11 Common English Idioms that We've Been Using Since the Middle Ages
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- čas přidán 16. 05. 2024
- Here are 11 great expressions that are very old some of them more than a 1000 years old. For each idiom there will be an example of usage and a look at the history. + there is a bonus expression at the end.
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#idioms
00:00 The Story
00:41 Make no bones about something
02:22 Sink or swim
03:49 To curry favour
05:47 Child's play
06:27 A Baker's dozen
07:40 Scot free
08:58 Apple of my eye
10:14 Throw down the gauntlet
11:34 A nest egg
13:27 Woe betide
14:51 Red letter day
15:33 The bonus expression
That's interesting, one of the types of brushes we use to groom a horse is a Curry Comb. Makes sense now!
And it's a brush 😂
The figurative phrase make bones about "take exception to, be unable to swallow" (mid-15c.) refers to fish bones found in soup, etc. The presence of bones made the soup challenging to eat, and discovering bones became synonymous with finding something objectionable in a situation.
Another interesting example is “the whole nine yards.” In medieval times, a bolt of cloth was nine yards long. So, if you bought the entire bolt, you took “the whole nine yards.”
Everybody has a theory for the origin of “the whole nine yards” that is wrong. The earliest known use of the phrase as we mean it today was about 1907.
Anther possibility: a concrete/cement truck holds nine yards (cubic yards.) "The whole nine yards" makes sense for this as well.
that is bullshit
@@davidjones-vx9juthat’s right. Nine cubic yards of it.
Concrete trucks weigh an average of 25,000 lbs. by themselves and up to 40,000 lbs. when carrying a full load. Their capacity is around 8 cubic yards, but can be up to 10 cubic yards if fully-loaded.
@@MrBlaxjax
Another great video that needs no silly title to attract attention. Some of these expressions are quite similar in German. If something is easy to do it's a "Kinderspiel" = child's play. To throw a gauntlet - den Fehdehandschuh werfen = (Handschuh = glove) to declare hostile revenge for some former "injuries" (Fehde = feud) . Ei (ey)is egg in German. Fare well could be close to "gute Fahrt" - have a good trip - when someone is leaving ( fahren = to go, going away, leaving). The apple of my eye, "mein Augapfel " = someone you really cherish, love, e.g. your child. Thanks for posting.
Farewell is, completely illogically, a word one says when taking leave for the last time such as at a final parting or a funeral. In German it is usually translated as 'Lebe wohl' so it means 'live well' in both languages. I think a much better expression for these circumstances is 'Adieu'.
My mom never called me Augapfel lol she called me “goldenes Mausilein” isn’t that cute?
My mother used to raise parakeets. Once in a while, a hen would break every egg she had. To break that habit, my mother put a white marble in the nest box. After a few days, the hen would learn that she couldn't break the new egg, and stopped trying. It's a different kind of "nest egg".
My great grandmother had chickens. To encourage the hens to lay eggs she had a stone, about the size/shape of an egg, that she painted white and placed in the nest. I don't know if it worked or not. It's been more than fifty years since my great grandmother passed away, but one of my aunts still has the stone.
My chickens do this occasionally, its just easier for a parakeet! Thin eggs shells! And I have heard that its not so easy to raise small birds, so kudos to mom! ❤
Thank you. She really did great with it.
@short2😊😊qa048
Farewell is from scandinavian expression farväl, literal meaning travel safely. In Scandinavia it is an oldfashioned way of saying goodbye.
Kind of reminds me of "Fare the well" when parting.
*thee
Alternate derivation of Bakers dozen is the arrangement round balls on a baking tray. Row of four, middle row of five staggered a half roll, another row of four. The extra can be sold separately or eaten by the baker, staff or family
That's why I like Gideon's channel and appreciate his effort, very interesting, knowledgeable videos all the time! Looking forward for continuation of these videos, related to the history of the language
😮The stories related to the expressions make it easier to memorize, I really like it!! Interesting to know about letter used in red much more in this incredibly informative video, farewell Sir Gideon.. Have a nice carnaval day 🎊🎭
Glad you liked it. Do enjoy the carnival yourself. I'll make it some time.
