More than you can shake a stick at likely comes from counting. A herdsman bringing cattle or sheep in at day’s end would tap or point at each animal with a stick to keep a tally, so a herd too large to count that way was more than he could...
Crescendo is not the high point of a sound, at least in the strict musical sense. Linda from Fort Worth, Texas, a retired symphony bassoonist, notes that a crescendo is the increase in volume or intensity, whether written out, abbreviated, or shown...