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Where Does It Come From? Origins Of Phrases & Expressions

There is also an increase in "Turn for the worst." as opposed to "Turn for the worse."

I may have mentioned it elsewhere but spacecraft being referred to as spacecrafts is on the increase in assorted TV programmes. I have a vision of knitted saucers.
 
What? Do you think I was born yesterday?:)
It's another phrase for calling out horse pucky.

The "born yesterday" thing is indeed often used to respond to bullshit, but not with quite the same connotations as "balderdash" or "bollocks."

To call something "balderdash" is to claim that you consider the subject / object at issue nonsensical or false in and of itself.

To say "I wasn't born yesterday" in the same situation means you are not naive and you can't be fooled by the subject / object at issue.

You can claim you're not going to accept (fall for ... ) something without necessarily meaning it's nonsensical / false.
 
Another slang term for nonsense / bullshit is "claptrap." It wasn't until I looked into it today that I learned it was originally a theater term somewhat similar to today's "-bait" (as in "click-bait') to mean something done or presented to elicit audience applause / approval (i.e., "applause-bait").

It wasn't until later the word was used to mean "rubbish."

claptrap (n.)
1730, "a trick to 'catch' applause," a stage term; from clap (v.) + trap (n.). Extended sense of "cheap, showy language" is from 1819; hence "nonsense, rubbish."
https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=claptrap
 
Another slang term for nonsense / bullshit is "claptrap." It wasn't until I looked into it today that I learned it was originally a theater term somewhat similar to today's "-bait" (as in "click-bait') to mean something done or presented to elicit audience applause / approval (i.e., "applause-bait").

It wasn't until later the word was used to mean "rubbish."


https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=claptrap
Claptrap was one I used to hear my grandad say. Plus he used the word clappers to mean the same thing. “ You don’t arf talk a lot of clappers”, I can hear him saying it now.
 
'Blather' - where did that one come from?
I guess it's related to 'blether' and 'blither'.
 
'Blather' - where did that one come from?
I guess it's related to 'blether' and 'blither'.

"Blether" is apparently the originally imported form, with the variant "blather" being the main one adopted in English. "Blither" is a variant that emerged a few centuries later.

blather (v.)

1520s, blether, Scottish, probably from a Scandinavian source such as Old Norse blaðra "mutter, wag the tongue," perhaps of imitative origin, or from Proto-Germanic *blodram "something inflated" (the source of bladder). ...

blather (n.)
"nonsense, foolish talk," 1787, blether, from blather (v.).
https://www.etymonline.com/word/blather

blither (v.)

1868, variant of blether "talk nonsense" (1520s), a northern British and Scottish word ...

blithering (adj.)

1880, present-participle adjective (from the first typically with idiot) from blither (v.) "to talk nonsense." From 1872 as a verbal noun.
https://www.etymonline.com/word/blither?utm_source=related_entries
 
Sweet Fanny Adams! Not sure where the sweet came from but I always assumed it meant sweet F**k All
"Sweet" Fanny Adams was an 8 year old murder victim, who was murdered and dismembered in 1867.
She is buried in Alton cemetery and I walk past there every year when I attend the Alton beer festival (which is where I first learnt about the gruesome story).

The heinous murder made the national news and, apparently, the very poor quality tinned mutton issued to British servicemen in subsequent years acquired the nickname "Fanny Adams" in a jocular but vile allusion that it was so unpalatable that it might as well have been bits of the poor chopped-up girl.
The expression then spread to refer to anything of no value that might as well be thrown away.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fanny_Adams
 
…the very poor quality tinned mutton issued to British servicemen in subsequent years acquired the nickname "Fanny Adams" in a jocular but vile allusion that it was so unpalatable that it might as well have been bits of the poor chopped-up girl.

That never changes. In WW2, the Italian army issued canned meat to its men. All the cans bore the stamp “AM”, for Amministrazione Militare. The Italians joked that it stood for asino morte, or “dead donkey”. German troops - who acquired some in swaps, or by seizing it when Italy capitulated - maintained that AM meant alter Mann, or old age pensioner.

