Oddity Shop
This podcast examines the oddities of the world...Cryptids to Conspiracies, Cults to Curiosities, Myths to Mysteries, and so much more! Stop by the shop, where the bizarre is always on sale... Each week your curators, Kara Perakovic and Zach Palmer will be opening the shop and sharing stories with you.
Oddity Shop
Idioms for Idiots: The Dark Origin of Common Phrases
Welcome To The Oddity Shop, Where The Bizarre is Always on Sale. This week, your curator Zach has the creepy and bizarre origin stories of commonly used phrases, or idioms!
Curious about the sinister stories behind everyday phrases? This episode uncovers the dark origins of idioms like "meeting a deadline" and "riding shotgun," tracing them back to their gruesome historical roots. From Civil War prison camps to Wild West stagecoaches, you'll be fascinated by how these phrases have evolved while keeping a hint of their original intensity. Join us as we delve into these eerie backstories and reveal the fascinating evolution of language through the ages.
Listener engagement is at the heart of this episode! We’re inviting you to share your favorite idioms and phrases with us. Who knows, your daily expressions might be the next topic of our deep dive! And of course, don’t forget to subscribe, tell your friends, and give Kara a compliment—she's pretty! As always, we sign off with our signature farewell: "creep a real ya Oddballs!
References:
· https://www.grammarly.com/blog/idiom/
· https://www.merriam-webster.com/wordplay/your-deadline-wont-kill-you#:~:text=In%20the%201860s%2C%20a%20'dead,until%20the%20early%2020th%20century.
· https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/501951/dangerous-history-behind-word-deadline
· https://discover.hubpages.com/education/The-Fascinating-History-of-11-Common-English-Idioms
· https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/14687941211046530
· https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/what-is-the-origin-of-the-term-paying-through-your-nose/art
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I want to dance with the mothman At the Irony Shop, baked in the moonlight At the Irony Shop. Creep through the graveyard To the Irony Shop. The door's always open At the Oddity Shop, yard Balls, where the bazaar is always on sale. I'm your curator, cara, with your other wonderful, beautiful, healthy, slim looking curators I was going to see how long you were going to compliment me, good lord. I was going to keep going until you made that face.
Speaker 2:This is the podcast where we tell you creepy, odd, weird, strange stories from around the world, and sometimes we tell you a little bit about ourselves. So, with with that, what's new with you?
Speaker 1:went to a concert. I was pouring, pouring tarantula.
Speaker 2:Oh, you talked about it like a while ago, the beach boys concert. Yes, tell us all how it went.
Speaker 1:It was. It was fun because, like you know, you have to make things fun. But there's only only okay quick fact. There's only one original Beach Boy left. He's 83 fucking years old. I can't remember his name, something love. It's amazing that he's still performing, right? The thing is is they basically make it a whole tribute show and so they put old videos up of like them, like, whatever. So they do it very um long winded and they do like okay. So anyway, midway through it starts torrential downpouring and they haven't played like any of their major songs, so we didn't hear any of them that's such a bummer
Speaker 1:so there was like a few and then, um, but not like the ones that we wanted to hear. So like half of my family left because they were like not trying to get wet, and then me, my mom and stepdad stayed and then, as we were leaving, as it's literally torrential downpouring I'm not kidding you like it was bad. John stamos comes back out on stage and then he dedicates a song to um, oh my god, what's the guy's name that died from full house? The dad oh my god, why am I drawing a blank?
Speaker 2:I'm picturing his face, but, but he.
Speaker 1:I know he dedicates whatever. And he says forever which, if any, thank you he's. He dedicates song forever and if any of you guys are Stamos fans or full house fans, jesse and the Ripper fans, that's a big song. So I had to run back and I had to record for my cousin's kids because they're obsessed with him.
Speaker 2:Anyway, long story, short, short then as we're running to the car after it's on a hill. I fucking slipped down the hill, biffed it, rolled my ankle, sprained it. Oh no, the same the same ankle that was your bad ankle too.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, it's always gonna.
Speaker 2:Oh, of course right, well, I mean it. Always I wondered if maybe it was the other one you sprained.
Speaker 1:You know, give yourself a break so it's bruise, it's black, it's blue, it's purple, it's artwork.
Speaker 2:Well, you know I was, I was gonna say something, nothing. Let me tell you something positive. Let me tell you something positive really quick.
Speaker 1:Did you know that there's gonna be a freaky friday 2 in the production? It's gonna have jimmy lee curtis and if chad michael murray isn't in it, I am not watching it. Also, there's supposedly going to be Magic 2.
Speaker 2:Ooh, that one I'm way more excited for because I still haven't seen Freaky Friday 1.
Speaker 1:Freaky Friday is fucking fabulous. And the soundtrack everybody listening right now knows the soundtrack and it fucking slaps.
Speaker 2:I do love me some Jamie Lee Curtis, though, so I will probably check it out. And also good for Lindsay she's looking great and fabulous.
