Chances are you recognize the expressions Judgment Day and root of all evil as phrases from the Bible. There are many others, such as the powers that be and bottomless pit, which both first appeared in scripture. • There’s a term for when the...
The term land of Nod, a joking reference to sleep, has its origins in the biblical Nod, to which Cain was exiled after murdering his brother Abel. Jonathan Swift first used it that way in his 1738 work, A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious...
A Temecula, California, man recalls that whenever he feels a chill, he says, “I guess someone walked on my grave.” If someone else feels a chill, he’ll say, “Did someone walk on your grave?” Then one day he shivered...
A Wisconsin listener says that when her body gets an involuntary, inexplicable shudder, she says “A goose walked over my grave.” An early version of the saying, “There’s somebody walking over my grave!” appears in a...
When you think about it, the saying “I’m as old as my tongue and a little bit older than my teeth” makes a good deal of sense. It goes all the way back to the 18th century and Jonathan Swift’s Polite Conversation. This...