US troops today are issued with MREs, or “Meals, Ready to Eat”, which GIs insist stands for “Meal, Rejected by Ethiopians”.

No-one likes rations.

maximus otter
 
"I'm pulling your leg"

How did that come about to mean that someone was deliberately making something up to fool you humourously?
Why pulling? And why the leg?
 
"I'm pulling your leg"
How did that come about to mean that someone was deliberately making something up to fool you humourously?
Why pulling? And why the leg?

There's no consensus on the age or origin of this idiom. There's no documentation of it (or referring to it ... ) earlier than the 19th century.

One common explanation relates to pulling on the legs of a person hanged (by other than a quick neck-snapping long drop procedure ... ) so as to accelerate their death. There's no documentation of this explanation or the alleged practice that dates as far back as the time when such "slow" hanging was commonly done.

The other most common explanation is that it alludes to tugging or pulling at someone's leg to trip them or affect their stance or progress.

... Note: There are two possible explanations for this expression, althoughthere is no proof for either. One suggestion is that in the past, when someone was being hanged, their friends or family sometimes pulled their legs hard so that they died more quickly and suffered less. Alternatively, the expression may refer to thieves tripping people up before they robbed them.
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/pull+(one's)+leg
(Citing Collins COBUILD Idioms Dictionary, 3rd ed.)

To tease or fool someone; to trick someone in a humorous way. This term for a time was thought to allude to the gruesome practice of pulling on the legs of a person who was being hanged in order to shorten his or her agony. In fact, however, the current meaning of the cliché dates only from the late nineteenth century, long after hanging was accomplished in more humane fashion (by means of a long drop). Most authorities now believe it alludes to tricking a person by tripping them, using a cane or foot or other object that, in effect, holds back one of their legs so that they fall. Current in England in the late nineteenth century, it had crossed the Atlantic by 1910, when O. Henry wrote, “You can’t pull my leg,” in his story A Little Local Color.
https://idioms.thefreedictionary.com/pull+(one's)+leg
(Citing The Dictionary of Clichés by Christine Ammer)

pull (v.)

... To pull (someone's) leg is from 1882, perhaps on notion of "playfully tripping" (compare pull the long bow "exaggerate," 1830, and pulling someone's leg also sometimes was described as a way to awaken a sleeping person in a railway compartment, ship's berth, etc.). Thornton's "American Glossary" (1912) has pull (n.) "a jest" (to have a pull at (someone)), which it identifies as "local" and illustrates with an example from the Massachusetts Spy of May 21, 1817, which identifies it as "a Georgian phrase."
https://www.etymonline.com/word/pull#etymonline_v_2836
 
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My grandmother used to say someone was "like a cow with a musket" if they were awkward or clumsy.

It wasn't just your grandmother who said it ...

It is remarkable what fine hands men of genius write, even when they are as awkward in all other uses of the hand as a cow with a musket.
Sara Coleridge, Memoir and Letters (1873)
 
Which reminds me of the following quote which I thought came from The Simpsons, (but now I can't find it);

"It's like a donkey with a banjo - nobody knows how it got it, or what it's going to do with it?!"

I knew it was from "Marge vs The Monorail" (Series 4 episode 9F10 written by Conan O'Brien). It's spoken by Monorail salesman, Lyle Lanley, as part of his sales patter.

I couldn't remember the exact quote but Google could, it's "A town with money is a little like a mule with a spinning wheel: no-one knows how he got it, and danged if he knows how to use it".
 
So what's the origin of 'cut the mustard' (as in when something isn't really good enough and it doesn't 'cut the mustard')?
I think it may have its origins in the batch testing of mustard. In consistency testing, the mustard has to be finely ground and wet enough to spread well. The tester lays a dob of it on a special metal plate and a thin scraper is applied to see how far the mustard will spread. If it's too thick, the scraper won't cut the mustard and it won't spread far. Tomato sauce is tested in the same way, IIRC.

 
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