Speaker 1:She's looking fresh, refreshed. She's got a kid, she's married, she's great. Now she's doing it.
Speaker 2:Good for her.
Speaker 1:Love her.
Speaker 2:Okay, so what do I got for you? One is I and you haven't noticed this in our last couple of recordings, but I recently slipped with my razor and I, for the first time in a decade, do not have a goatee or a beard or anything at all. Oh, I know, Fresh chin.
Speaker 2:I'm not used to my face. I'm going to grow it out immediately, but it was nice to see what it looked like for a second there. You don't like it, I don't know. I feel like I don't mind it, but I like it better with I so my chin hairs right, Whether it's a goatee or beard. They help me think I sit there and just twiddle them a bit. Now I just I can't think I think that you look little. I look like a baby.
Speaker 1:Like, you just look very young. Not that we don't all want to look young, but yeah, you just look. You look very young. I need to go to a bar and see if I get carded.
Speaker 2:That's what I really need to do. I mean, I get carded all the time.
Speaker 1:I, that's what I really need to do. I mean, I get carded all the time. I haven't been recently and I'm feeling old, but maybe now, maybe now we'll be good. Do you know what Lynn did the other day? Sorry, we went out to dinner and I got carded and she's like oh, thank you so much for asking, and just hands she just needed some of the validation too.
Speaker 2:Love it good for you, sorry um, no, the other thing is I got a really cute gift today from Julia, from her pottery class. She just finished up another one, so I now have a new thing to hold all of like my bracelets and watches and uh rings and stuff and earrings. They're like no, it's like all organized in there.
Speaker 2:It's so cute she's getting so cute that she made that for you, I know well, I don't know if it was for me, but she had all her pieces out. I said last time I'm still kicking myself in the the butt because she made this really cool thing and I didn't want to like take it, but then she still gave it away. So I'm like, this time I want first dibs got you.
Speaker 1:So you just basically said I'm having that yes cute. All right, you got anything else, she's not keeping all of it.
Speaker 2:That's really fun well, I was like till here. I'm like I feel like I'm like the proud mom because she's talking about giving it all away. I'm like we can clear off a shelf and put it all up.
Speaker 1:You should, though I know that's so cute.
Speaker 2:All right, all right, are you ready to get the shop opened up? Yeah, do you have a question for me? I do, I came prepared, do you?
Speaker 1:ever sit that you use all the time, and I knew you're going to ask me. Oh God, I came really quick to my brain and then it left. Dang, I wish I could think of one. What do I use all the time? Do you know what I use all the time? No, you're looking at me like you Okay.
Speaker 2:I was trying to think, but no.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but yes I do, Because some of them are just a little crazy. So at work all the time, when things are impending, I always say the writings on the wall, and I have no idea what that one meant that's a good one, that's right damn, I wish I could come up with one, because actually this is so funny that you said this, because I just said something a few days ago and thought about why the fuck do we say that?
Speaker 2:okay, well, and that's me intrigued it started with somebody sending me a tiktok of one of the ones we're going to get into. That was like I've never actually thought about like why we say what we say when we say it. Yeah, I'm not going to spoil them all, but a lot of them actually come from some like pretty dark or weird origins. So when we're ready, kind of a list episode. But so those types of phrases though let's start with the definition it are called idioms, yeah, and according to grammarlycom, an idiom is a phrase, when taken as a whole, has meaning you would not be able to deduce from the meanings of the individual words. Okay, right, so like the writings on the wall obviously means like it's not talking about. Like you know, when you say that, like the writing's on the wall obviously means like it's not talking about, like you know, when you say that the writing is not actually on the wall, it has totally different meanings than what those words usually mean.
Speaker 1:Isn't that crazy, though that? I'm sorry to interrupt you, but these weird fucking phrases just you just know what they mean, though, but you have no idea things that they mean that's so actually fucking weird I don't remember ever any of them being like explained to me or anything. You just kind of like pick up on them from context yeah, so right.
Speaker 2:It's essentially the verbal equivalent of using the wrong math formula but still getting the correct answer, which I really like that analogy oh, that is a good analogy so, for example, another one would be kill two birds with one stone right, like you're not actually gonna go kill two birds with a rock see that one does make a little bit more sense to me than the writing on the wall.
Speaker 2:But okay, right but fluent in native english speakers. Right, we understand that we're not gonna go throw rocks at birds, but that you're multitasking, or doing two things at once and if you do throw rocks at birds, I will literally come and kill you so the word idiom has nothing to do with idiot surprisingly idiot, I know you're just about you.
Speaker 1:I was waiting for you to say it like that how carol idiot, always idiot, idiot.
Speaker 2:But it comes from a greek idioma, which means peculiar phraseology.
Speaker 1:So I like that.
