or, you know, bodily fluids had moved, they would freak out and think that that person was undead or alive or whatever. They had come alive after, you know, or they weren't really dead when they were buried. So it's so fascinating, and we end up talking about this stuff all the time. All right, Alan, tell us the root of the phrase caught red-handed.
SPEAKER_01:I'm half remembering this. It has something to do with being a pickpocket and when they stole something, it was like a it was like a uh they would leave a mark on their hands. Like it would be like an entrapment type thing.
SPEAKER_00:Well, let's fact-check you. The funny thing is, being caught red-handed is actually quite similar to what it means now. Like it it originally also meant to be discovered in the act of doing something wrong or illegal, especially in connection to like being caught with like undeniable proof, right? That's kind of the whole point of the saying. So this phrase actually comes from medieval Scottish law. So now we're talking about my ancestors. In medieval Scottish law, a murderer uh or a thief or any kind of criminal would be convicted only if they were caught with the victim's blood still on their hands. And we know that's from early legal texts from the 15th century, which use the term red-handed to describe criminals that were apprehended again with literal visible blood marking their guilt. Of course, over time, this phrase has evolved and it doesn't just refer to like super violent crimes anymore. So there's a bit of a myth that we're gonna try to debunk around the phrase rule of thumb, which is often misidentified in its origin. So some people incorrectly say that it comes from this old British law that would allow a man to beat his wife with a stick no thicker than his thumb.
SPEAKER_01:Yes.
SPEAKER_00:That's that's not true.
SPEAKER_01:100% true. I learned that from Boondock Saints.
SPEAKER_00:That law never actually existed. Sure it did. I haven't seen Boondock Saints in so long. That was a firefight. Wow, you're in rare form today. So the real origin of rule of thumb is far more boring, but we love that it's not connected to domestic violence. So different types of craftspeople or tradespeople dating back to the 17th century often sort of had to rely on because there wasn't maybe the invention of or widespread use of rulers and things like that. So they would kind of use approximate measurements when they were looking at the body, and the thumb was a convenient and common reference point for like a measurement.
SPEAKER_01:So the the whole beat your wife with a stick was never a law. It's more of just a guideline. Because if it's small enough, it would leave it wouldn't like leave permanent damage.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, but this this isn't where the the phrase is from.
SPEAKER_01:It is because I learned all about it in Boondock Saints.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. And I forgot that that is a historic film. This was also used by brewers. So brewers would sometimes check the temperature of beer or ale with the thumb rather than a thermometer. They kind of, you know, they could feel it out.
SPEAKER_01:It reminds me of our famous story when uh my grandfather was out to dinner with uh the rest of my family, and he always loved getting his soup. He always ordered his soup as hot as the kitchen could possibly make it. Yeah. Like scaldingly, scaldingly hot.
SPEAKER_00:A l lawsuit waiting to happen.
SPEAKER_01:It was a very common occurrence for him to send soup back to be heated up. And so one time a waitress had brought the soup back after reheating it, and before she even put it down, my grandfather said, That's not hot enough, you need to send it back.
SPEAKER_00:Oh my god.
SPEAKER_01:And she's like, Sir, I don't mean to be rude, but you haven't even tried it.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:And he says, Yeah, but your thumb's in it, so if it was hot enough, you'd be screaming.
SPEAKER_00:Oh. What kind of soup would he eat?
SPEAKER_01:It doesn't matter. He just loved soup.
SPEAKER_00:He loved soup. You love soup too. So, Alan, I just looked this up, and actually, that incorrect domestic violence origin story didn't appear until the 20th century and has been repeatedly proven wrong by historians.
SPEAKER_01:Technically the 21st century, because that's when Boondock Sades came out.
SPEAKER_00:That's when it first appeared, I'm saying. Alright, Alan, tell us about Break a Leg.
SPEAKER_01:Break a leg comes from theater. Uh the I mean sorry. Break a leg has a few different origins. It's one of those things that cannot actually be confirmed. But one of the most accepted origins is having to do with theater where you come through the curtain, the bits of the curtain are called legs. So you are breaking a leg of a curtain by parting it to come out.
