For at least three centuries, declaring I’ll eat my hat! has indicated that the speaker is so certain they’re right, that if they’re not, they’re willing to swallow their chapeau. Variations of this phrase include I’ll eat my boots, I’ll eat my cap...
Which is correct to describe “a morally upright path” — straight and narrow or straightened arrow? The latter is picturesque, but the vastly more common term is straight and narrow. The original expression was strait and narrow, a...
If you’re feeling poorly, you have several options for expressing how crummy you feel, including: I feel like death on a soda cracker, I feel lower than a snake in a wagon rut, I feel like I’ve been rode hard and put up wet, or I feel...
There are lots of colloquial phrases to explain away the cacophony of a thunderstorm: The potato wagons are rolling, The tater wagon’s going over the bridge, The potato wagon broke down, and God is dumping out potatoes and washing them off. In...
If someone’s got melon, it means they’re smart. The expression most likely arose because of the resemblance between a melon and a human head. Several other foods are associated with having brains, including a cabbage, a gourd, and even a...
Chad in Hilliard, Florida, wonders about the expression old as Methuselah, meaning “extremely advanced in years.” The phrase references Methuselah, a figure in Jewish, Islamic, and Christian tradition said to be 969 years old when he...
