Money does talk

10 Idioms about money and what they really mean

Image: Fabian Blank

In this day and age, money is one of the central aspects of our lives. But not only does it shape the way we live: sometimes, it can shape the way we talk. Our daily language is stuffed with colorful expressions about cash. From the most silly to the utterly serious, they all carry a story, often stranger than the phrase itself. Let's break down some popular idioms about money that prove how creative we can get!

Image: micheile henderson

It sounds quite obvious, but this idiom is still the go-to phrase for parents trying to rein in their children's over-eager spending. Rising to popularity during the early 20th century, this phrase underscores the finite nature of money while highlighting the value of hard work and careful spending.

Ironically, some people say that paper money does, in a sense, come from trees, but this isn't true in the United States. US dollars are made of cotton fiber, not of wood fiber.

Image: Andre Taissin

Today, this phrase conjures images of crashed piggy banks; we use it when we spend what seems like a fortune on a luxury car or some hard-earned vacations. However, the origins of this idiom stretch back to 19th-century casinos. If a gambler, by luck or cunning, won more than the house could cover, they quite literally broke the bank, and the casino had to shut down the table.

Image: Erik Mclean

This one is pretty straightforward: it actually comes from the farmyard. Dairy cows, requiring little beyond feed and care, produce milk steadily for many years. In the 20th century, businesspeople borrowed the metaphor: a cash cow is any product that brings consistent profit with minimal effort on the company's part. Think of razor blades, sodas, or charging cords: humble items that, while unassuming, keep the cash flowing steadily.

Image: Jp Valery

Sounds painful when you think about it, right? Some historians trace this phrase back to 9th-century Ireland, when it referred to the pain of paying heavy taxes levied by the Norse invaders. Legend has it that, if you didn't pay on time, collectors would slit your nose in punishment.

While this grisly tale is debated, the idiom stuck, and today it simply means to pay for something more than what it's actually worth. Thankfully, we get to keep our noses.

Image: Sasun Bughdaryan

Another idiom that comes straight from the farmyard. The story goes that farmers once kept an egg (sometimes real, sometimes carved out of wood or made of porcelain) in a chicken's nest to encourage hens to come back and lay more eggs in the same place. By the 1600s, this practice gave rise to the figurative nest egg: money set aside to grow over time.

Image: Siora Photography

In 18th-century England, wealthy families often gifted silverware at birthdays or baptisms, a symbol of prosperity and high status. To the common folk, pointing out that someone was "born with a silver spoon" meant that they started life with privilege, without the need to make their own fortune. The phrase stood the test of time, though kids today would probably say that people "born with a silver spoon" are "playing life on easy mode."

Image: seeetz

Today, this is a common phrase used when someone has to cut their expenditures. However, this one has very dark origins rooted in real hardship. In times of famine or economic downturn, people literally have less to eat and lose weight, having to pull their belts tighter. In the US, this phrase rose to prominence during the Great Depression, when cutting expenses and making do with less became commonplace.

Image: Wright Brand Bacon

This fun idiom about providing for the family might have much more bizarre roots than we imagined. A possible origin for this phrase traces it back to 12th-century England, where the town of Dunmow promised a slab of bacon to any married couple who could swear before god that they hadn't quarreled for a year and a day. Lighthearted recreations of this tradition still survive in Great Dunmow, Essex.

Image: Kateryna Kamenieva

This one sounds like a cautionary tale about shady investment opportunities and online deals that are too good to be true, but its origins can be traced back to the writings of a 1573 English clergyman. The message is clear: careless spending will lead to dire consequences. The phrase has remained popular because, unfortunately, it's timeless. Times have changed, but fools still part with their money; only the scams have changed.

Image: Patrick Weissenberger

Short, blunt, and cynical, this enduring phrase is a testament to the power that money represents. It expresses the idea that, sometimes, wealth can influence decisions faster than persuasion or logic. This phrase dates to at least the 1600s: it appears in literature from that time, and it hasn't changed a bit since.

Customer success vocabulary

"Are we ready to order?" The true reason servers use the first person

There's a reason why a handful of phrases keep coming at us from public-facing workers across many industries. Decades and decades of trial and error have taught brands which words put customers at ease, which expressions to reach for, and which to avoid at all costs — like "unfortunately" or "I don’t know that." Let's explore 10 of the vocabulary tools used by waiters, hosts, receptionists, and customer service reps, and the real reasoning behind each one.