Speaker 2:Right, it's something that's normal to some but to others sounds really, really off. And there's like hundreds and hundreds of these. But let's get into some of the creepy ones, the first one. I have. I didn't even think of it as being an idiom Meeting a deadline. Have you ever thought about the word deadline?
Speaker 1:Yes, Okay, so isn't it like a flatline, like your deadline?
Speaker 2:No, like you're dead. No.
Speaker 1:Oh see, I always thought it was like that, Like when you're lying, like on the.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like when you're flatlining on a heart rate thing. Yeah.
Speaker 1:And then it's dead. You're deadline. No, nope, nope, oh. That's already dark enough. What could be darker?
Speaker 2:Right, I thought it was just a phrase that gave me like PTSD and anxiety about projects hanging over my head at work. But you know, in today's world the deadline won't literally kill you, but you don't want to miss one. But the original one was actually quite deadly. But the original one was actually quite deadly. The definition of a deadline is the, you know, the standard one is the latest date or time by which something should be completed. But we didn't start using that to the 20th century. In the historical one, a little bit more gruesome, we can find, like the earliest usage of the word deadline 1860 ish. It might have been before then, but that's when it like we have writing of it. So the historical definition is a literal, dry, trying, a literal line drawn around a prison beyond which prisoners are liable to be shot and killed. So you don't want to miss the deadline and step over it, or else you know what lights out.
Speaker 1:That sounds really familiar to something. Yeah, because it was drawn. Yeah, so you didn't go. Ok, deadline Interesting.
Speaker 2:What's kind of interesting here, though, like I said, we can see in 1860, some of the earliest writing of it, 1863, we actually have preserved diaries from captive soldiers during the Civil War talking about the prisons and the deadlines from captive soldiers during the Civil War talking about the prisons and the deadlines.
Speaker 2:When we're talking about prisons during the Civil War, though, we're talking about, like war, camp prisons, so prisoners of war, which, during the Civil War, we did not have very good treatment of the POWs. It was pretty harsh, they could have up to like 30,000-plus people, and usually, of course, it was the confederates making these, these camps. So the deadline could be a literal line, could be a ditch, could be a mound, but anybody who dared to cross it would likely be shot dead, if not killed in other ways. Yikes right, although, depending on how you want to look at things, it might be tempting to cross that deadline, because sometimes the conditions inside of those lines, these listen phrases, we're all going to be like, do you know, if you hang around this episode for nothing other than the fact that you get useless trivia knowledge, I'm happy.
Speaker 1:This is.
Speaker 2:This is awesome okay, so I got two passages from the diaries for you. Oh, okay give them to me all right. William williston hartstill in march.
Speaker 1:Williston, william williston hartstill williston great name is so cute, cool. You're like okay, thank you.
Speaker 2:I got 10 of these to get through. The guard lines are drawn in making our playgrounds much smaller and cutting us off from our best well of water. This is done for no other purpose under the sun, but to interfere with our only enjoyment and to grind us to the lowest depth of subjugation. The two subtler scores are moved inside the deadline. All right, mr lynch, we may meet you when we will have the say on you. Not sure what all of it means, but hey one of the earliest recordings of the word.
Speaker 1:Obviously, he is quite angry.
Speaker 2:Yeah, November of the same year, although I would be angry too. November of the same year, Robert Ransom. Before noon, we turned into the pen, which is merely enclosed by a ditch, and the dirt taken from the ditch thrown up on the outside, making a sort of breastwork. The ditch serves as the deadline and no prisoners must go near the ditch.
Speaker 1:That's creepy so meeting a deadline.
Speaker 2:Very different meaning, but I think I'll take, even though the corporate one gives me anxiety. I'll keep that definition, yeah 100% Okay this next one. You've said it a million times. I've said it a million times Probably most when we were teenagers and just getting our driver's licenses. This next one. You've said it a million times, I've said it a million times Probably most when we were teenagers and just getting our driver's licenses you know what one this is?
Speaker 1:I can't think of it.
Speaker 2:Imagine you're running to the car with all your high school friends. What are you going to yell? Shot, oh, shotgun, shotgun. Yes, so riding shotgun. Do you know? Do you know why this one is?
Speaker 1:I feel like this one's not too surprising, but I mean, I feel like in my head I get it, but I can't.
Speaker 2:Okay, articulate. So the first known use of this phrase comes from writer Alfred Henry Lewis in his 1905 novel the Sunset Trail. But it was said to be popular during the Wild west in America and also colonial Australia. Okay, so what he wrote was Wyatt and Morgan Earp were in the service of the Express Company. They were often, as guards, riding shotgun, it was called when the stage bore unusual treasure. So the words used by Lewis to explain that guards for hire would often sit in the passenger seat of stagecoaches that had highly valuable items, okay, when they were going through an area rife with, like, outlaws or native americans or highwaymen. So the guards would be armed with a break-action shotgun, or sometimes called a coach gun, which was a super powerful close range rifle for, like you know, when people are, basically the bandits are coming for the loot, all right. The funny thing is is that bandits got really, really smart to this and they noticed that coaches would only hire the shotgun riding guards if they had high value guns.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:So if you just lie, so they just had passengers, right yeah, if they just had passengers, usually the stagecoach wouldn't have a guard. That seat would be open and the bandits would be like, no, not for us. So the presence of the guard actually started to bring more attention and more likelihood of people being robbed.
