Fascinating backstories of phrases

Ten common English idioms and their surprising origins

Image: Amador Loureiro

Ever wondered why we "spill the beans" when we reveal secrets, or why something costs "an arm and a leg"? Our everyday expressions carry hidden tales of history, culture, and human nature. Let's dive into ten familiar idioms and discover the surprising stories behind the words we use so casually.

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When you "break the ice" at a party or meeting, you're helping people feel more comfortable and start conversations. This perfectly sensible expression actually comes from a very literal practice. In the days before modern icebreakers, ships would get trapped in frozen harbors during the winter months, unable to move until smaller boats physically broke through the ice to create a clear path.

The phrase made its way into social situations because starting a conversation in an awkward silence feels just as challenging as breaking through solid ice. Shakespeare even used this expression in "The Taming of the Shrew" back in 1590, proving that people have been struggling with small talk for centuries.

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"Spilling the beans" means revealing a secret or letting information slip out accidentally. Historians suggest this idiom may have originated in ancient Greece, where voting was serious business. Citizens would cast their votes using beans. White beans meant "yes," and black beans meant "no." The beans were supposed to be counted privately, but sometimes a clumsy voter would knock over the jar and literally spill the beans, revealing the secret vote.

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When something "costs an arm and a leg," it's extremely expensive –so much so that you'd have to give up precious body parts to afford it. While this sounds like modern exaggeration, some theories suggest that the phrase comes from the world of portrait painting in the 18th and 19th centuries. Back then, having your portrait painted was a luxury, and artists charged based on how much of your body was included in the painting.

A simple head-and-shoulders portrait was the basic package, but if you wanted your arms and legs painted too, the price went way up. So literally, including arms and legs in your portrait cost extra arms and legs!

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"Biting the bullet" means facing a difficult situation with courage, usually something unpleasant you can't avoid. This grim expression comes from battlefield medicine in the days before anesthesia. When soldiers needed surgery or had to endure painful medical procedures, doctors would give them a bullet to bite down on to help them cope with the pain and prevent them from biting their own tongues.

The lead bullet was soft enough not to break their teeth but firm enough to give them something to focus on during the agony.

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"Letting the cat out of the bag" means revealing a secret or surprise, usually by accident. Legend has it that this phrase comes from medieval marketplaces, where dishonest merchants had a sneaky trick for cheating customers. When someone wanted to buy a pig, the merchant would show them a nice, plump pig, then put what the customer thought was that pig into a bag for transport. But instead of the pig, they'd slip in a much cheaper cat.

The fraud was only discovered when the buyer got home and literally let the cat out of the bag. The cat was definitely out then, along with the secret of the merchant's deception! This medieval scam was so common that buyers learned to insist on seeing inside the bag before paying.

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When you go "the whole nine yards," you're doing everything possible, giving maximum effort, or including everything available. Despite being such a common phrase, its origin is hotly debated. One popular theory involves World War II fighter pilots, whose ammunition belts were exactly nine yards long. When a pilot used up all their ammo in a fight, they had given it "the whole nine yards."

Other theories include fabric merchants selling nine-yard bolts of cloth, or concrete trucks carrying nine cubic yards of concrete. The truth is, nobody knows for sure, and that mystery makes the phrase even more interesting. What we do know is that nine yards seems to represent completeness in American culture.

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This awkward-sounding advice means you shouldn't be overly critical of something you're getting for free. The saying comes from the practical world of horse trading, where a horse's age and health could be determined by examining its teeth and gums. Younger horses have better teeth, making them more valuable, while older horses show wear and problems that reduce their worth.

When someone gave you a horse as a gift, it would be incredibly rude to immediately check its mouth to see if you were getting a good deal. You'd essentially be questioning the giver's generosity and looking for reasons to complain about your free horse.

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Calling someone "mad as a hatter" means they're acting crazy or irrational. This isn't just a random comparison. Hat makers really did go mad, and there was a tragic reason for it. In the 18th and 19th centuries, hat makers used mercury in the process of turning animal fur into felt. Mercury is highly toxic, and prolonged exposure caused mercury poisoning, which led to tremors, mood swings, and erratic behavior.

Hat makers would develop what we now know were symptoms of mercury poisoning: Twitching, slurred speech, and personality changes that made them seem insane. The phrase became so common that Lewis Carroll used it when creating the Mad Hatter character in "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland."

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Being "saved by the bell" means being rescued from a difficult situation by a last-minute interruption, like when the school bell rings just as the teacher is about to call on you. While many people think this comes from boxing, where a boxer about to be knocked out gets saved when the round ends, the phrase might have an even more dramatic origin story involving the fear of being buried alive.

In the 18th and 19th centuries, people were terrified of being mistaken for dead and buried while still alive. Some coffins were equipped with bells connected to strings that ran down into the grave. If someone woke up buried, they could pull the string and ring the bell to alert the graveyard workers.

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When it's "raining cats and dogs," we mean it's pouring heavily. This bizarre expression has several possible origins, all of them rather unpleasant. One theory suggests that in medieval times, city drainage was so poor that heavy rains would wash dead animals through the streets, making it look like cats and dogs had fallen from the sky. Not exactly a pleasant mental image for your morning weather report.

Another theory points to old English, when thatched roofs provided shelter for small animals. During heavy storms, these creatures would supposedly fall through the soaked thatch into people's homes. While this sounds more like folklore than fact, it captures the chaos and surprise of a sudden downpour.