@@LetThemTalkTVYou'll have a lot of fun anywhere, Brazil is cooler.. Hehe
This is pure gold. Always a pleasure to watch. Cheers.
As an American high school student we were assigned samples of English from our colonial period. One sample was a letter from a woman traveling in America who noted that for Americans "the most important Red Letter Day is St. Election's Day."
Egg in Dutch is still 'ei', with the plural 'eieren', whose cognates in Middle English were 'ey' and 'eyren' (or 'eyeren'). Curiously, this is an irregular plural in Dutch, yet it passed into English in the same form. (If it had had a regular plural, that would have been 'eien'.)
Eien or eieren, from the way Dutch people speak it would not matter since nobody would hear the difference))
@@AndreiBerezin I'm a native Dutch speaker. There is a distinct difference between the two.
@@SpiritmanProductions but for an outsider spoken Dutch sounds pretty slurred, topped only by Danish where you cant tell half the sounds apart. For an outsider those two words would sound veeeery close to each other.
Tell you the truth, there is a sound in Russian language - X, to us there are THREE sounds in Dutch that sound exactly the same to us, G is Russian X, R is Russian X and CH is also Russian X. That's just to show how the language works for a foreigner.
@@AndreiBerezin I'm sorry, but /ˈeɪ.ə/ (2 syllables) is clearly not the same as /ˈeɪ.ərə/ (3 syllables). (The final 'n' is usually not pronounced.)
@@SpiritmanProductions okay fine
In the case of "apple of my eye," apple used to just be the term for any fleshy fruit, not the specific family of trees referred to as apples today. It's rarely used that way today, but is sometimes used to refer to a husk or fruit, such as a cashew apple.
Thanks, that probably explains why a fruit quite common in tropical Australia is called a custard-apple, despite looking and tasting NOTHING like an apple.
It's why Adam and Eve are depicted with fig leaves despite supposedly eating and apple. Not sure they have apples in the middle east, pretty sure they have figs!
@@AndyJarmanthey didn't exist in those times .
@@AndyJarmanthat’s also partially due to the similarity of the Latin words for ‘evil’ and ‘apple’
And the expression: "the apple never falls far from the oak", meaning people don't deviate much from how they were raised or their genetic background
I already knew the binomial pair "sink or swim", but I would have never imagined that it comes from ancient times. Thanks Gideon for another instructive video.
I love the way you told stories to explain what these phrases mean. The phrases immediately become clear without a doubt!
l sometimes have trouble defining words.
An alternative explanation for the phrase "to make no bones" relates to the use of bones in divination or fortune telling. The bones used were the jack bones which could also be used as dice to determine the future depending on how they fell. Essentially similar to reading the tea leaves or examining the entrails of birds et cetera used by ancient Romans.
I think my alternative explanation more likely as it would mean that a particular thing was 100% certain and settled without the need for recourse to fortune telling or "casting the bones" to determine the matter - so "make no bones about it."
I used to wonder why a strong metal comb for cattle ( or horses) was called a curry comb.
I did not know that
@@LetThemTalkTVI have already downloaded "The loom of the English Language"; 688 pages. What a wonderful and insightful book. I am finishing reading "Los 1001 años de la lengua española", de Antonio Alatorre, FCE, México, 2002, which I highly recommend you. Greetings from the underground, as always.
Congratulations for such an inspiring and enjoyable recollection of ancient idiomatic expressions, I really appreciate it.
Well, in horse circles, you should curry a horse before and after a ride. You want to break up the sweaty hair so they will dry off after, or use the curry comb to get the dust off your horse in preparation for a ride or show.
In the US, b/c I've never seen it as a metal comb, is a large flattish black rubber "comb" or brush with teeth. The teeth are gently rounded. This is the main brush for cleaning a horse, with the softer, bristled body brush to smooth and get the dust off the top, after the horse has been curried.