Speaker 1:Yikes, that's yeah, shotgun. See, I guess in my head the way that I kind of articulated it was, if we take it back to Greece, you know, like you're riding shotgun, like you're like my right hand man for the races, like what they kind of were Right, so I kind of had it in the right way, but yours is more of like a dark, morbid way, like the real ways.
Speaker 2:Remember the next time you say you're you call that shotgun seat, you better be ready to defend that vehicle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so the next time I'm in shotgun and you're driving, I am going to defend your life and my loot.
Speaker 2:What loot, oh, you know what? I don't even need a guard, you're just gonna check on this anyway. All right. So the next one, though. Have you ever heard, like when, okay, like especially now, right, when we keep talking about how damn expensive everything's gotten, like grocery stores Yikes, can't even leave my house without spending $100, I fucking feel like Mm-hmm. I don't know about you, but I am so sick of pain through the nose for everyday necessities.
Speaker 1:I don't know if I've ever heard that. Oh really Pain through the nose.
Speaker 2:My mom said this one a lot. I feel like Really yes. I feel like Really yes, Like pain through the nose.
Speaker 1:I always just thought like I mean, I guess I always hear like pain through the ass or something, but pain through the nose, ok, so yeah, what is so? What is you interpreted as Like? What do you think?
Speaker 2:I always thought it was just like, like your pockets were empty, whatever. Like you were, just like.
Speaker 1:I don't know, like money's pouring out of your nose.
Speaker 2:Right, so it has nothing to do with anything coming out of your nose, but we have to go back to the Vikings. So the Scandinavian, denmark, swedish, norway people right, fierce, violent warriors, insanely agile on the sea and they would just kind of like undertake raids throughout Europe because they were so vastly overpopulated in their home areas. Ok, so, nearby and sick of the constant rating, english and irish people tried to strike up deals with the vikings.
Speaker 2:Okay, so, a lot of like local, like not kings, but you know people who had their little kingdoms, I guess the rulers of their yes, sir, little kings, they would have to pay a tax to the vikings, and, in turn, as long as they paid their tax, they weren't pillaged, robbed and killed. Solid deal, okay. So this tax was called a dane geld and would ensure that the vikings would leave people in peace, as long as you paid on time. Now, the vikings were reasonable people, were they? Um, because if you didn't pay the tax, they wouldn't just go back to killing you, at least not at first, but it was a very, very expensive rate to pay. So, when you didn't pay, the vikings would come pay you a visit, but they just punch you in the nose, nope, take their axe and slit your nostril all the way up and open, and then take it back all the way around, to your ear, basically, or up to your eyebrow. Sometimes they would even start at your lip and just go all the way across. Why, though?
Speaker 2:Because, once you had that scar it would be a really good reminder to anyone else coming in that you didn't pay your tax once already. Oh Mm-hmm.
Speaker 1:That's.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and that like you're not not gonna live a normal life after that. I mean they're from lip to nose, up to your eyebrow or like almost over to your chin that is so fucked up, but it is good, right because you're, because you're right.
Speaker 1:You're gonna have that scar forever.
Speaker 2:It's never gonna go away, it's gonna be awful and everybody will know the next time you you say you're paying through the nose for something, maybe be a little less dramatic, all right. Number four is one I feel like we all know, but I found a really interesting twist on it that I didn't. So the phrase mad as a hatter, you know this one right? Yeah, basically it was, or a lot of us were, introduced to the mad hatter through alice in wonderland, yes, so the 1865 book Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll. That's kind of where we got like the very popularized trope which led to Mad as a Hatter being a common phrase. So the Mad Hatter, highly eccentric, crazy character which is funny, in the book they never call him the Mad Hatter, he's only called the Hatter.
Speaker 1:Wasn't it though, though the chemicals of making hats and stuff, though?
Speaker 2:yes, we're gonna get to that. Okay, so he spends a whole book, right, like interrupting alice and using bizarre logic and just comes like increasingly hostile. So, just like you said, hatters were kind of they had a reputation of being a little bit crazy because the what they would use to produce the felt was mercury. So they were handling mercury all the time they would get in the 18th and 19th century, acute mercury poisoning and nobody knew like how dangerous mercury was as a compound at first it's like the rain uranium girls yeah, yeah, absolutely the same thing right radium, radium girls, yeah, yeah, absolutely the same thing, right radium radium thank you.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so the poison of the mercury, right. It would start with like third speech, trembles, stumbling, but as it progressed, right, hallucinations, psychosis, and that's where we get that mad hatter trope, the mad as a hatter thing it is so crazy to me that we would just think and categorize somebody because of a profession of some way.
