Life is just a phase you're going through...you'll get over it.
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And finally some old ads you wouldn`t get away with today........
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The Origins of phrases we use every day !!!
When somebody Brings Home The Bacon they have achieved something notable, or won a prize or award. There are two possible explanations for this phrase. The first is an ancient game, popular at country fairs up and down the land. Men would chase a heavily greased pig around a ring and whoever finally caught and held on to the pig was given it as a prize to take home. Such winners were said to have ‘taken home the bacon’. The second, and far more likely, explanation originates from a tradition known as the Dunmow Flitch Trials. Established by a noblewoman called Juga in 1104, at Great Dunmow in Essex, the trial was a challenge to all married couples in England to live for a year and a day in complete harmony, without so much as a cross word between them. The prize offered was a flitch of bacon (a whole side) but in over 500 years there were only eight winners. The tradition was re-established in 1855 and these days are held every four years, often with celebrities taking part. Claimants of the flitch are required to stand in front of a jury of 12 (six maidens and six bachelors of Great Dunmow
prove their worthiness during a day-long family event. The winners ‘take home the bacon’. These days, it would seem, the noblewoman’s bacon is safe.
Not A Sausage is a way of describing either something as free of charge or one’s own self as being penniless. It is derived from another example of the colourful cockney rhyming slang of London, where sausage and mash was a staple diet between the 17th and 18th centuries. To be without ‘sausage and mash’ is to be without cash.
To suggest a person is No Great Shakes is to imply they are not particularly effective, and not up to a given standard. The word ‘shakes’ in this context comes from the Old English word ‘schakere’, which means to boast or brag. This was a phrase used frequently in the 13th century and the phrase ‘of no great schakere’ meant a person had nothing to boast about. A second widely held belief is that the phrase comes from the game of dice, suggesting a poor player wasn’t any good because his ‘shakes’ were not effective enough.
Spondulics is a slang word for money. According to the Oxford English Dictionary it is a word of ‘fanciful origin’ but my Greek friends have managed to trace it back to their ancient language and the word ‘spondulikos’, which derives from ‘spondulos’, a type of seashell. Apparently this shell was once used as a currency and is very likely to have been the origin of our slang phrase. In addition, the Greek word for spine, or vertebrae, is ‘spondylo’ and a stack of coins could resemble a spine. This suggestion is supported by John Mitchell in his book A Manual Of The Art Of Prose Composition, first published in 1867, in which he lists ‘spondulics’ as a ‘coin pile, ready for counting’.
If a person is Not Worth His Salt they are regarded as not very good at their job and not worth the wages. During the days of the Roman Empire salt was an expensive commodity and soldiers were actually paid partly in salt, which they carried in leather pouches. This payment was known as ‘salarium’, from the Latin word ‘sal’, meaning salt. The modern word for wages, ‘salary’, also originates from this source.
The origin of the phrase Taken With A Pinch Of Salt goes as far back as AD 77 and the Latin Addito Salis Grano written by Pliny the Elder. The elderly Pliny had discovered the story of King Mithridates VI, who once ruled Pontus and built
up his immunity to poisoning by fasting and then taking regular doses of poison with a single grain of salt in an effort to make it more palatable.
Scallywag is a word used particularly around the Liverpool area, to describe a boisterous, energetic and disruptive young male who has little regard for authority. The word started life as ‘scurryvag’, which comes from the Latin phrase ‘scurra vagus’ meaning ‘wandering fool’. In London the word ‘scurryvag’ was used to describe a scurrilous vagrant (a merging of the two words) which later became scallywag thanks to the Liverpool accent.
To Spill The Beans is a widely used term for giving away a secret. A tradition that began in ancient Greece for electing a new member to a private club was to give each existing member a white and brown bean with which to cast their votes. The white bean was a yes vote and the brown meant an objection. The beans were then secretly placed in a jar and the prospective member would never know how many people voted either for or against him. Unless, that is, the jar was knocked over and the beans spilled. Then the club members’ secret would be out.