When Julius Caesar chose to cross the Rubicon River and march against his rival in Rome, he supposedly said Alea jacta est, or “The die is cast,” indicating that at that point, there was no going back. The phrase is a reference to...
No great shakes means not impressive, no big deal, or nothing much to boast about. Kat in Dallas learned it from her mother and found that friends sometimes took it for a family oddity, but the expression has been around at least since the early...
“A horse apiece”, meaning “six of one, half a dozen of the other,” comes from an old dice gambling game to describe a draw. This is part of a complete episode. Transcript of “Etymology of “A Horse...
The die is cast has nothing to do with dye in water or a metal mold. The die is the singular of dice, and cast here means thrown, the older sense still found inside broadcast and podcast. Brian in Indianapolis ran into the phrase as the title of a...
ticket house n.— «Many Hoosier Lottery games are patterned after games that have been played in pea-shake houses for years, such as selecting winning combinations of three or four numbers, pull tabs and tickets. People pay 2 cents and...
pea-shake n.— «Many Hoosier Lottery games are patterned after games that have been played in pea-shake houses for years, such as selecting winning combinations of three or four numbers, pull tabs and tickets. People pay 2 cents and more...