Speaker 2:Like I understand, we didn't understand but we just had little, we had little minds that we were just like every hatter. Just is mad thankfully, though, because of so many mad hatters like. That's what led to us finding out that it could cause things like irritability, low self-confidence, depression, apathy, shyness and memory loss. I feel like I'm at the end of a uh drug commercial commercial side effects drug commercial.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I'm gonna repost that it was good yeah, oh yeah, it's, it's time it's been if y'all know, you know so I told you, though I had a fun twist on this, for yes, okay, so the character of the hatter in wonderland, who's helped like popularize the phrase, gets his inspiration from a real person. The twist is he didn't make hats. What did he make? So they think that it's widely agreed upon that the character in the book is named after an odd duck named Theophilius Carter. A duck, an odd duck, it's just a name for, like a strange person, you never heard somebody be called an odd duck before.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so are you going to tell us, is that going to be your next one? Why is it called an odd duck?
Speaker 2:No, it's not actually.
Speaker 1:Oh shit.
Speaker 2:So, but Theophilius Theophilius, I'm not sure exactly how you say it he was a purveyor of furniture who would resell items in his shop near Oxford, close to where Carol went to school, and wrote Adventures of Alice in Wonderland. Okay, he would kind of go all about town. He would always have a fun top hat on at a strange angle near the back of his head. That's cute. We don't know if he was actually mad, but he was a crazy inventor and would make things like the alarm clock bed that would drop you from your bed into a bath of cold water.
Speaker 2:Hey, I kind of like that right and many other, just like eccentric inventions. That kind of made him known as a local weirdo that's so cute I have another fun, though matt like a real life mad hatter story, for because the one that the character was based on wasn't really a Hatter. Do you know that a Mad Hatter has actually killed a famous assassin?
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:So Abe Lincoln was assassinated in the theater by John Wilkes Booth, and Booth was shot to death for the crime he committed. But he was shot by a man named Bostonoston corbett who spent most of his early life as a hat maker. Oh wow, it's widely believed that his exposure to mercury caused his decision making to go affected for the rest of his life. And he was considered mad as a hatter when he and his unit had surrounded booth in a barn in virginia and he completely just went against orders and, instead of taking John Wilkes Booth alive, shot him dead. Hmm, but he was forgiven for his disobedience even after the event made him leave the army.
Speaker 2:And guess what he did, what he went back to hat making. Oh, just because I didn't make hats Until they put him in an insane asylum. Oh Later. But lucky for our Mad Hatter Boston, he escapes and is never seen again at some point.
Speaker 1:Huh, okay, all right, really quick. For those that are like me, if someone says a duck, it means they have a quirky personality or unusual habits. The expression comes from the Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale, the Ugly Duckling, in which the little duck, who doesn't fit in with the rest of the flock, is actually a swan, which after reading that I did know.
Speaker 2:Look at you helping us out here adding another to the list.
Speaker 1:Yeah, now Okay.
Speaker 2:All right, is there anybody? We don't need names that you have been warring with, or, like you got some beef with anyone out there, who Don't I True? Well, you should really start to like get over it, settle that score and just bury the hatchet, kara.
Speaker 1:Oh, yes, bury the hatchet.
Speaker 2:This one's actually less dark than I thought.
Speaker 1:Oh see, I would have thought that if we're now that I'm thinking about these, I would have thought that it's like somebody got murdered and you're trying to forget about it, so you bury the hatchet.
Speaker 2:That's honestly what I thought it was, and we all know by this point in you know, two years of podcasting that I can't get through a single episode without mentioning Native Americans.
Speaker 1:But it's so funny that you said that, because then my other thought was like no, a hatchet is Native Americans. So Right, ok.
Speaker 2:And, on top of it, this is probably the only one on the list. That isn't an idiom.
Speaker 1:Oh.
Speaker 2:Because burying the hatchet really literally means in this case burying the hatchet.
Speaker 1:Okay, yeah, so it's like ceremonial maybe.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it was a practice when warring tribes of Native Americans would finally come together and forge a peace treaty.
Speaker 1:I love this.
Speaker 2:They would ceremoniously bury their weapons in the ground next to each other as a gesture that the conflict had been settled and the weapons aren't needed anymore why am I getting emotional?
Speaker 1:because you're on your period care.
Speaker 2:That's so sweet it is kind of cool, so this actually happens so much over native american history, like it's across many, many tribes. And they started to do it when, like they would settle scores with settlers too.
Speaker 1:Oh my God, I love this.
Speaker 2:So I found a couple to tell you about. So 1680 in Massachusetts.
Speaker 1:Stop, I'm going to start crying.
