Ask any foreigner visiting the United States as to our language with its many and varied slang words. It has to be impossible to understand for most of them because truthfully, it’s pretty hard to understand even if you were born and raised here. I’ve noticed in recent weeks while reviewing some British Tick-Tock participants who apparently are as confused about some of our language as I am. For years I’ve collected a huge list of clichés because they intrigue me. Some of them are cute but if you’re not an American you’ll have one helluva time trying to figure them out. Today I’ll share with you a few samples that you’ve heard but probably never knew where they originated. See would just think . . .
SLEEP TIGHT
This term is nothing more than a way of saying “good night and sleep well”. The phrase dates back to when beds were made of rope and straw. It is a shortened form of the expression, sleep tight and don’t let the bedbugs bite.” Before going to sleep at night, people would have to pull the ropes tight in order to have a firm bed to sleep on as the ropes would’ve loosened during the course of the previous night’s sleep. (I’ve actually slept on a rope bed and it’s like a sort of punishment or torture.)
SNUG AS A BUG IN A RUG
This expression dates from the 18th century, although a “snug” is a 16th century word for a parlor in an inn. The phrase is credited to Benjamin Franklin, who wrote it in 1772 as an epitaph for a pet squirrel that had belonged to Georgiana Shipley, the daughter of his friend the Bishop of St. Asaph. Franklin’s wife had sent the gray squirrel as a gift from Philadelphia, and they named him Skugg, a common nickname for squirrels at that time. Tragically, he escaped from Its cage and was killed by a dog. Franklin then wrote this little ditty:
Here Skugg
Lies snug
As a bug
In a rug.
KISS OF DEATH
This phrase derives from Judas Iscariot’s kiss given to Christ in the Garden of Gethsemane before he betrayed him (Luke 23:48 and Matthew 26:49). It’s also known as a “Judas Kiss,” meaning an insincere act of courtesy or false affection. In Mafia circles, a kiss from the boss may indeed be a fatal omen. The phrase is often used today in political or business contexts, meaning that certain associations or actions may prove to be the undoing of a person or organization, or the downfall of a plan or project. (I always thought it referred to several of my former ex-girlfriends.)
CATCH FORTY WINKS
A colloquial term for a short nap or a doze. Just why shutting one’s eye 40 times has come to mean a quick snooze is unclear, but it could have something to do with the fact that the number 40 appears frequently in the Scriptures and was thought to be a holy number. Moses was on the Mount for 40 days and 40 nights; Elijah was fed by ravens for 40 days; the rain of the Flood fell for 40 days, and another 40 days passed before Noah opened the windows of the ark. Christ fasted for 40 days, and he was seen 40 days after his Resurrection. As an aside: A “40” is a bottle containing 40 fluid ounces of malt liquor beer. Street gang members will drink 40’s and will sometimes pour out a little of the beer onto the ground for their dead homies. (Not so holy anymore.)
PUT A SOCK IN IT
This is a plea to be quiet, to shut up, to make less noise. It comes from the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th centuries, when the early gramophones, or phonographs, had large horns through which the sound was amplified. These mechanical contraptions had no volume controls, and so a convenient method of reducing the volume was to stuff a woolen sock inside the horn.
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