Académique Documents
Professionnel Documents
Culture Documents
ISBN 1 870596 34 X
s
The Greeks had a wordJbr it!
The word phrase came into English in
the 16th century from the Greek phrasis.
It meant speech or way of speaking.
Contents
You are what you eat 7
Have a heart! 8
Its a dog's life 10
There's no business like show business! 12
Horses for courses 14
A Question of Sport 15
The Name of the Game 16
On the wild side 18
Heads you win.... 20
Fish and.... 22
Chips 23
as sick as a....? 24
Just good friends 25
After a fashion 26
Money, money, money! 28
To coin a phrase 31
Only fools and horses.... 32
Your number's up 34
Pearls of wisdom 35
Heavy weather 36
Who said? 37
That's before you bought your shovel! 38
Answers 40
Books for further reading 45
Index 46
You are what you eat
The items o f food in these well-known sayings have got
mixed up. Can you put each item into the right place?
8 Hard biscuit!
7
Have a heart!
Find the meaning or explanation on the opposite page
which bestfits each of these phrases,
C A heart to heart
D Cross my heart
F Take to heart
G Learn by heart
Be very frightened
Memorise
Fred You can say that again! I'm really in the dog
house this time.
10
Fred I know just how you feel, mate. Still, at least
you're not dogged by trouble at work too. My
secretary's just tom me off a strip for sending
out a circular she'd already done last week!
12 Gissajob.
12
How's-your-father?
This was the punch line in a series of comedy
sketches by the Music Hall comedian, Harry
Tate. It came at the end of a scene in which
Harry was making up to a girl on the sofa in
her home. Just as things were coming to a
head, her father would enter the room and
Harry would hastily ask the girl, as casually
as he could, "...and hows your father?"
Ever since then, a bit of how's-your-father,
a bit of the other and many other variations
of the phrase have been in common use in
conversations about sex.
13
H o rses f o r cou rses
Completethis Tiorse-talk':
1 We're flogging a ...................
5 _____________your horses!
14
A Question of Sport
back to square one
I| This phrase started life in the 1930s in football j
| commentaries on the radio. A map of the football |
I pitch, divided into numbered squares, was printed |
I in Radio Times each week. Commentators would J
| call out the numbers as the game progressed so
| that listeners could follow the players' moves.
| The idea for this may well have come from the j
| children's board game, Snakes and Ladders.
below par
15
I
The Name of the Game
Fill in the names o f people or places in each o f these
2 Nice o n e , ___________!
9 ________ , I presume.
Hobson's Choice
Thomas Hobson kept a stable in Cambridge in the
late 16th century. He hired out horses, but he only
offered each customer the horse nearest to the
stable door. Customers, therefore, had no choice
at all It is unfair that Hobson's name has become
attached to this miserable phrase. In fact, he loved
his horses and his system ensured that no horse
was overworked. He moved the horses round in
strict rotation, so that there was always a fresh
horse next to the stable door for customers to hire.
17
On the wild side
( apig in apoke |
| At old country fairs, a trick was often played 1
| on unsuspecting customers. A sucking-pig I
| was offered for sale and when it was paid for |
| it was put in a sack for the customer to take |
| home. The trick was to replace the pig with
| a cat. If the customer did not discover it, he |
| got home with a pig in a poke (a bad bargain!). 1
| If he opened the bag at once to take a look at
| his purchase, he would let the cat out of the I
| bag (discover the trick). Another saying with |
| the same meaning is to be sold a pup.
What are these?
1 a swan song
4 a red herring
5 a dead duck
13 a dark horse
15 toad-in-the-hole
Heads you win....
The meanings o f som e well-known sayings are given
below. Choose the sayingfrom the opposite page which
fits each one best.
C Mad or deranged
20
1 Hit the nail on the head
21
Fish and
| a load ofcodswallop
| In 1875, a man called Hiram Codd patented |
| a bottle with a marble stopper for mineral |
| water. WaUop, in this phrase, is a slang |
| term for beer. It is said that Codd's wallop |
| became a term of abuse used by beer drinkers |
I for weak or non-alcoholic drinks. |
1 1
| The phrase, in time, came to have the more |
| general meaning of rubbish. It has nothing j
| to do with fish at all - although the phrase
| in the drink is sailor's slang for 'in the sea'. |
!v !v
a queer fish
22
Chips
What sort o f chips appear in each o f these phrases?
5 To chip in
23
as sick as a 9
1 as hard as __
2 as cool as a
3 as fit as a ___
4 as warm as
5 as light as a
6 as good as _
7 as bright as a
8 ' as nice as __
9 as smooth as
10 as flat as a _
11 as cold as ___
12 as keen as _
5 being drunk
6 a sexual relationship
25
After a fashion
Fill in the blanks with items o f clothing.