Speaker 2:It's okay, this isn't that sad anymore. Okay, english men and Mohawk tribesmen meet to bury a set of axes binding the peace treaty between settlers and natives. In early American history Like this is 1680, a hundred years before America. You know we started selling those scores early, why I don't know 1761. Okay, a hatchet bearing ceremony ends a 75-long war in Nova Scotia.
Speaker 1:That's so cute.
Speaker 2:Between the British and the Micmac tribe.
Speaker 1:Okay, Micmac tribe, I like that.
Speaker 2:And then in 1795, the Treaty of Hopewell, hatchets were buried to stop fighting between Colonel Benjamin Hawkins Men and the Cherokee Indian tribe. This one, the treaty actually mentions it. So the treaty reads the hatchet shall forever be buried and the peace given by the United States and friendship reestablished between the said states on one part and all of the Cherokees on the other, shall be universal. And the contracting parties shall use their utmost endeavors to maintain the peace given. And the contracting parties shall use their utmost endeavors to maintain the peace given and the aforementioned friendship. So like they literally buried axes to say we are never gonna fight again next time we get into an argument what can we bury?
Speaker 2:we need to get like um little tiny hatchets everyone, so just be like oh, we should just get like.
Speaker 1:We should get like a bunch of them, so that we don't have them on deck well, you know how we get along.
Speaker 2:We, we need a few. What's that?
Speaker 1:mean on deck I don't know.
Speaker 2:You have to google it and you can throw it in. Uh, because we're we're almost through this, but I got a couple more for you. Okay, I'm getting this little hatchets if we didn't bury our hatchets and this is one you're really good at, I feel like is this shade? It's sort of close to throwing shade, uh, but it's something you know I meant like are you giving me shade by saying that?
Speaker 2:oh, yeah, yeah, I am. Uh, no, this one, this next phrase, I think you you're good at. If you don't settle the score, what's another name for snubbing somebody?
Speaker 1:you give them the old cold shoulder oh yeah, I'm great at that Ice queen over here.
Speaker 2:Right when, when you get pissed off and you want to ignore somebody or snub them. It's basically the exact opposite of a worm. Welcome, if you took a guess.
Speaker 1:I think you just said worm Welcome.
Speaker 2:I'm not warm, but I like worms, although if you open the door to a bunch of worms, that's that's a little cold shouldery. Where do you have any guesses?
Speaker 2:I think you're dead, like you're cold you're also wrong again that's fine, because I this one I would have never put together. Okay, okay, so we're back to the 1800s again, and it has more to do with your meal than it does a human shoulder. So in the 1800s, when people would come over to your house and you had guests that you welcomed, they would always be served a hot meal and refreshing beverages.
Speaker 2:Okay you just being a good host. If a host wanted to make it known that you were not welcome in your home or in their home, they would offer meat from the shoulder of whatever animal they would be serving for dinner. The shoulder was known as being the toughest and coldest part of the animal that would retain the less amount of heat. It was usually cooked well prior to being served. The unwelcome guests would receive the cold shoulder from their host to eat.
Speaker 1:I I kind of love this, because you then really know that you weren't welcome.
Speaker 2:Literally, my next sentence is this definitely gets the message across that you you're like. Here's some inferior food. I don't like you.
Speaker 1:They will never come back. That I love. Why don't we do this shit now?
Speaker 2:I, I'm going to have some pork shoulders in the freezer just for when I need it, you know. So this phrase come. We can trace its earliest written use to 1816 by the novelist sir walter scott, and in his piece titled the antiquary he writes the countess's dislike didn't go farther at first than just showing the old cold shoulder. Uh, and later on he writes I must tip him the cold shoulder or he'll be pestering me eternally. So he actually uses it both ways. The first time it was written right as serving the cold shoulder, and then later, in the same book, tip him the cold shoulder. So it was likely Sir Walter Scott, who's obviously like a hugely famous author, who kind of changed the meaning of that phrase.
Speaker 1:I love that. I love that I love that right, uh.
Speaker 2:And then the next person to pick it up was dickens, and you know now it's definitely written into history, did you? Uh? Did you figure out what on deck was yet?
Speaker 1:I mean, basically it is what it is. It's just like people on ships and stuff, just it's like their readiness so they're like ready I wasn't thinking ship at all, though you weren't. So that's kind of what I always thought.
Speaker 2:I was thinking like on a tape deck.
Speaker 1:Oh no, I don't know why. Basically alludes to crew members being on the deck of a ship in readiness to perform their duties, which that's literally what I thought.
Speaker 2:OK this is fun. So the next one. I was actually thinking about this one a ton when you did your episode on witches. Ok, especially when you're talking about something with the green witch. Ok, say, you said something and all of a sudden you get superstitious about it. What do you do? How do you protect yourself when you say something that you still want to have come true, or like you don't want to have the worst case scenario come around?
Speaker 1:why am I drawing blanks to every one of these that you're giving me? I don't know, I don't know it's gonna be so obvious's yelling at me.
Speaker 2:They are, because you better knock on wood.
