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Spilling The Beans On The Cat's Pyjamas: Popular Expressions: What They Mean And Where We Got Them (2009)

by Judy Parkinson(Favorite Author)

3.53 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

1843173654 (ISBN13: 9781843173656)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Michael O'Mara

review 1: A bit of a nothing book - no doubt easily put together from plenty of existing sources with some reasonable illustrations. The explanations are interesting enough, although some seem fanciful and many I already knew. My favourite snippets that I didn't already know ...."To Come up to Scratch"In the days of prize fighting, under London Prize Ring Rules, introduced in 1839, a round ended when a fighter was knocked down. After 30 seconds rest each fighter than had 8 seconds to return to a point in the middle of the ring marked by a scratch. If one couldn't manage that, he hadn't "come up to scratch" and was declared the loser."The curate's egg"Now means something that's both good and bad in parts, but was originally an egg that was bad, fed to a new curate by the Bishop which... more the curate ate saying it was good because he was too mild-mannered to say it was off. So originally something bad that was claimed to be good out of politeness."Hoist by his own Petard"Of course comes from Hamlet, but a petard in 1600 was a newly invented explosive device: a metal bell-shaped grenade fillwed with gunpowder and used to blow up barricades and walls. Sometimes the fuse went off too early and the engineer was thus blown up (of lifted off his feet, or hoist) by his own bomb. Also, interestingly, the word Petard comes from the latin "petare" which means to fart, so make of that what you will"Put a sock in it"this phrase harks back to the early days of the gramophone, which was just a metal horn and thus no volume controls. Therefore the only was to reduce the volume from a gramophone was to literally, put a sock in it (the horn). I loved this one, it was my favourite in the whole book."To be on Skid Row"From the early days of logging in North America and Canada - a skid row was a row of tree trunks laid on the slopes leading down to the river. The later trees could then be felled on here and they'd slide down to the river themselves without extra labour ready for transportation - because it sounds like a street, Skid Row was taken to mean the lowest of the low, the place where everything tramples on top of you.So, as I say, not a lot to it and one of those books that's pretty easily put together for publishers, but an interesting read as a bathroom book though.
review 2: I have a love for language, especially sayings and expressions. It is interesting to learn the root of some of those famous quips. That is exactly what this book does, and it does it very well.I have to admit, there was not one I didn't hear at one point in my life. Though I had gotten some mixed up. I always knew of the Gift Horse, but I thought you kicked a gift horse in the mouth not looked a gift horse in the mouth. If I hadn't read this book I would still be saying it wrong.I highly recommend this book to all you language enthusiasts out there. This is a real gem! less

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