7 Theyre living on a
26
as mad as a hatter
When hats were made by hand a substance
called mercurous nitrate was used to treat
the felt. Hatters who inhaled the fumes
got sore eyes, shaking limbs and often had
sudden changes of mood which resulted in
severe bad temper.
It is said that the original 'mad' hatter was
Robert Crab, from Chesham in Buckingham
shire in the 17th century. He became so
eccentric that he gave away all he owned to
the poor and lived on grass and dock leaves.
a hat-trick.
In the early days of cricket, when a bowler
took 3 wickets with 3 successive balls, he
was given a new hat at his club's expense.
The idea of the hat-trick has caught on and
it now appears in many other sports, but
the free hat has been dropped!
Moneyt money, money!
There are many sayings, old and new, to do with money.
It is often coupled with love as one of the two most
important things in life!
29
M oney , m oney, m oney! continued
^mssssssmsssssmmm
I pin money
Pins were once very expensive.
They were a luxury and not for
common use. For many years,
the makers were only allowed
to sell them to the general public on two days of
the year, in January. It became the custom for
husbands to give their wives a special allowance
at the beginning of each year just to buy pins.
Pin money has gradually come to be regarded as
money which a married woman can keep to
spend entirely on herself.
I
where there's muck there's brass
This is a well-known Northern saying
which suggests that money can always
be made from hard, dirty work.
At the end of the 17th century,
pennies, halfpennies and farthings
began to be made in brass because
it was cheaper than gold or silver.
As a result, a farthing was worth
nothing and this led to the saying,
its not worth a brass farthing.
Brass has since become a slang word
for money.
30
To coin a phrase
A clich is a phrase which catches on when it is first
used but ends up being almost meaningless because it is
used too much.
2 up and
3 give it a start
5 user-
6 at this moment in
7 -front
8 hands-
9 level field
10 to the wire
pull the on it
12 chalice
on down poisoned up
time plug playing kick
stall end running friendly
31
Onlyfools and horses
1 by hook or by crook
4 spinning a yam
32
Farmers regard wild grain as a weed
and of poorer quality than cultivated
grain. In their eyes, to sow wild grain
would be a waste of time and could
produce unwanted results.
C? C>
Pearls of wisdom
Uryumble these well-known sayings and say what they
mean.
35
Heavy weather
cloud nine
If someone is on cloud nine (or in seventh heaven)
they are in very high spirits - a state of bliss.
The term cloud nine is used in American Weather
forecasts to describe the cumulonimbus cloud,
which can reach a height of 30-40,000 feet.
3 under a cloud
36 .
Who said?
Match the people to the quotations.
1 I have a dream
4 Read my lips
6 My husband and I
Queen Victoria
37
That's before you bought
your shovel!
Every family has its own private sayings which only
make sense to those 'in the know'. Some of them are
adapted from popular phrases, others are funny quotes
from children or other members of the family which are
remembered and become stock phrases over the years.
Here are some from our family:
38
"We always put our suns in the top Itft-hand comer "
(Remark made by a niece when showing us her latest
picture)
Whenever there is a call for some sort of change in our
household, this quote comes up. In fact, nowadays, it
rarely gets beyond the first few words - but,we always ....
40
5. Julia Lang and others; BBC Radio's Listen with Mother
6. Marie Lloyd; Music Hall song
7. Ryan ONeal; in the last moments of the film Love Story
8. Humphrey Bogart to Ingrid Bergman; In the film
Casablanca
9. Ronnie Barker & Ronnie Corbett; at the end of their TV
show The Two Ronnies
10. Mae West; first used in the play Diamond Ul (filmed as
She Done Him Wrong). It became her personal catch
phrase.
11. Bruce Forsyth; TVs The Generation Game
12. Bernard Hill as Yosser Hughes; in Alan Bleasdale's
TV play The Boys from the Blackstuff
41
The Name q f the Game (p.16/17)
I. Jack 2. Cyril 3. Bristol 4. Joneses 5. Bob 6. Naples
7. Jack Robinson 8. Josephine 9. Dr. Livingstone 10. Rome
II. Burton 12. Watson
Chips (p.23)
1. A chip of wood. The phrase comes from a 19th century
American custom in which anyone who was looking for
a fight used to walk round with a chip of wood on his
shoulder, daring others to knock it off. Nowadays, the
phrase is used to describe someone who is resentful or has
a grudge against the world in general.
