“Rag-tag” used to be part of the longer expression “ragtag and bobtail,” meaning “lower class.”

Upon learning that “bobtail” was now involved, I became more confused.  So I stopped.

They idiom, “to take it with a grain of salt,” comes from Pliny’s Naturalis Historia in 77 AD.  He gives a description of an antidote for a certain poison.  Here’s the quote translated from Latin:

“After the defeat of that mighty monarch, Mithridates, Gnaeus Pompeius found in his private cabinet a recipe for an antidote in his own handwriting; it was to the following effect: Take two dried walnuts, two figs, and twenty leaves of rue; pound them all together, with the addition of a grain of salt; if a person takes this mixture fasting, he will be proof against all poisons for that day.”

It suggests that the bad effects can be tempered by taking a grain of salt.

I wish we would say, “take it with twenty leaves of rue,” instead.

Recently I have heard people use the expression “jump on the bandwagon” a lot (thanks to the undefeated Kansas City Chiefs).  Literally a bandwagon was a wagon that carried the band in a parade, circus, or other similarly silly event.  Supposedly, the idiom, “to jump on the bandwagon,” was coined in 1848 when Dan Rice, a clown, used his bandwagon to attract attention for his political campaign.  Other politicians saw the attention he was getting and also wanted to “jump on the bandwagon.”

This seems kind of odd to me.  You would think a clown aspiring to be a politician would try to downplay his clownliness.  Not ride around on a wagon blasting clown music.  

Clownliness.

The idiomatic expression used to explain sex, “the birds and the bees,” is said to first appear in a Samuel Coleridge poem in 1825.  However, even earlier, Shakespeare mentions the copulating creatures in King Lear. 

Let me tell you something though; the way birds and bees have sex is neither pleasurable nor possible when dealing with humans. 

Trust me.

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.

I love discovering how particular phrases and words are coined.  Wait.  Coined?  “Coining” in the sense of creation, as in “to coin a phrase,” derives from the creation of monetary coins by stamping metal with a die…  Because every time someone makes up a new word or phrase, that person is stamping the word with a die.

And every time a bell rings an angel gets his wings…and is stamped with a metal die.

I honestly don’t know what I’m saying.  This is one of those posts that makes me laugh, but I really know it shouldn’t.

Stetson helped popularize the “ten gallon” hat, but that doesn’t help me understand why these cowboy hats are considered ten gallon.  There are two common explanations.  The first, which is likely false, is that it refers to the hat’s ability to hold water (however, a real “ten gallon” hat only holds about three quarts).  The most widely accepted theory is that it is a language mix-up.  Cowboy hats came to Texas by way of Mexico.  In Spanish, galón means “braid.”  Some vaqueros wore as many as ten braids on their hats.  Do you realize how stupid everyone would look if the cowboy hats held 10 gallons of water?  Well, not everybody…most people don’t wear cowboy hats.  But if we did it, it would be like walking around with water-cooler jugs on our heads.  

“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.