The metal ones in the US are shedding blades. And a good way to help get your horses itch. Lol
@@feliciagaffney1998 I'm more familiar with cattle combs. They were usually made from a short , round wooden handle holding a metal fork in a Y shape. There was a metal cross plate fitted between the prongs of the Y and that plate had metal teeth along its bottom edge. We used them to take " tackles " from a cow's coat ie dried bits of dung. This was best done after the first wash and soaking of the animal to soften things up. The hard round beads of dung that got fixed on the tail hairs like wooden beads needed soaking and breaking up with your fingers- a very long tedious job. The curry comb's partner was a largish wooden backed brush called a dandy brush or a dry dandy used for cleaning cattle coats of dust etc. They latterly had nylon bristles and filled the whole of your hand.
Thabks for this class, Gideon! I love when you mix language and history ❤❤
Thanks, Gideon! I've learnt a lot from your excellent lesson!
Lovely lesson thank you!
Funny that you say it was a nest ey: there is a story of the man who brought the printing press over to England. He was asking a woman where he could get some eggs. She didnt understand what he meant. After a while she understood:"oh you mean eyren" she said . In fact , this was another word for eggs. So when he shaped modern english and had to decide between eyren and eggs, he chose eggs. But in German, which is my my native tongue we say Eier. And this shows, that at that time, english and German were very close to each other
Edit: ok, you already said. Shouldnt have paused the video
Eggs in Dutch is "eieren", very close to the English of that time.
The word egg derives from old Norse as said in the video whereas the Germanic word is ei/ey. I'm just wondering, could it be that only the old norse spelling was adopted but not the pronunciation? In present day Swedish for example, the "G" is usually pronounced as a J/Y as in "Jöteborje" = Göteborg, or the name Göran as "Jöran". That would be like a Y in English of course, in German "J". Maybe the "G" in old norse was also pronounced like an English "Y", but the English "G" was pronounced the same way as it is today - like in German? I'm just speculating.
@@magmalin exactly. Do you know why so many words in english are so differently spelled, than being pronunced? It's like for example "knight, knife, light" . In the middle ages you would have said it exactly how it was spelled out. So they really Said " *KN* icht, *KN* ife, li *CH* T (btw in German it really is Licht)". After all these years from generation to generation, the pronunciation gradually changed, while the spelling stayed the same. So I would reckon, your suspicion would be correct.
@@robert48719 Knight - Knecht in German. And there's Loch (eg. Ness) and Nächt = night (German "Nacht)" in some traditional songs with the "ch" pronounced as in German. It would be interesting to know the origin of the word knife as I can't relate it to any German word. "Kneifen" = to pinch, is the only one I can think of, but it doesn't make much sense.
@@robert48719 you are referring to silent letters. And there's several letters that can come before N that are silent. Knight, knee, know, gnat, gnaw, mnemonic, pneumonia, pneumatic. I do know the Dutch pronounce their k, in knie.
Googling it, those sound clusters were just simplified over time to drop the letter before the N. Although, I feel like the case of Mn- may be different from the others. I feel like that is a Greek spelling construction. Gn- and kn- at least are Germanic.
Also for -mn, it is more typical to be at the end of a word than beginning. Which hadn't occurred to me until I googled it, but of course... damn, hymn, autumn, column, etc.
In Italian we say “senza pagar lo scotto” “without paying the scot”
That's cool.
Paying the piper!
Why would Italians make an apparently random connection to a fairly distant small nation? Just curious. I mean it’s a bit like the Spanish having an expression like “don’t pay the Moldavian”.
I don't speak Italian, but does "scotto" translate to "tax" or something similar, or is "scotto" simply the Italianized version of the English word "Scot" (as in a person from Scotland)? (I do know enough of other languages to understand the preceding words in the Italian phrase you posted though:
"Senza" deriving from the Latin word "Sans," meaning "without."
"Pagar" also deriving from Latin and also used in Spanish as a word meaning "to pay."
And "Lo," also used in Portugues, and very similar to the word "le" (masculine) in French and "la" (feminine) in French, Italian and Spanish for the English word "the" (which probably itself derived from a combination of the French "le" and Old/Middle English "thee."
Commonality among different the languages is a very fascinating thing! Even some Persian, Sanskrit and Arabic words have very similar sounds to the same words in European languages.
