Speaker Barry Smith - Idioms

Barry strung the idioms he was quoting around a story of a man dating a woman for the first time and the process from there: -

• Drop dead gorgeous - Your heart starts going so fast that it stops and you fall down dead
• Bite the bullet - From battlefield when soldiers were given a bullet or a piece of wood to bite down on when undergoing surgery
• Cold shoulder - If somebody turned up unexpectedly if you liked them they would be given a hot meal but if not liked they were given cold shoulder of mutton.
• A feather in the cap - The first time somebody killed a woodcock on a hunt they would put one of its feathers in their cap
• Cold feet - Again a battlefield term from when a soldier was unable to fight in battle because of frozen feet
• Dutch courage - From the reputed heavy drinking of the Dutch
• One for road - Pubs used to be few and far between - perhaps the next one was 200 mile away hence travellers would have one for the road. Also condemned prisoners being taken from Newgate to the gallows would frequently be allowed to stop at a pub for one last drink
• Break the ice - Sailors in olden times had to use a pickaxe to break ice so the ship could move
• Get hitched - From the term for connecting a horse to a wagon
• Paint the town red - It is said that the Marquis of Waterford used to hold wild parties and one night a group painted several buildings in Melton Mowbray red
• Honeymoon - Comes from a Scandinavian tradition where newly weds were supposed to drink mead for first lunar month
• Happy as a Clam at high tide - Few had heard this saying. It comes from the fact that predators have to swim away from the rocks at high tide hence clams could swim about unafraid
• Heard through grapevine - After the invention of the telegraph so many wires were strung about that they looked like a grape vine
• Read the riot act - It used to be the law that if the Riot Act was read out and protestors did not move away within the hour they could be shot
• Once a Blue Moon - In the 16th century the cleric William Barlow included the first known reference to a Blue Moon sarcastically meaning it would never happen