The slang phrase “going postal,” as in getting uncontrollably furious and violent, derives from tragic incidents involving United States Postal Service workers. Between 1986 and 1997, more than 40 people were murdered by spree killers in over 20 acts of workplace violence.  You know what hasn’t murdered 40 people?  E-mail.

A Catch-22 refers to an unsolvable logical dilemma.  The phrase comes from Joseph Heller’s 1961 novel “Catch-22.”  The number 22 has no significance.  Heller originally intended to call it “Catch-18,” but this was rejected by his publisher for being too similar to the title of another recently published war novel.  “Catch-11” was also proposed and rejected, due to its similarity to the film “Ocean’s Eleven” which was released in 1960.  “Catch-17” was then also rejected for similar reasons.  “Catch-14” was rejected because the publisher didn’t think 14 was a “funny number.”  If I were Joseph Heller, I would have just given up.  Clearly, there was no way he would win this battle with his publisher.

“Scot” is a Scandinavian word for tax or payment.  “Scot free” just referred to someone not paying taxes.  So, if you don’t pay taxes you’ll be getting away scot free, in the literal sense.  It’s unlikely that you’ll get away from the government scot free.

10-91H is the police code for “Stray Horse.”  I will make sure I watch for this when I am listening to the police scanner.  I would hate to get in the middle of this.  I bet the LAPD would give a whole new meaning to beating a dead horse.

I’ve never really understood the saying, “you can’t have your cake and eat it too.”  Of course I can.  That’s what I do with my cake.  Apparently the confusion comes from a distortion of the original 1546 quote, “wolde you bothe eate your cake, and have your cake?”   The original saying meant, you can’t eat your cake and still possess a cake (because you ate it).  Clearly, cake was a philosopher’s nightmare in the 1500s.

Schrodinger’s cake.

So nerdy. 

The euphemism for death, “to kick the bucket” likely originates from a method of suicide in the Middle Ages where someone standing on a bucket with a noose around their neck kicks the bucket out from underneath them, thus hanging themselves.  …That doesn’t seem like a euphemism.  That sounds way more grisly.  I’d rather just pass away… whatever that means.

If you think about it, the expression, “there is more than one way to skin a cat,” is pretty messed up.  I mean, who skins cats?  And why so many ways?  I couldn’t find a definite origin of the phrase.  In 1678, a variant of the idiom was first published as “there are more ways to kill a cat than by choking it with cream.”  That’s weird.  Also, Mark Twain used the quote a couple hundred years later.  It’s also been said that the saying comes from a gymnastics move called “skinning the cat,” but I don’t really buy it.  The only thing I do know is that skinning a cat is a harbinger of becoming a serial killer.

The idiomatic phrase “make no bones about it,” used to state a fact that allows no room for doubt, comes from 15th century England.  When people wanted to show their dissatisfaction with something, they would say that they “found bones in it,” referring to unwanted bones that could be found in soup.  If you had no bones in your soup, it was ingested without difficulty.  This also supports the stereotype that English food is miserable.

The dot on a lowercase i or j is called a tittle.  Without the tittle, the word tittles and titties would be easily confused.  Thankfully, we don’t have to suffer that confusion.  It is believed that in the phrase “to a T,” meaning exactly or meticulously, the T is short for tittle. You would be incorrect to assume that titties may also derive from tittle, as a nipple is no more than a bodily tittle.  Wow, that sentence sounded like something out of a creepy Dr. Seuss book.

P.S. tit comes from teat.

We’ve all heard the idiom “to let the cat out of the bag” after someone spills the beans (another idiom for another time).  But how does letting a cat out of this said bag somehow symbolize the telling of a secret?  Well, in the Medieval days, pigs were sold and traded at markets.  To keep the piglets secure, they were sold in tightly tied bags.  Sketchy pig traders would sometimes put a cat in the bag instead of a piglet, which the new owners would realize after they got home and let the cat out of the bag.  Let me just say that I am not a student of agriculture nor a Medieval merchant, but seriously…  I think I could tell the difference between a pig and a cat even if it was concealed in a bag.  After my next door neighbor was tricked into bringing a cat home instead of a pig, I would be even more likely to poke the bag a little, see what sound it makes.  When concealed in a bag, I am sure a cat will not be complacent and silent.  If people were stupid enough to lug around a cat thinking it was a piglet, I wouldn’t be surprised if the people tried to make bacon out of the cat even after letting it out of the bag.  I also like the ideas of “sketchy Medieval pig traders.”  I can picture them hanging out in high school parking lots, trying to dupe some kid into buying a “piglet.”