@@skyhawk_4526 Scotto is Italian for overcooked pasta
"Apple of my eye": in German= "Augapfel" literally is "eye apple". But "Augapfel" is the whole eye, the "eyeball". In German there is a saying: "Ich hüte etwas wie meinen Augapfel" = "I guard something like my eyeball."
"You are the appel of my eye" would be translated as "Du bist mein Augenstern" literally "You are the star of my eye".
It`s interesting to compare the languages.
Fascinating, I love your videos delving into linguistics and history.
Have you heard of David Crystal? He is a British linguist, I have been reading "The Story of English in 100 Words" and googled his name to see if he had written any more books but I was not expecting such a long list! 😂
A fascinating video it really is ,Sir G.Thank you.
I have a particularly challenging class of students tomorrow. “Woe betide” may come in handy.
Interesting. In Russian, eyeball is called "Глазное яблоко" for some reason. The direct translation in English is "Eye apple" :)
Love this! Thank you!
Wow how interesting, what a great delivery.
Your subtle humor and knowledge is splendid.
New sub.
Yes, you got the word "skat" quite right. It also means treasure.
Treasure in Dutch is 'schat', which is also used as a term of endearment (often in the diminutive form 'schatje').
That also goes for Danish/Scandinavian.@@SpiritmanProductions
This fellow is Brilliant & entertaining. I love languages & their roots; so this program is 'right up my alley!"
This channel is like : "La prunelle de mes yeux ! " (the French equivalent for : " The apple of my eyes" but we use a different fruit in this recipe (sloes)!
Very interesting and humorous video, as usual.
‘Prunelle’ a beaucoup plus de sens, étant donné que la pupille de l’oeil ont la même couleur, non?
@@1972hermanoben Franchement, je ne me suis jamais posé la question. À mon sens, l'analogie avec la forme m'a toujours parue suffisante pour que je ne pousse pas la réflexion plus avant. 🤔
I thought apple in french was la pomme?
@@lbell9695well that's true, it's just that the same expression in French uses a different fruit 🙂
@@lbell9695 Of course, it is!
This is something very interesting, thank you!
That was fascinating. I'm so glad to have found your channel!
Thx u so much for such a quality content
What a lovely video! I'm a playwright and a Writing Instructor so adore etymology. Wonderful explanations!
Hello, I make no bones that many people in Russia think about the English language to be too simplified and not to be able to express human thoughts at all. But I don't, thanks for your videos!
That’s the first time I ever heard anyone suggest that English was an oversimplified language! 😅I’d love to get the perspective of someone who’s attempted to learn both languages to a similar level, to see what they think. And Pushkin vs The Bard? Shakespeare wins hands down, I make no bones about it! 😂
I thoroughly enjoyed this. Thank you very much period part of me feels like I should be using some of these phrases like "sink or swim" so that they will carry on.
Oh tidings of comfort and joy. (It is still used in the Christmas song)
Thank you!❤
Very interesting ! Thanks ❤
glad you liked it
I encounter the word "betide" the second time today. (The first one was in the original Winkworth's translation of the Neumark's hymn.) Thank you-for encouraging me to look up the word in the dictionary.
A VERY GOOD VIDEO THANK YOU.
Thank you, Sir. I am ecstatic to have found your channel. More, please. Cheers from Montreal.
Interesting. As this is a site for people learning English, the delivery is slower than normal speech. As a native speaker l can see how engaging this is for people.
Thank you so much!
Thanks, I really enjoyed this and all the great comments!
Bravo!
Thank you 😊
Thanks for another great video. I used to live in Manchester, I have two Irish friends and my best friend from work was from Sheffield. My boss was Scottish and we were doing experiments at Daresbury with colleagues from Liverpool. At night I saw the BBC news...so, that is why I love your videos, so now, thanks you, I understand my messy English.
Thank you.
Our lovely teacher again ♥️
In the US the expression (mainly) is "I make no bones about it", the use of "it" at the end is the slight difference. It seems to simply be a way to simplify the term though use of the all-purpose "it".
Thanks for the video.
totally cool!
Very interesting!!