42
2. The counters used in betting games like poker. The
phrase describes the moment when the bets are placed
in other words, when the decision has been made and
cannot be reversed.
3. A wooden chip from a bigger block. This phrase has
been used for many years as a way of describing a son
(or daughter) who is veiy like his father (or mother).
4. Betting chips. Probably used in the game of poker and
now used generally to describe someone who is finished,
done for or bound to lose.
5. Betting chips. In betting games players put chips which
represent money into a central pot. In general, the phrase
can either mean to make a contribution' or to interrupt'.
6. Potato chips. The phrase is used to describe people
(especially British tourists abroad) who have a very
narrow view of life. Arnold Wesker used it in the early
1960s, as the title of a play about class attitudes in the
R AF. during National Service.
as side as a fp.24)
(Title: parrot)
1. nails 2. cucumber 3. fiddle 4. toast 5. feather 6. gold
7. button 8. ninepence 9. silk 10. pancake 11. ice
12.mustard
Tocoinaphrase (p.31)
1. end 2. running 3. kick 4. stall 5. friendly 6.. time
7. up 8. on 9. playing 10. down 11. plug 12. poisoned
43
Pearls of wisdom (p.35)
1. Too many cooks spoil the broth
(Having too many helpers makes ajob harder to do)
2. Familiarity breeds contempt
(Knowing someone too well means you discover their
bad points)
3. There's no time like the present
(If you're thinking of doing something - do it now!)
4. Absence makes the heart grow fonder
(People are often nicer at a distance!)
5. One man's meat is another man's poison
(What one person likes, another may not like at all)
6. A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush
(Its better to put up with what you've got than to dream
about something you'll never have)
7. A stitch in time saves nine
(Correcting an error at once saves greater trouble later on)
8. Many hands make light work
(A Job gets done more easily with help)
Booksforfurther reading
The books listed here are those which were found both useful
and Interesting when compiling this book. All are hardback
unless otherwise stated.
45
Index
A
Absence makes the heart grow fonder 35
After a fashion 26
All ship shape and Bristol fashion 16
And now for something completely different 12
The apple of one's eye 7
Are you sitting comfortably? 12
as............as; 24
as bright as a button 24
as cold as ice 24
as cool as a cucumber 24
as fit as a fiddle 24
as flat as a pancake 24
as good as gold 24
as hard as nails 24
as keen as mustard 24
as light as a feather 24
as mad as a hatter 27
as nice as ninepence 24
as sick as a parrot 24
as smooth as silk 24
as thick as two short planks 34
as warm as toast 24
At the end of the day 31
At this moment in time 31
B
Back to square one 15
The ball's in your court 15
Don't spill the beans 7
Before you could say Jack Robinson 16
Below par 15
A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush 35
That just about takes the biscuit 7
A bit of hows-your-father 13
A bit of the other 13
Bob's your uncle 16
He's too big for his boots 26
Get down to brass tacks 32
It's not worth a brass farthing 30
Where there's muck there's brass 30
It's the best thing since sliced bread 7
A bull in a china shop 19
By hook or by crook 32,33
46
c
It's a piece of cake 7
If the cap fits, wear it 26
Pay cash on the nail 29
A cat-o-nine-tails 19
Let the cat out of the bag 18
Hard cheese 7
Chips : 23
A chip of the old block
A chip on his shoulder
To chip in
The chips are down
Chips with everything
He's had his chips
Every cloud has a silver lining 36
On cloud nine 36
Under a cloud 36
You have to cut your coat according to your cloth 26
A load of old cobblers 22
A cock and bull story 19
A load of codswallop 22
To coin a phrase 31
Come up and see me sometime 12
D
Dogs : 10,11
A dog in the manger
Dogged by
Don't keep a dog and bark yourself
Every dog has his day
Give a dog a bad name (and hang him)
Gone to the dogs
In the doghouse
It's a dog's life
Let sleeping dogs lie
Love me, love my dog
You cant teach an old dog new tricks
The hair of the dog 19
Down to the wire 31
Dressed up to the nines 34
In the drink 22
Dr. Livingstone, I presume 16
A dead duck 19
E
Don't teach your grandmother to suck eggs 7
One over the eight 34
Elementary, my dear Watson! 16
Every cloud has a silver lining 36
47
Familiarity breeds contempt 35
First past the post 15
Fish : 22
A queer fish
Drinks like a fish
Fish for compliments
I have other fish to fry
Make fish of one and flesh of the other
There's other fish in the sea
A fish out of water 19
A pretty kettle ofJish 7
To fly off the handle 32,33
A frog in the throat 19
Hands-on 31
A hat-trick 27
At the drop of a hat 26
Heads : 20,21
Bang one's head against a brick wall
Bite someone's head off
Buiy one's head in the sand
Can't make head or tail of it
Give someone their head
Head over heels
Heads you win, (tails you lose)
Hit the nail on the head
Keep one's head
Keep one's head above water
Off one's head
Hearts : 8,9
After my own heart
A heart to heart
Cross my heart
Eat your heart out
From the bottom of my heart
Have a heart!
