Where Common Terms And Phrases Originated

Have you ever heard a word or phrase and wondered when people started saying it? And why?

Language is constantly changing, and many of the common terms and phrases we use in everyday conversation have much deeper meanings than we realize. Numerous statements still in use have evoked controversy and reassessment, while others continue to find new applications.

#idioms #language #weirdhistory

[Oscarhobbit]

I enjoyed your video. I live in the UK. We call a bus, a "bus". The coach is used for larger fancy buses that people use for touring holidays or transporting VIPs. We would never say in the UK "I am going to take the coach to work", we would say I am "taking the bus".

[terriwetz]

My mom was born in 1930, grew up poor and raised/grew most of what they ate. She had a ton of weird sayings that I've repeated over the years and no one else has ever heard them before. Here's my favorite: "You can even learn to hang if you hang long enough." She passed about 6 years ago but was the greatest lady I've ever known.

[stanislausklim]

"Pulling all the stops" comes from the use of an organ. The organ stops traditionally pulled out to activate them. Now, a lot of organs just use buttons as the stops. The stops are basically the different instrument sounds the organ can make. By pulling all the stops, an organist is activating all the tones.

[oldschool]

Hoity-Toity is derived from the French Haute Toit which means high roof. If you had a high roof it meant you had a big house and were wealthy. In French you would say toit haute, but the term was mangled by early pioneers.

[lilivonshtup]

I always thought the term basket case was given to someone who was sent to a mental institution where therapy included weaving baskets.

[pucknorris]

This video was the bee's knees... The cat's pajamas... A diamond In the rough.

[Cinnabuns]

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, this narrator is my absolute favorite. His voice and sarcastic inflection bring me such joy. If he’s narrating the video, I’m watching it, even if I’m not interested in the subject.🙌

[scot]

My mom came from W Virginia in an isolated mostly Scottish descendant area. She had many strange sayings but my favorite was when she was annoyed. She’d say “sh!t fire and save the matches!”

[Rockhound]

The term "saved by the bell" was in reference to graveyards tying bells to string that was placed into the casket just in case someone was buried prematurely. If someone had appeared dead and been buried but weren't dead, when they awakened, they would pull on the string which would ring the bell and if you're lucky enough that someone was nearby, they would dig you up. Another good one was the saying, "you don't have a pot to piss in" in reference to being extremely destitute. This term originated in the Middle Ages when peasants would sell their urine to tanneries who would use it to cure leather. They would literally pee in a pot and bring it to the tannery. Some peasants were so poor that they didn't have a pot to pee in to bring it to the tannery hence they don't have a pot to piss in. Incidentally, being so poor that you had to sell your urine to make money led to the term "piss poor".

[AC-ihjc]

As both a psychologist and a space enthusiast, I can assure you that those are not photos of *psychologist* HENRY Goddard, but of *aerospace pioneer* ROBERT Goddard!

The pictures of him posing *WITH A ROCKET BOOSTER* should have been a clue.

If that's how poorly Weird History is fact-checked, it has earned a VIP Pass into the "Do Not Recommend This Channel" Club.

[NefariousKoel]

The people at Jonestown didn't actually drink Kool-Aid brand, despite the popular implication of the phrase.
They drank a competitor's product, Flavor-Aid. "Kool-Aid" was used because that's what everyone calls those kind of drink mixes, like some people calling all soda the name brand "Coke".

[jamesdietz]

The irony with "drink the Kool-Aid" is that it was actually Flavor-Aid used at Jonestown.

[eckankar]

In the 1960s we belonged to Jim Jones' church in Indiana. I spent Christmas twice at his home. So glad my family left the church when they did.

[swampmolly]

I once dated someone who had English/American as a second language with no problems. Even after having lived a decade in the states they still struggled with idiom's. You never realize just how many are integrated into our daily speech until you actually count how many you hear or use in a day.

[melindaschink]

I was taught in my college literature class that "peanut gallery" was much older, and likely referred to the audience of a Shakespeare (or similar) who couldn't afford proper chairs. They sat or stood on the dirt floor and ate peanuts, tossing the shells on the ground. Since they were poor, their opinion of the play didn't matter as much, lending to the negative connotation.

[markbailey]

I'm 72, and growing up the term "Basket case", was used for a motorcycle that was usually torn apart and its parts where all dumped in a "basket". Later, when I was older, old airplanes that were diassembled and probably missing parts, with a run out engine were deemed basket cases. Any mechanical contrivence that was advertised in the want ads as a "basket case" meant that it was all torn apart, missing pieces and was going to need parts and a Hell of a lot of work to get it running again, so it was unusally cheap.

[grapeshot]

In our attic at our old house me and my brothers found a letter written in 1909. And the word corking was used several times in the letter. So we went to the library to try to find out what that slang word meant and one of the librarians who was an historian told us that it was their word for cool.

[anthonyduffy]

What I find fascinating about word and phrase origin videos is the simple fact that every video has an entirely different origin for the words/phrases

[KarlMcCleve]

The term raining cats and dogs comes from early Irish or English origin ...with thatched roof homes, cats and dogs would climb up into the thatch to stay warm. When it would rain real heavily, it would make them slide out of the roof. So you know when it's raining really hard cuz you'll see cat and dogs going by your window

[martinjansson]

10:47 An early use of "tumregel" (rule of thumb), in Swedish, is from a textbook about physics, written in 1897, by the Swedish school book author Tom Moll (one of the earliest authors of higher education schoolbooks in Swedish). His Rule of Thumb state that if you put your hand around an electric coil, so that the fingers point in the direction of the current that run through it, your thumb will point in the direction of the magnetic north, of the magnetic field generated by the coil.

Is there any earlier uses of this expression with a different meaning. As far as I know, this is the first documented use of the expression in Swedish.

Tom Moll had Dutch father, so the expression might have come to Swedish from Dutch. The language used by physics and engineers, in all of Europe and America, was German, and when Tom Moll himself was a student, lectures (in Sweden), and the school books used, was held/written in German, so his choice of expression might have come from German. I find it unlikely that the expression came into Swedish from English, as English was not much in use outside the British Empire (yet) and didn't (yet) have much influence on other European languages (the international language of international relations, law, and culinary arts was French, the international language of philosophy was Latin, the international languages used between sailors was Dutch, Spanish, Lingua Franca, or Mandarin et c.). There were a lot immigrants to USA, from Sweden, in the 1840-60's (when there was several years with bad crops), and some of those, would later return back to Sweden, and with them some English loan words and phrases; but English was only influencing lower class Swedish, and using an English expression in Swedish writing, was, in the 1890's (it would change in the 1920's, when Enlish would really become the bees knees), seen as quite vulgar, unless it was fiction and the intent was to mimic what an English speaker might have said, or what some vulgar Swede, might had said (e.g. in 1880-90's there was a Swedish subculture called "grilljannar", that mixed English into their Swedish slang).