Origins of some common phrases

Day 321 / 365

The call icon on your mobile phones 📞 is a receiver of a landline phone. The save icon 💾 is a floppy disc. All this might seem obvious to us, but these will surely puzzle people 100 years from now when both these objects would be long forgotten. That makes me think, what symbols or phrases do we use in our daily lives whose origins we might have forgotten? I found some interesting ones.

To butter someone up

This one is quite common, it means to flatter someone purposefully. This actually has Indian origins. Back in the day in religious ceremonies, people used to put ghee (which is known as clarified butter outside of India) on the deities in order to make them happy.

To bite the bullet

This phrase means to endure a painful situation that seems to be unavoidable. Its origins are quite literal. When army doctors were short on anesthetics while on the battlefield, they would make the patient bite on an actual shell of a bullet to help him cope with the pain.

Caught red handed

This is used when someone is caught in the act of doing something wrong. This has its origins in 15th century Scotland with people getting caught with blood on their hands from illegal poaching.

This post is part of my 365 Day Project for 2019. Read about it here

Yesterday’s blog — The Loneliest Guy in the world