WE LOVE YOU, Gedeon! ❤ You are an amazing, fascinating, great teacher! In my 50's I can certainly say that you are the best teacher I could have to still be learning English in the most enjoyable way. So thank you! 🙏 ( This video is another masterpiece of yours😃)
That's very kind. Your words are much appreciated.
I thought the apple of the eye was the glint in the eye. Very interesting video. Thank you, sir. May you fare well.
curry favor is synonymous for building karma . Farewell stems from dutch vaarwel (sail well or travel safe) , dutch
varen is to navigate, german fahren remarkable means to drive, zeevaart/seefahrt is navigation, scheepsvaart/
schiff-fahrt is shipping. Farewell is another way to express go well or going fine. Fare is old english you still hear
in ferryman (boatsman), to fare to far away is kind of a double from the same root.
Thanks.
I always thought that a baker's dozen comes from making sure the baker still has 12 eggs if one is bad or gets broken on delivery. In other words it's 12 and one extra just in case.
That 'red letter day' example is a challenge for those of us with red/green color blindness. I never did see the red word (assuming there really is one). Enjoyable and informative video! I'm glad CZcams came through with a good recommendation.
Good one!
so good
When grooming a horse with a winters worth of hair growth, one uses a CURRY COMB.
It is a grooming tool designed to help shed the thicker coat at end of winter season.
Thanks for an interesting video, Gideon. :)
Did you know that egg is used in Norwegian? Farvel is also used by some Norwegians (though adjø is more common) to mean goodbye.
Loved this. I'll be back.
I subscribed!!!🥳🤩
I feel like the phrase, "Farewell" would translate roughly to, "May you have good travels." Travels, metaphorically, could mean something as broad as "life." "Fare," in modern usage, means a cost of travel from one place to another. (Like in "airfare" which means the price a passenger pays to travel on an airplane flight from one destination to another.) So, literally, "Farewell" (or "fare well") would translate in modern English to something like "May your travels (literally or figuratively) be at a small price." Or to put it another way, "May you be able to live out the rest of your life without major costs (or consequences)."
Its the same in Swedish and Danish so it must be a very old expression
In German the eyeball is called Augapfel.
Valeu!
You are so very kind, Isabel. Best wishes and enjoy carnival
@@LetThemTalkTV It's really cool to be able to collaborate, I'm a fan and I really enjoy everything
That was fascinating. Thank you. My grandmother always told me that the “make no bones” refers to murder. That is, it’s so obviously true that it’s not worth killing someone to hide it (a dark horse my gran).
I’ve always intuitively understood a baker’s dozen to mean a dozen plus one for the baker. The plus one would be used by the baker to judge the overall quality of the dozen or as part of the baker’s food as there’s too much to do to stop to eat a meal.
That makes total sense. An extra to test the batch.
Curry is still used by equestrians, eg curry comb or curry brush for brushing horses.
I thought that “make no bones about it” was a reference to oracle bones used to devine an unclear or obscure question. But if the answer is clear and obvious, there’s no need for an oracle: Make no bones about it!
I think "bones" was also a slang term referring to dice. Since they were sometimes made out of bone.
Of course dice, back then, were primarily for gambling. Perhaps "making bones" meant something like, "I'm not going to gamble (or cheat) with this".
Never heard "Woe betide" before (at least not as a common idiom) and have usually heard "make no bones about it" here in the USA. I loved how old "apple of my eye" is. Thanks for the video.
"Woe betide" used to be quite common in Australia: "woe betide you should miss the bus and be late for school" etc etc, but then I am 64 and it may be dying out...
@@steelcrown7130I'm American and in my 40s and it's always had a sort of quaint old timey dramatics to it
Farewell is farvel in Danish. It's from old Norse. Fare means to go.
Dear Gideon
I think there is a second explanation for "to be the apple of one's eye".
In German the only existing translation of eyeball is "Augapfel". There might be a connection to the German language.
Tnanks so much for your work which provides me regularly with second to none listening material.
Ilse
Hello Ilse
Danish and Norwegian also have "øyeæble/øyeeple" for "eyeball". There is also the word "øje(n)sten/øye(n)sten" which has the same figurative meaning as "apple of ones eye". This word is very old; it can be traced back to Old Norse, and could mean "eyeball" or "pupil", just like "apple of the eye". Do you know if "Augstein" was ever used in German?