SPEAKER_00:So as we all know, saying good luck to somebody who's about to dance in front of an audience or go on stage is considered bad luck. And instead, actors tend to say break a leg to each other. The exact origin of this one is a little bit unclear. There's two different theories. So the first comes from this idea of breaking the leg line, which meant if someone broke the line of the curtain or the stage border by stepping onto the stage, then they earned sort of the role or they earned a bow. That's what I said. Yeah. Others trace it to vaudeville when performers had hoped to do so well that they would energetically bend or break a leg in repeated bows, right? That they would sort of have been bowed, bowed to the point of exhaustion because they performed so incredibly. I'm just going to content warn. This one is certainly dark and also true crime-based. So s feel free to skip ahead a minute or two if you'd like. Alan, do you know where drinking the Kool-Aid comes from?
SPEAKER_01:I do.
SPEAKER_00:Tell us.
SPEAKER_01:From from Jim Jones and his great party hosting abilities.
SPEAKER_00:Oh boy. Drinking the Kool-Aid comes from the Jonestown cult murders from November 18th, 1978, when Jim Jones led over 900 members of the People's Temple to commit mass suicide by drinking a flavored drink that was spiked with cyanide, tranquilizers, and other sedatives.
SPEAKER_01:It was actually not Kool-Aid.
SPEAKER_00:Correct. Do you know what it was?
SPEAKER_01:Flavorade?
SPEAKER_00:That's right. It's generally believed that it was flavor aid and not Kool-Aid.
SPEAKER_01:Can you just be can you just imagine being on the way out and then still being like, you know what? We should get the discount version of this.
SPEAKER_00:We're not even gonna splurge for so Kool-Aid is like the the better version. I didn't grow up on either, so I don't know.
SPEAKER_01:That's right, because you grew up on the world's oldest dairy farm.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. That's a right. I grew up on milk, on calcium. The Jonestown settlement was based in Guyana. So how did this horrifying event inspire a commonplace saying? This saying distills the essence of the thing, really, meaning to blindly follow a leader or anybody, going along with something problematic without questioning it enough. It also has some similarities to the old question, would you jump off a bridge just because whoever told you to? But drinking the Kool-Aid is not an amazing term to use, and I'm certainly someone who's guilty of it. But in reality, Jones forced 900 people, including kids, to take their own lives. It was a horrible tragedy. Talking about horrible tragedies, there is a phrase that comes from the Civil War. Do you know what phrase it is, Alan? Okay. Everything else is so easy for you, so let's level it up.
SPEAKER_01:A phrase from the Civil War. Is there any more context?
SPEAKER_00:The American Civil War. Right. You said this word, you said I was very good at this in our vows, in your vows to me at our wedding. You said, And by God, you always hit your partner deadlines. Meeting a deadline dates back to the American Civil War in the 1860s, when a deadline marked the territory or border of a prison. So kind of like this idea of an open air prison where there was a ditch or some sort of line in the ground that marked the boundary. And if a soldier that was imprisoned by the other side crossed this line, they may be shot. Hence the deadline.
SPEAKER_01:Do they yell? You crossed a line, buddy.
SPEAKER_00:Or you missed the deadline, pal. That's what they yell at you at work nowadays. Now it means, as we all know, the due date for something. I think the evolution there is right. It was like something that could not be missed, something that was pivotal. It was a deadline. Alan, tell us do you know about biting the bullet?
SPEAKER_01:I thought it was a suicide reference.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah, I think I thought that too, but it's not. In today, in society today, people are often urged to bite the bullet when they must do something that they really don't want to do, right? Just bite the bullet and go to the grocery store. I hate the grocery store.
SPEAKER_01:The ultimate human trial.
SPEAKER_00:So, right, today it's like, okay, you have to do something annoying, you have to, you know, go through something awkward, something you really don't want to do. But hundreds of years ago, this was much more than something of annoyance. This was far more literal and far more harrowing. The expression is often tracked back to battlefield medicine when hurt or wounded soldiers were subjected to surgery, and of course they didn't have, you know, painkillers or anesthesia and things like that back then.
SPEAKER_01:They certainly did.
SPEAKER_00:Well, they weren't they didn't always have them on the battlefield.
SPEAKER_01:In appropriate supply, but they certainly had lots and lots of booze and tons of opium.