Speaker 1:Knock, knock, knock on wood.
Speaker 2:Do you want to take a stab at this one?
Speaker 1:Nope, oh, isn't it? When you're to make sure that you're not buried alive like you're not dead, you're knocking on the casket.
Speaker 2:That's a good guess and a lot of people know, so that that's kind of one of the commonly OK, it's a commonly accepted version of it, but it is not the original. Remember we're going back to original. So, you, you're, you're not wrong.
Speaker 1:No, I'm not entirely right. No, tell me.
Speaker 2:OK, knocking on wood is actually a magical ward that dates back to pagan times. So pagans and more spiritual religions believe that spirits lived within all of nature, especially within trees, so that knocking on or touching a tree with the correct spirit inside would protect you from bad luck.
Speaker 1:Do you think that that's why Bigfoots knock?
Speaker 2:Ooh, maybe. Maybe they're more spiritual than we think.
Speaker 1:Well, because they're more elemental right, We've decided that they are.
Speaker 2:Yeah, or UFO. I think we're still on. I think it's all intertwined True.
Speaker 2:Okay. So on the flip side of this, though, you could also knock on the tree as a gesture to the gods or spirits when you received good blessings, so as a way to say thank you. Now the Irish had to take this one step further, and they knock on wood or knock on trees for a very different reason, and it's to thank the leprechauns for good luck or to keep them from messing with them. Okay, makes sense, right? Little shysters Now, because this is a pagan thing.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Right Christian religions who renounced all pagan beliefs or stole some of them. Right. They told everyone because these are false gods in the trees, yes, that you are not in fact bringing upon good luck to yourself. That if you knock on wood, you're summoning a demon.
Speaker 1:Yep makes so much sense.
Speaker 2:Be careful. You could either be getting really good luck or, you know, Lucifer.
Speaker 1:So this does bring me back to the witch episode, because the green man is supposed to be the protector of all like woods and stuff like that. So I'm thinking that I'm just gonna start knocking on trees, yeah there you go or when you.
Speaker 2:There's something else you had said about like paying your respect to nature during that whole part, like I'm like oh, that's very similar to knocking on wood I mean delilah, because if anyone knows, but they wouldn't know.
Speaker 1:But delilah doesn't go walks. She's seven years old and she fucking hates walks. I finally got her to go on a walk almost a mile, because we found a little nature trail right by my house. You know the cemetery.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1:There's a nature trail right across the street from that cemetery and we went down it. I know and I'm going to knock on trees, Okay.
Speaker 2:All right, all right. Last one for you, and this is the one I started with. So this one suggests that doom or misfortune is coming and is inevitable. It's the one I said right at the beginning. The writings on the wall yes, okay, so it's usually used right when something's coming, usually something negative. It's not always negative, though. It could just be like inevitable, but whatever it is like if the writing is on the wall it's kind of too late.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and I guess I kind of always interpret it to be like it's obvious. That's why it's like on the wall, like in front of you, like it's an obvious thing, type of deal. That's how I've always, I guess, thought.
Speaker 2:That's kind of what I thought, too is just like it's going to smack you, like it's so obvious, it's so clear, it's on the wall. Ok, it can also be expressed as the handwritings on the wall, which I've never heard before, but apparently, that's common in some places.
Speaker 2:This one comes from the Bible, which you would have thought as many years as I went to a religious school I would know. Yeah, it comes from the Book of Daniel, book of daniel, and I use the word gentlemen here loosely. Gentlemen named belshazzar is having a feast in the temple, where they are getting too tanked, eating way too nice of food okay and using sacred vessels to drink the wine. They're basically just trashing and desecrating this temple when, all of a sudden, the story goes a disembodied hand appears and begins to write the Aramaic words mene, mene, tekel, a parson on the palace wall. Now, this is fun, because this is an idiom within an idiom.
Speaker 2:So at face value, the translation appears meaningless. Meaning two minas, a shekel and two parts. So a minas and a shekel, I parts. So a minus and a shekel, I will tell you are forms of currency, okay, but belshazzar can't make any sense of this and he has to bring in the exiled jew named daniel. And daniel comes in to explain to us because he knows that this writing must be from god and god only himself, oh yeah, and that it's a play on words. So each word denotes a different coin and the last word could be parts, but it could also be persia, which is where this temple was. So many. Many tackle a parson. Daniel gave it this meaning many god has hath numbered thy kingdom and finished it. Tackle thou art weighed in the balances and aren't found wanting. Paris is the kingdom is divided and then given to medes and the parisians yeah, I still don't know what that means.
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, daniel's gonna explain it to us a little bit in layman's terms um, it means that due to his partying hard and making God upset, it is now inevitable that Belshazzar, for desecrating his palace and just being a kind of fun-loving drunk, was going to lose his kingdom, and that it would be split between Medes and the Persians if he had not been partying so hard he wouldn't have missed all the prior apparent warnings from god, before god himself had to write it on the wall and make it very clear.