I liked the nest egg. Will try to remember and use it)
Farewell always reminds me of the Latin "Vale" which I was taught means literally "be well!", but is used to say goodbye. I always liked that we have the same thing in English.
Its Farväl in Swedish and Danish too
Salve and Vale. Hello and Goodbye.
Gideon, your intelligence, charisma, and beauty never fail to impress me.
Lol gay
@@homuraakemi493 Intelligence is attractive.
Aside from the "woe betide" expression I've used or heard all the others. I'll make sure to use it.
Growing up singing old hymns surely brought many of the olde english words into my life early as well as reading the KJV Bible. My high s hool had a linguistics english stream which i took and enjoyed. Thanks for sharing!
King James was in to magic, did you read how he died, Joy. Have you even read about what he was actually like? No, of course not.
My favorite for obsolete usage is “hoist on his own petard”. A petard is a satchel charge, i.e. a bomb.
Great, I watched this umpteen times
There is a song by Linkin Park which is called "What I've done". The word "farewell" is used there. "In this farewell there is no blood"
Do you think that courrier favel is connected to and the opposite of "rub somebody up the wrong way"?
Interesting. Perhaps it refers to combing or brushing and fact that it feels good, so it would be like petting an animal. Rubbing someone the wrong way (the opposite of the way the hair grows,) would be raising the hair of an animal and would be annoying to said animal. I think you may be on to something.
Woe betide is a new one for me
Thanks for your videos. You put in a lot of effort. For someone who emphasizes "proper speaking", here's an observation and recommendation: in this video, and others, you use an incorrect keyword; that is, you use the word "theory" when the word should be "hypothesis". To watch and listen to the word "hypothesis" being applied correctly, starting near 27:00, watch a few minutes of this classic 1960's British Film, "The Deadly Affair", starring James Mason, Harry Andrews, and others. I trust this will make sense, and, with kindest regards, again I thank you for all your good work.
The baker’s dozen explanation is wholly different from the one I know; a baker’s dozen (as I thought) meant 12 for the customer, and one for the baker.
I always wondered about the expression "That's the pot calling the kettle black". I hope you have more of these. They're fun and interesting !
A simple search online would have answered your wonder in seconds, Jeff.
@@IbnBahtuta Heaven forbid we ask people questions any more, huh? Geez.
@@BJGvideos Asking or pressing keys just like a search, geez?
@@IbnBahtuta Asking. Even if it's in text, it's asking another human being.
@@BJGvideos ROFL, not always.
I thought that curry was an old word for cooking. As in one of the oldest existing cookbooks in England “ The forme of curry” or “The method of cooking”. I’m probably wrong however.
Caxton had a lot to say about the different words for eggs, and explained why he chose the variant he used when he printed something.
I too always thought it's "to carry favour"!
Guess at some point this version may become the correct one
Can you make a series on how to translate really early English, say like Beowulf?
13:53 Woe betide anyone who doesn't like and subscribe after watching this video! (+stern face)
The expression has been used in English almost unchanged since at least 1377. (expression "like and subscribe", I believe)
At this moment I laughed. 🙂
I'm from the southern US, we might say "Woe be unto you, if..."
Curry comb is used to groom horses today
Always great to see Gideon !
This lesson is right up my street, just what the doctor ordered, fit for a king ! In another words : Les Couilles Du Chien😆😉
Greetings from Casablanca.
Fare thee well for now and stay mellow gaffer.
I am off now to see a Touareg about a camel 😂
Glad you liked it. Don't get short-changed on that camel
A nest egg is to teach some young hens Where to lay not to lay in general when the whole flock is young and there are no eggs in laying boxes. I've used them, you'll spend an hour looking for a dozen out in the pasture and they'll be covered in mud. They lay anywhere, sometimes in brush piles. Others lay on the ground in the house and get stomped and broken, sometimes you get an egg eater that wrecks the laying boxes from it. Use them.
My favourite is people saying any old Auction, they don't know it should be any old okshen anglo saxon for a mess cheers from mercia