SPEAKER_00:Sure. But but but again, I'm saying that stuff existed, but maybe not on every battlefield medical tent.
SPEAKER_01:Right, yeah. Not every operation had the appropriate tools. Right. So a lot of people had to get their like BBLs done without proper anesthetic.
SPEAKER_00:A more popular depiction in film, good I'm yeah, you know what BBL means. A more popular depiction of this in film is usually biting down on a leather strap when something painful was about to happen medically. But a bullet was also an option.
SPEAKER_01:Why use a bullet? It's gonna crack your tooth.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe that's what they had.
SPEAKER_01:They don't have a stick?
SPEAKER_00:So this improvised state.
SPEAKER_01:It literally grows on trees.
SPEAKER_00:Maybe if they're in a desert, they don't. Or the tundra. All right? War is everywhere.
SPEAKER_01:But you're gonna bite a bullet, which is gonna cover one side of your mouth and it's metal, so you can crack your tooth.
SPEAKER_00:This improvised safeguard had two pros. One to keep people from screaming and also from damaging their tongues. But historians have questioned this origin story as much as you are right now. Because it's dumb. Noting the absence of any sort of meaningful evidence and the fact that military surgeons usually carried leather straps for this. And again, as we've seen on TV.
SPEAKER_01:Get a wooden spoon.
SPEAKER_00:Oof. What? I don't like the taste of wood.
SPEAKER_01:You like the taste of metal more?
SPEAKER_00:No, leather strap is the best. It's like jerky. Another theory, and this is from this is actually a book that we have in our bathroom, Allen.
SPEAKER_01:Oh, um, how to relax?
SPEAKER_00:In this 1976 volume, a classical dictionary of the vulgar tongue, English writer Francis Gross describes the slang term nightingale, used for soldiers who cried out while while being publicly flogged or beaten. He noted that soldiers of certain regiments prided themselves on stoically enduring punishment and would quote, chew a bullet, quote, to keep them from screaming out or yelling out as they were getting beaten.
SPEAKER_01:I guess I guess it's kind of smart because if you have a bullet between your teeth and you get hit so hard that you really chomp down on it and it makes the bullet fire. Maybe you can kill your your attacker. Oh, but no, because this is with like ball and powder for like muskets and shit, right? Or do they use cartridges?
SPEAKER_00:In the 1700s, you tell me.
SPEAKER_01:1700s was absolutely like muskets and yeah. So you'd have to also fill your mouth with gunpowder.
SPEAKER_00:Hey, I'm sure it's been done.
SPEAKER_01:Rock and roll.
SPEAKER_00:Quoting from the Vulgar Tongue quote a soldier who, as the term is, sings out at the Halberts. It is a point of honor in some regiments. the grenadiers never to cry out or become nightingales, whilst under the discipline of the cat of ninetales, to avoid which they chew a bullet. End quote. Now, thankfully, both this very, very upsetting punishment and uh, you know, the use of biting down on a thing during surgery have been solved. Those are not things that we often run into, at least for now. So that's the good news. Alan, what's the origin of the phrase hot shot?
SPEAKER_01:Hotshot? Every reference to the term hotshot that I can think of is modern.
SPEAKER_00:All right. So a hotshot as we know it today, right? How would you describe a hotshot as we would use that term right now?
SPEAKER_01:A hot shot is when you add fire damage to your attack because then you can pop lead balloons.
SPEAKER_00:I would say that a hotshot is a phrase or a way to describe somebody usually like a younger kind of like overly confident show off type of a peacock person. They might rub people the wrong way around them because they are kind of a successful show off.
SPEAKER_01:It's someone who's talented and not afraid to show it.
SPEAKER_00:They're not humble. But so this phrase started with a much more literal meaning as they often do. Hundreds of years ago a hot shot referred to a cannonball that was heated so much that it started to glow. It was then fired into an enemy vessel and it would set it on fire.
SPEAKER_01:What I tell you, you add fire damage to your attack.
SPEAKER_00:You were saying it from like a gameplay perspective though and this is about the same thing.
SPEAKER_01:Well it's not well it's not really it's at you added to the pirate ship monkey.