Speaker 1:Okay, so yeah, I would have never thought all of that, but yeah, it makes sense that one's probably got like the deepest meaning of the ones.
Speaker 2:I could have kept going.
Speaker 1:There's like okay, can you a? Hundred more of them reread really quickly all of the 10 that you gave us.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I think I said 10, but I think I might be actually under 10,.
Speaker 1:But Whatever, give me one.
Speaker 2:We have meeting a deadline, okay, right, so don't cross the deadline, you're going to get shot. Yep, riding shotgun, once again shot. If you steal the loot, though Paying through the nose, we're just going to rip your face wide open if you stop paying your taxes, which was a very expensive tax. We have mad as a hatter, so the mercury poisoning, but that's the one where we had the fun twist, where the character we all kind of like, the archetype of the mad hatter, is literally just a crazy inventor who bought furniture, burying the hatchet. Pretty damn straightforward on that one, the cold shoulder, referring to your meal, a pretty shitty meal we threw in on deck and odd duck.
Speaker 2:Which are fun words to say Odd deck and odd duck On deck and odd duck. Try saying that Ten times fast. Okay, knock on wood. Some men, demons are thinking the spirit yep. And then the writing's on the wall god's literally telling you that you're fucked. What's?
Speaker 1:your favorite out of those ones?
Speaker 2:I I kind of really like the knock on wood, because I feel like that's what I'm gonna think about a lot, because I say that all the time, knock on wood, and then I do it.
Speaker 1:It's like, okay, well, now I can put some witchy shit right, I can put some of that intention behind it so and use it as more of a manifestation that's my favorite as far as, like, I can do something with, but bury the hatchet really got me well, you were literally crying over it like, but then I will try to see if. I can pull a clip from this recording, just like actually crying, but then the cold shoulder is actually my favorite as far as what it means.
Speaker 2:Because I feel like the cold shoulder is one of the ones. That was a very literal Soak. I always thought it was just very literal, like I'm just gonna. But how many times do?
Speaker 1:you have somebody in your life where you're like they're an acquaintance of a friend of yours or whatever, and you're just like I mean we, you and I don't do this anymore, really, because we're old enough to just like, have boundaries. But how many times and like things have you been like these people just come to whatever because you feel bad or whatever, and you're just like they don't get it I don't like them, I don't want and you've, you do, give them the quote-unquote cold shoulder, but they still don't get it.
Speaker 1:But if you, if there was something that, like it was known everywhere that if you got this one thing, you are not welcome liver and onions.
Speaker 2:Now I I kind of like that most people don't know it. Now, right, it's inspired me to throw a dinner party and invite somebody I don't like.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but then what are you going to?
Speaker 2:give them, I don't know, something cold though Anchovies. Well, it depends, because I like food with anchovies yeah. Like give me a real salad dressing with actual anchovies in it. I love it.
Speaker 1:My child's being very sassy right now.
Speaker 2:Yes, she is, which means it's probably time to wrap this up. Well, I love that, have you been listening to what's Up Weirdo around the house, because that's how Toad always tells them it's time to wrap up.
Speaker 1:He does. Toad is so cute. I loved that, though.
Speaker 2:That was so fun yeah, I thought it was.
Speaker 1:It's a little bit different, you know, but like cool and it's like I like the darker side of stuff that we just don't realize. Um, so I think that if you made it till the end, I had it in my head, but I wanted you guys to leave and then I lost it.
Speaker 2:Fuck, is there a hatchet?
Speaker 1:That wasn't what I wanted, but now I don't remember what. But is there a hatchet?
Speaker 2:I feel like after you. Yes, there is a, there's a axe like a fireman's axe.
Speaker 1:So leave an axe, or maybe like some crying tears Cause I cried.
Speaker 2:There we go. Okay, I'm surprised. This is like one of the first episodes you've really cried in. I know it doesn't always take much.
Speaker 1:Okay, so that was awesome. Thank you, thank all of you. We love you.
Speaker 2:If you want more idioms, send us some of the ones you want to hear the meanings to. What are the phrases you use every day?
Speaker 1:Give me something more to look up, but also just send us some ideas of what you want to hear. Not, send us some ideas of what you want to hear.
Speaker 1:Not that we're running out of ideas, but like it's, it's always got at least two more years in us but it's also so much fun and it's like refreshing when we get your guys's ideas of what you guys want. I think we asked on the last episode or one of the other episodes, I don't know but share with people, share with your oddball friends, that would really mean a lot to us. Like, share with your oddball friends. That would really mean a lot to us. Like us Subscribe, you know.
Speaker 2:Tell Kara, she's pretty.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I haven't asked that in a while.
Speaker 2:All right, let's close the shop up. What's the last thing we need to do?
Speaker 1:Listen, you all know it by now. But the most important thing is to creep a real yard balls.
Speaker 2:Goodbye, bye, outro Music.