Have you ever been left wondering why your waitress keeps speaking in the first-person plural? That plural "we" has a name: linguists call it "the royal we", or nosism, meaning the substitution of a group pronoun for a singular one. Monarchs used it for centuries to speak as though they embodied an entire nation; King Edward VII was still doing it in official documents as late as 1902.

It’s unclear when restaurant servers picked up the habit, but it works. By including themselves in the sentence, waiters imply that every step of the dining experience is a team activity that they lead gladly.

When you thank your barista, receptionist, or cashier, you are more likely to hear "no problem" than "you’re welcome". This one stems from naturally friendly and gallant behavior that has set in society in recent decades.

Linguist Aaron Dinkin studied the phenomenon in 2017 and confirmed that younger speakers had opted out of "you’re welcome," since it suggests that effort was spent and is being graciously accepted. "No problem" is a humble assurance that the help cost nothing at all, even if it’s a little white lie at least half of the time.

Here’s something a customer never wants to hear: "Unfortunately, there’s nothing I can do about that." Experts advise never to use that adverb in the face of a customer’s problem, since it suggests the company is powerless or worse, indifferent.

Instead, the magic words to use are these: "Here's what I'm going to do for you." That will instantly please a customer who is looking for possible solutions. The phrase can be traced back to a 1980 policy at the Ritz-Carlton, where co-founder Horst Schulze gave every employee the authority to spend up to $2,000 per guest fixing a problem on the spot.

In 1936, Dale Carnegie wrote in How to Win Friends and Influence People that a person's name is "the sweetest and most important sound in any language," and customer service training is careful to apply that wisdom.

Hearing your own name signals that you're being treated as a person rather than a ticket number. Modern software made the trick easier, since caller ID and account records now hand an agent your name before they've said hello. It can backfire, though; hearing one’s name repeatedly in the middle of a heated conversation can become irritating and sound like mockery.

An alternative to this one is "that would upset me, too." These phrases are a nod to the notion that the client is always right. Companies now admit that the latter is not necessarily true, though, but that often, indulging a customer's complaint, however unreasonable, is cheaper than losing their trust.

"That shouldn't have happened" updates the idea: it validates how a customer feels without declaring them factually correct. Researchers coined the term "service recovery paradox" in 1992 after finding that customers who complain and get an empathetic, competent response often end up more loyal than customers who never had a problem at all.

The two most empathetic words an agent can say are these. The concept behind it is called "active listening." It was so named in a 1957 essay by psychologist Carl Rogers and Richard Farson, and it didn't come from business at all. It came from Rogers's therapy sessions, where he found that people couldn't move toward a solution until they felt genuinely heard first.

Sales trainers later built an entire technique around the same insight, nicknamed "Feel, Felt, Found," which opens with exactly this line before pivoting to a fix. The order matters more than the words, because agents know that offering a solution before acknowledging the feeling can make people argue harder.

This is the go-to sentence to use instead of a dreaded "I can't help you with that." In the industry, this is called a "warm transfer," as opposed to the far more common and far more resented "cold transfer," where you're bounced to a stranger who has no idea why you called and makes you start over. Ideally, a rep will personally explain your problem to another expert and build a bigger team to come up with solutions.

This is the euphemism phrase to use in place of "I don't know." It’s friendly, humble, and a preamble to a brief research that will follow. Technically, saying "That’s a great question" in a conversation is a stalling tactic. It borrows a few seconds through flattery while the brain scrambles for an answer.

In 1963, a Worcester, Massachusetts commercial artist named Harvey Ball was paid $45 to design a simple smiling face for an insurance company, State Mutual Life Assurance, meant only to boost employee morale. Seven years later, two Philadelphia brothers paired the design with the words "Have a Happy Day," soon changed to "Have a Nice Day," trademarked the combination, and sold more than 50 million pins by 1972.

The four words have now become the obligatory send-away greeting that some businesses even write in their windows. It has also become the default sign-off for practically every customer transaction in America; "goodbye" might sound too dramatic.

"Found everything ok?" That question usually greets customers when they reach the cashier in retail stores. It can be traced back to Walmart's national "People Greeter" program in the 1980s, designed to do two things at once: make shoppers feel noticed and discourage theft.

The restaurant version of the same check-in is the "How’s everything?" a few minutes after bringing the food to the table. Waiters are trained to ask this to spot possible complaints early on, and also to remind customers that someone’s paying attention to their experience.