SPEAKER_00:Who out there plays balloons? Just us? So these cannonballs were kind of kept warm on grates or like in special furnaces over fires because they could very easily turn gunpowder into flame. So they were kind of very carefully guarded and kept warm. They also had to be like when they were actually shot into the the thing the ship or the whatever they were trying to set on fire they had to be done it had to be done with extreme precision and very like precise measurements because it was so flammable.
SPEAKER_01:So a lot of these ships had cats because they take care of the mice? Yeah. They would have to like fight so hard to keep the cat away from the warm cannonballs.
SPEAKER_00:Oh that's so cute. Alan speaking of pirates and ships do you know the origin of the phrase show your true colors?
SPEAKER_01:Uh yeah that's has to do with flying your flags. So very oftentimes people would do false flag operations where you put up the wrong flag because that was really the only way to identify what a ship is is based off what flag they're flying.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah.
SPEAKER_01:So to show your true colors would be to show your true flag.
SPEAKER_00:How would that work?
SPEAKER_01:What do you mean?
SPEAKER_00:They would have to take down the enemy flag the fake flag and put up another flag.
SPEAKER_01:So say you're a smuggler, right? Okay. And you're trying to get stuff from the Caribbean to Europe. Uh you are going to have to go through so many different like checkpoints? Uh just different areas of water that are controlled by different nations.
SPEAKER_00:Port of call.
SPEAKER_01:And so like one part is going to be friendly to Spain. One part is going to be friendly to England one part is friendly to France. And it's part of your smuggler knowledge to know where you are and what flag needs to be shown at what time and what flag would get you shot immediately.
SPEAKER_00:Whoa, that's interesting. But yeah you're totally right no notes. So let's talk about the phrase to turn a blind eye. Of course today this means to willfully or knowingly ignore something. We know from the Oxford English Dictionary that this one dates back to at least 1698, which is a bit contradictory because generally the idiom is seen the idiom is thought to be inspired by an event from 1801, the Battle of Copenhagen but we see that it's been used you know in writings from 1698. Vice Admiral Horatio Nelson had one blind eye. When the signal came that sort of on the battlefield right that alerted him to stop his attack he claimed I really didn't see the signal and he was kind of looking through his one spy glass and it became like okay he has one eye but also he fucking saw the signal. He just didn't want to see the signal.
SPEAKER_01:It's the uh the old timey equivalent of oh no you're we're you're breaking up yeah that's not even a thing anymore.
SPEAKER_00:Right. The signals are too good now. Well it's not true at all it just doesn't make it it doesn't make the noises anymore. Yeah. All right Alan since you're so smart tell us about the phrase to run amok.
SPEAKER_01:Uh to run amok is actually a more modern version of another famous quotation from Pliny the Elder who was famous for coining the phrase beware of thoughts.
SPEAKER_00:Beware of thoughts? Who taught you that? Pliny the Elder You shouldn't whatever websites you're on make me nervous. Today running amok perhaps repopulated by the 1993 hit Hocus Pocus is used to describe someone who is out of control. But the origins of this saying are you just softballing the the hit hocus pocus. Yeah because that's like such a fun little moment in that movie. But the origins uh of course are quite different. According to the HistoryExtra.com article Captain Cook defined a muck in the 1770s as quote to get drunk with opium, to sally forth from the house indiscriminately killing and maiming villagers and animals in a frenzied attack end quote. This is from his travels to Malaysia where this sort of fit was often thought to be caused by this evil tiger spirit called Hantu Belin which was believed to possess a person and sort of drive them into this mad, murderous rampage. Sadly this usually ended with the possessed quote unquote possessed person either committing suicide or being killed by others to stop the madness.
SPEAKER_01:So like I said it's just another way of saying you gotta stay in control.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. So this next one is dark certainly because that's what we're doing here but it also kind of has a beautiful element to it at the beginning.
SPEAKER_01:What is it?
SPEAKER_00:Do you know the origins of the phrase white elephant?
SPEAKER_01:White elephant?
SPEAKER_00:Yeah. Like you know as the holidays approach some of us may find ourselves playing some version of white elephant or Yankee swap, but the phrase white elephant wasn't always in reference to this game. There's kind of a deeper origin.
SPEAKER_01:I do not know.
