My Favorite Phrases!
Please see below for more of my favorite phrases but with my personal connection or their origins.
Even a worm will turn
Even the humblest and weakest will retaliate if provoked sufficiently. The very first phrase on my list.
Bite the bullet
The origin of this phrase comes from the days before anesthesia when a soldier would be told to bite a bullet during surgery to clamp down on instead of biting off his tongue from the pain.
Pull yourself up by your bootstraps
Achieving your goals through as much hard work as levitating yourself by grabbing your bootstraps would take
Burn the candle at both ends
The phrase came originally from a French expression and morphed into working so hard that you burn yourself out. Additionally, candles use to be an expensive item, and thus to burn the candle at both ends implied that one was wasting a valuable item for an obsession.
Buy the farm
A phrase from the military when someone was to retire they were given insurance money that many military men joked about using to buy a farm and so victims of war were thought to have bought the farm.
As dead as a doornail
Really dead. Doornails were hammered into wood and then clenched to provide additional grip which bent it meaning that it could not be used again and was even deader.
A watched pot never boils
This phrase was introduced to me by my grandmother whom I call, Mommom Suzanne. We were in my kitchen making something and I was growing impatient waiting for the water to come to a boil. She said to me “A watched pot will never boil” and now every time I am boiling water I think about this, and refuse to watch it.
Penny for your thoughts
This is another phrase that was introduced to me by Mommom Suzanne. When I would stay at her place in the summers, I would often get lost in my thoughts and she would turn to me and say: “Penny for your thoughts?” I had never heard the phrase before she taught it to me, but it became our thing to ask each other.
Cabin fever
When one becomes restless or disheartened from being separated from others or being stuck inside for too long. The phrase Cabin Fever was used in the 1800s hailing from the American West as people put a name to the feeling of being trapped in their cabins for the long, long winters. It is also thought to have another origin from people who were confined to small quarantined dwellings when they were ill with an infectious disease. I have always liked this phrase and use it when I feel I have been cooped up in one place for too long.
As mad as a hornet
This is a phrase that my mother would say all the time in reference to my little brother. It simply just means angry, so whenever he was a little kid and would get angry about something my mom would say “he’s as mad as a little hornet.”
Doesn't know beans
A phrase meaning ignorance, it is a jab at a Bostonian who is so ignorant they cannot even cook up the city's most famous dish: baked beans. Starting in New England the phrase eventually spread across the country.
The bee's knees
Something that is excellent! For some reason, I just really enjoy this phrase.