Culture Reflection

Culture Reflection

Idioms; Their meanings and where they come from.

By Josiah Sapp

    If you were to tell a goldfish that they were in a bowl surrounded by water, it would be difficult for them to wrap their mind around it. What is a bowl? What is water? Why am I here? Isn’t everywhere like this? It’s all they know so it would be confusing to point it out or ever give it a name. There are weird things we do as a culture and I think it’s healthy (and fun) to put a mirror up to ourselves and ask why we do the things we do. Being such a diverse country made up of people from all over the world, there is bound to be traditions and sayings that bleed into our day to day. We say phrases every day that we understand but don’t know where they come from. Folklore and myths often surround these phrases but that doesn’t stop us from saying them anyway. I’ll be creating a non-exhaustive list of popular phrases with their meaning and a brief origin explanation. If you want to take a deeper dive into their lore, I’ll provide links for that as well.

1. “Bite the bullet:” Meaning to accept the fate of a situation and deal with it even if you don’t want to. It has a very literal origin. In times of war (dating back to the Civil War), surgeons didn’t have proper anesthetic in the field. They would offer a wounded soldier a shot of whisky and a bullet to bite down on while the surgeon did what needed done.
2. “Bury the hatchet:” Meaning to settle your differences/arguments with your enemies. Originating in Native American culture, they would make their most common weapon, the hatchet, a symbol of war and bury it. Peace would be made between tribes as their instrument of war could longer be seen or used.
3. “Long in the tooth:” Meaning getting along in age. Usually used to poke fun at someone getting older, the phrase originates among horses. The main way farmers could tell how old their horses were is by measuring their teeth. The longer the tooth, the older the horse.
4. “Last ditch effort:” Meaning to give it your last best attempt. Early use of the term can be traced back to England in the 1600s but there are also recordings of it being used during the American Revolutionary war. Both instances are from the military and both reference the last ditch or trench of defense. It was commonly used as a rallying point.
5. “Humble pie:” Meaning to admit and own up to a mistake or wrongdoing. Originally, humble pie wasn’t metaphorical but a real meal for many people. The meal of “umble pie” traces back to the 1400s and meant the innards or organs of a deer. Hunters would sell a whole deer to a family and the actual venison was reserved for the lords and ladies of the house while the innards were set aside for the servants. To eat umble pie was seen as a sign that you accepted you roll as a lower class citizen.
6. “Kick the bucket:” Simply meaning to die but it’s origin is not so simple. Suicide is often associated with the term. The implication being that you’d stand on a bucket as you hang yourself and kick the bucket from underneath your feet. In the UK, “bucket” has a few meanings. It could be read as a “yoke” or “beam”. Butchers would hang livestock by their feet from these buckets as they begin the slaughtering process. The animal would violently fight back, kicking the bucket or beam.
7. “The peanut gallery:” Meaning a rowdy or heckling group of people. Originating in British theater, the very top seats of a play house were often the cheapest seats reserved for “less refined” customers who would insult and heckle at artists they didn’t like. That stereotype continued in the U.S. and the favorite snack of poor Americans at that time were peanuts. If they found the entertainment unfit for their taste, insults and peanuts were hurled from the top row.