48
Have one's heart in one's mouth
Have one's heart in the right place
Learn by heart
Set one's heart on
Take to heart
Heavy weather 36
Here's looking at you, kid! 12
A red herring 19
Hit for six 15
Hobson's choice 17
A dark horse 19
Horses : 14
A nod is as good as a wink to a blind horse
Don't lock the stable door after the horse has bolted
Don't look a gift-horse in the mouth
Don't put the cart before the horse
Get off your high horse!
Hold your horses
Home, James, and don't spare the horses
Horses for courses
I got it straight from the horse's mouth
We're flogging a dead horse
Weve backed the wrong horse
You can take a horse to water, but you can't
make it drink
I
I have a dream 37
I'm all right, Jack! 16
I'm going to make him an offer he can't refuse 12
In at the deep end 15
It's goodnight from me, and it's goodnight from him 12
I've started so I'll finish 12
J
Just good friends 25
K
Keeping up with the Joneses 16
Don't get your knickers in a twist 26
L
The lady's not for turning 37
Let the cat out of the bag 18
Level playing field 31
The lion's share 19
A little of what you fancy does you good 12
A bit long in the tooth 25
Love means never having to say youre sorry 12
Tis love that makes the world go round 28
M
Many hands make light work 35
Money : 28,29,30
Money doesn't grow on trees
Money is the root of all evil
Money makes the world go (a)round
Pin money
Put your money where your mouth is
You pays your money and you takes your choice
Over the moon 36
My husband and I 37
On cloud nine 36
One foot in the grave 25
One man's meat is another man's poison 35
One over the eight 34
It takes one to know one 34
There's one bom every minute 34
Only fools and horses work 32
Out for the count 15
Over the hill 25
Over the moon 36
P
Pay cash on the nail 29
Pay through the nose 29
He who pays the piper calls the tune 28
You pays your money and you takes your choice 28
Pearls of wisdom 35
A penny for your thoughts 28
In for a penny, in for a pound 28
That's just pie in the sky 7
A pig in a poke 18
A poisoned chalice 31
Pull the plug on it 31
To be sold a pup 18
9
Quick off the mark 15
50
R
It never rains but it pours 36
Read my lips 37
Red sky at night, shepherd's delight 36
A rolling stone gathers no moss 38
Rome was not built in a day 16
S
The salt of the earth 7
Saved by the bell 15
See Naples and die 16
Set out your stall 31
In seventh heaven 36
A wolf in sheep's clothing 19
He's a real stuffed shirt 26
I wouldn't like to be in her shoes 26
They're living on a shoestring 26
A short, sharp shock 37
Six of one, half a dozen of the other 34
She wears her heart on her sleeve 26
A snake in the grass 19
It's time you pulled your socks up 26
Sowing wild oats 32,33
Spinning a yam 32,33
A sprat to catch a mackerel 22
Still waters run deep 36
A stitch in time saves nine 35
To stump up 29
A swan song 19
T
It's not really my cup of tea 7
Ten green bottles, hanging on the wall 34
That's one small step for a man, one giant leap
for mankind 37
Theres light at the end of the tunnel 44
There's more in it than meets the eye 44
There's no business like show business 12
There's no time like the present 35
The tip of the iceberg 36
Three sheets to the wind 34
Toad-in-the-hole 19
Toe the line 15
Tomorrow is another day 12
Too many cooks spoil the broth 35
It takes two to tango 34
Two's company, three's a crowd 34
51
u
Under a cloud 36
Under the weather 36
Up and running 31
Up-front 31
User-friendly 31
W
(A walk) on the wild side 18
We are not amused 37
Under the weather 36
A whole new ball game 15
Got the wind up 36
It's an ill wind that blows nobody any good 36
A w olf in sheep's clothing 19
Y
You ain't seen nothin' yet 13
You are what you eat 7
Your number's up 34
You've never had it so good 37
52
Phrases is a book of exercises based on phrases
popular in everyday English. It contains over 250
well-known catch phrases, cliches and proverbs,
providing information on sayings such as to get
the sack, Gordon Bennett!, cash on the nail, at the
drop of a hat and many others.