SPEAKER_00:According to the Oxford English Dictionary a white elephant is quote a possession that is useless or troublesome, especially one that is expensive to maintain or difficult to dispose of end quote.
SPEAKER_01:Unlike those gray elephants which are so much more easy.
SPEAKER_00:Let me tell you why the white elephant came to be thought of this way. So the saying actually comes from Southeast Asia particularly in modern day Thailand white elephants were considered sacred and incredibly rare. So giving one as a gift was a great honor but it was way more complicated than that. Essentially because they were so sacred and rare white elephants would not be used for labor.
SPEAKER_01:Sorry I just pictured an elephant in a little nurse's outfit helping someone in labor.
SPEAKER_00:But refusing this gift or mistreating an elephant was like unthinkable, right? Because they were so sacred. So if someone in power or wealth wanted to financially ruin somebody else in a very passive aggressive way, they would give them this horrible burden of this very sacred white elephant.
SPEAKER_01:So gifts should be burdens no I that's your takeaway? I've been doing it right all along yes that's true.
SPEAKER_00:If you have if you give one more person the purge box set of DVDs it is an incredible burden and I and I apologize to all of our friends they're good movies. I disagree they're too violent. You've never even seen them yeah but I've seen the trailer.
SPEAKER_01:No it's Abby get your shit together.
SPEAKER_00:Alan have you heard the saying Beyond the pale uh yes do you know what it means?
SPEAKER_01:Beyond the pale is a reference to Jim Gaffigan's first filmed stand-up routine.
SPEAKER_00:Close but off by a couple hundred years. So beyond the pale today usually means you've gone too far. But its origins are actually Irish and date back to the Middle Ages. So the Pale was a region uh in Dublin controlled directly by English rule. It was literally sort of like marked off as this territory right and so life quote unquote within the pale was thought of as civilized and highbrow and according to like the English standard and the English way while lands that were considered outside of the pale were thought of as wild and dangerous and Irish and beyond kind of like control, right?
SPEAKER_01:Here be monsters.
SPEAKER_00:That's right. So thus to go beyond the pale was to kind of cross this boundary into territory that was considered unruly. Today it still means to cross a boundary but of course a less literal one. Strange history is all around us all the time. There are so many more historic idioms that we still use today that have evolved in meaning of course over time. And I think it's just really interesting to look back and try to understand what has stuck and what has been lost. For instance in Victorian England people went around saying no you're onions to each other meaning to be very knowledgeable or informed.
SPEAKER_01:And then some things like old phrases come back full force, you know? Like what? Again to the other warning us of thoughts. And then it dips out of fashion for hundreds of years and now they are a scourge in society. Again.
SPEAKER_00:Alan tell me what you think a thought is that hottie over there so other sayings that were lost to time don't sell me a dog which Don't sell me a dog which meant don't trick me. And I've had some mild exposure to heavens to Betsy an expression of shock and horror from the 19th century but that's kind of faded away by 2025. I'll be there with bells on means I will be excited to come. I'm enthusiastically accepting in the 1950s teens would say let's blouse if they wanted to leave and take a powder meant to flee in the 1930s. All in all there is wild phrases all around us that maybe seem random but you can trace anything back if you have Wikipedia.
SPEAKER_01:So to take a powder uh is reference to having a smoke bomb that you would throw and then you could just escape.
SPEAKER_00:Is that true?
SPEAKER_01:Like Batman.
SPEAKER_00:Where did you learn that? Is that from Reddit?
SPEAKER_01:Uh if it's from Pliny the Elder I just his blog is amazing. That's right.
SPEAKER_00:Well Alan thank you for uh being here with me today and I guess I should have realized you would know all this and it wouldn't be that interesting too but it was interesting to me. Yeah you knew a lot of them I knew a few I'm surprised you knew about the curtain thing for taking a bow or for breaking breaking a leg.
SPEAKER_01:And then you said I was wrong.
SPEAKER_00:Yeah well sometimes I want to keep keep you on your toes.
SPEAKER_01:Okay.
SPEAKER_00:As always thank you guys so much for being here and listening. I hope you will take a moment next time to look up a a a saying that's being used in a conversation and you don't know what the origin is. Okay. Talk to you soon. Bye bye