Uncovering old data

From Dodgers to Royals: What do the names of these pro sports teams mean?

Some sports team names sound fierce, others sound mysterious, and a few seem downright confusing. Why are basketball players in Utah called the Jazz? What exactly is a Dodger? And who were the 49ers? As it turns out, many of America's most iconic team names are little time capsules, preserving stories about cities, industries, historical events, and even newspaper jokes. Take a look at these 12 household names. Which one surprised you the most?

The Dodgers weren't always from Los Angeles. The franchise began in Brooklyn, where residents earned the nickname "trolley dodgers" during the late 1800s. Electric streetcars crisscrossed the borough, and pedestrians had to dodge them constantly to avoid serious accidents. Local newspapers started referring to the baseball club as the Dodgers, and the name eventually stuck.

When the team moved west in 1958, it kept the nickname, turning a distinctly Brooklyn expression into one of baseball's most recognizable brands. Few fans realize the name celebrates quick-footed pedestrians rather than baseball players.

The Packers owe their name to a meat-packing company. In 1919, future coach and founder Curly Lambeau secured money for uniforms from the Indian Packing Company, where he worked. Since many of the players were employees there as well, local reporters naturally began calling the team the Packers.

Unlike most professional sports franchises, Green Bay has never changed its nickname. More than a century later, it remains one of the few major American teams still carrying the name of its original corporate sponsor.

Pittsburgh's identity has long been tied to steel, so it was only fitting that its football team embraced the city's signature industry. The franchise entered the NFL in 1933 as the Pirates but adopted the name Steelers in 1940 after owner Art Rooney held a public contest.

The new name honored the thousands of steelworkers whose mills made Pittsburgh one of the world's great industrial cities. Even today, the team's famous logo incorporates the Steelmark, a symbol created for the American steel industry.

The 49ers are named after the fortune seekers who flooded California during the Gold Rush. Gold was discovered at Sutter's Mill in 1848, but the greatest wave of prospectors arrived the following year, becoming known as the "Forty-Niners."

Although the franchise now represents the San Francisco Bay Area, its name celebrates one of the most transformative events in California history. The Gold Rush attracted hundreds of thousands of newcomers and helped shape the modern American West.

Despite the bear mascot, the Cubs were originally named after young baseball players rather than young bears. Around the beginning of the twentieth century, sportswriters noticed Chicago's roster featured an unusually youthful group of players and began referring to them simply as the Cubs.

The nickname gradually replaced earlier names such as the White Stockings, Colts and Orphans. Today it's difficult to imagine the club as anything else, but its famous name started as little more than a newspaper description.

Milwaukee has been one of America's great brewing capitals for generations, home to legendary breweries such as Miller, Pabst, Schlitz, and Blatz. Baseball teams in the city had used the nickname Brewers since the late nineteenth century, making it an obvious choice when the current franchise relocated from Seattle in 1970.

Rather than honoring a mascot or an individual, the name celebrates the industry that helped define Milwaukee's economy and identity for well over a century.

Houston's baseball club entered Major League Baseball in 1962 as the Colt .45s. Three years later, the team moved into the futuristic Astrodome just as Houston became the home of NASA's Manned Spacecraft Center, placing the city at the heart of America's space program.

The franchise adopted the name Astros in 1965 to reflect this new Space Age identity. It remains one of the clearest examples of a professional team embracing a city's role in scientific history.

The Lakers have one of sports' most famous geographical mismatches. The franchise began in Minneapolis, Minnesota, whose nickname, "The Land of 10,000 Lakes", made the Lakers a perfect fit.

When the team relocated to Los Angeles in 1960, it simply kept the name. While Southern California isn't known for lakes, the nickname had already earned a winning reputation and had become too valuable to abandon.

Few team names puzzle fans more than the Utah Jazz. The explanation is simple: the franchise wasn't originally from Utah. It began as the New Orleans Jazz in 1974, borrowing its name from the city that gave birth to jazz music.

After financial difficulties forced the team to move to Salt Lake City in 1979, the nickname remained unchanged. It has since become one of the best-known examples of a sports team carrying a name that reflects its original hometown rather than its current one.

The Rangers weren't named after soldiers or adventurers. Instead, the nickname grew out of a newspaper pun. When boxing promoter Tex Rickard received an NHL franchise in 1926, journalists jokingly referred to the club as "Tex's Rangers," echoing the famous Texas Rangers.

The playful phrase was quickly shortened to simply "Rangers," giving hockey one of its most enduring names, all thanks to a clever headline.

Detroit's famous winged-wheel logo tells the story behind its nickname. When businessman James E. Norris purchased the franchise in 1932, he renamed it the Red Wings after Montreal's Winged Wheelers, an amateur club with which he had once been associated.

The winged wheel also proved especially appropriate for Detroit, already earning worldwide recognition as the center of the American automobile industry. The logo has become one of hockey's most iconic symbols.

The Royals aren't named after kings or queens. Instead, they honor the American Royal, one of the nation's largest livestock, horse, and rodeo exhibitions, held annually in Kansas City since 1899.

When the city received an expansion baseball franchise in 1969, fans voted in a naming contest, and the Royals won in tribute to this beloved local institution. It's a reminder that sometimes a team's name celebrates hometown traditions rather than history's famous rulers.