Snowy sayings

You won't believe the real roots of 10 winter idioms you use every day!

You might not realize it, but the world around us shapes the way we speak. And the seasons are no exception. Have you ever wondered why we say someone is "snowed under" or that they suddenly get "cold feet"? These expressions aren’t random. Today, we’re exploring the origins and meanings of 10 popular winter idioms.

You’ve thought it through, made your decision, and planned everything. But then nerves take over, and you hesitate. That’s when we say you’re getting "cold feet," and it’s something we’ve all felt at some point.

The expression comes from Germany, though its exact origins are debated. One theory comes from war, describing soldiers ready to fight but unable to charge because their feet were frozen. Another comes from a 19th-century German novel, where a poker player backs out of a game before losing, claiming he couldn’t focus because of his "cold feet."

If you’ve ever been in a risky situation where a small mistake could lead to disaster, you might say you’ve "walked on thin ice," even if you’ve never been near snow.

The phrase originally described the real danger of walking on thin ice over water in frozen regions. By the mid-19th century, it became a metaphor, used to describe any situation where one is in danger.

If your friend ignores your calls or says they won’t be home when you plan to visit, they might be giving you the "cold shoulder." One of the most widely accepted origins of this idiom comes from the Middle Ages. Back then, if an unwelcome guest arrived, hosts couldn’t just shut the door. Instead, they would serve a cold shoulder of beef, mutton, or lamb, instead of a warm, welcoming meal. Unbelievable!

If you applied for a job that’s completely unrelated to your experience and you’re totally unprepared, we might say your odds are "a snowball’s chance in hell." This idiom, used to express extreme improbability or near-impossibility, emerged in the United States around the 1880s. One of its earliest recorded uses appeared in The Detroit Free Press, describing the slim prospects of a political candidate.

If you’re working on a project but your creativity is running low and progress stops, it might be time to "put it on ice." This popular idiom simply means to pause something or set it aside for a while. Its origins are quite literal: before modern refrigerators, people stored food with blocks of ice to preserve it for later use.

Imagine your friend is telling you about all the problems they’re facing. You’re shocked by what’s already happened, and then they say, "Wait, that’s just the tip of the iceberg." Oh no! This means things will get even worse.

The idiom is used metaphorically to describe a small, visible part of a larger, hidden problem. But what’s especially interesting is its root: while the exact moment it emerged is unknown, it’s believed to have gained popularity in the first half of the 20th century, shortly after the famous sinking of the Titanic.

If "a snowball’s chance in hell" means that something is extremely unlikely, then "when hell freezes over" goes even further, indicating absolute impossibility.

The phrase imagines the logical absurdity of a vast place that is completely on fire, suddenly freezing over. It first emerged in the late 19th century, and according to written records, its popularity grew around the 1920s, becoming a widely recognized idiom in everyday English.

Do you remember Kevin, the main character in Home Alone? Even though he was inside the house, he was essentially "left out in the cold." But how? The expression is used to describe someone who has been forgotten, excluded, or ignored, just like poor Kevin in the movie.

While the exact origins of the phrase are unknown, it likely comes from the literal idea of leaving someone outside, exposed to the cold, without shelter or warmth, highlighting the feeling of being left out.

When work piles up, deadlines loom, and your stress levels rise, we might say you’re "snowed under." This expression, used to describe someone who is overwhelmed, dates back to around 1880. Its origins are literal, referring to the terrible experience of being buried under a heavy snowfall, unable to move, and suffering in the cold.

When exam season rolls around, and students face a heavy workload, they might say, "Winter is coming." This expression, used to warn of future challenges, originally refers to the real hardships that winter brings to animals and plants.

Although it has been around for a long time, it gained huge popularity in recent years thanks to the hit TV series Game of Thrones, based on George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books.

FRUITFUL CHANGES

10 Common Fruits That Used To Be Completely Different

Image: Jacopo Maia

As humanity's agricultural practices evolved, crops changed shape, taste, and even color. And although we like to think of the fruits we know and love as timeless creations of nature, the truth is that they have also transformed over time—and a lot!

Here are 10 intriguing examples of fruits that underwent significant changes before becoming the fruits we know today.

Image: Anastasia Eremina

Bananas have an interesting (and complex) story. Initially, they weren’t the fleshy, tasty treats we know today, but were almost inedible and had enormous seeds in them. Through selective breeding over dozens of generations, humans transformed bananas into the sweet, seedless fruit we know today. But the changes didn’t stop there: in the first half of the twentieth century, the main banana cultivar in the world was victim to a mysterious disease that almost wiped out bananas completely, and they had to be replaced with a more resistant variety.

Image: Shelley Pauls

Wild apples were small, sour, and varied greatly in flavor and not necessarily for good. Over many centuries, humans chose to grow and eat the ones that were larger and more palatable, leading to sweeter fruits with a more consistent flavor. Our ancestors brought these "elite" seeds around with them while they traveled the world, giving rise to many of the cultivars we know today.

Image: Sahand Babali

Once, watermelons weren’t bigger than a peach. You might find that hard to believe, but most of what we now love about watermelons was selected for thousands of years. Unfortunately, this came at a cost. In the process, watermelons lost genetic diversity, and became more vulnerable to pests and diseases, making them harder to grow.

Image: Maja Petric

One of the earliest domesticated fruit crops, grapes have been a part of human history for millennia. How early grapes exactly looked is kind of a mystery, but we can guess that they were smaller and not all that sweet (starting to see a pattern here?). Fortunately, our ancestors loved the fruit so much that they bred hundreds of varieties, some for winemaking and others to feed their families.

Image: Jacek Dylag

What we call a strawberry is not even a berry. And, to be fair, they are not even a "purebred" fruit, but rather a "hybrid" of two different related species. The hybridization was intentional and was part of the domestication of wild strawberries—that were initially tiny and packed with too many seeds. We can thank this intense selection process for the sweet, juicy treat they are today.

Image: Ian Baldwin

Peaches originally appeared in China, and, according to botanical experts, they were way smaller than they are today and, allegedly, "tasted like a lentil." Yeah, we are as surprised as you. However, after nearly six thousand years of artificial selection, domesticated peaches grew to be 16 times larger, sweeter, and juicier than their wild counterparts, while also increasing the amount of nutrients essential to human survival.

Image: Max

Not even the timeless orange is safe here. Yeah, you guessed it, they used to be nothing like what we now expect of a standard orange, being generally smaller and bitter than today’s sweet and juicy cultivars. Interestingly, they were also the result of hybridization between two varieties of citrus we are still familiar with: pomelo (Citrus maxima) and mandarin (Citrus reticulata).

Image: Hitoshi Namura

Though avocados were only semi-domesticated, with early humans in the American continent choosing to grow wild varieties rather than keep specialized plantations, their evolutionary history is quite surprising. This fruit evolved at the beginning of the Cenozoic era, when the local megafauna (very large animals like the megatherium) ate it whole, helping its seeds begin their germination process within their stomachs. Relics of a long gone past, they were only saved from extinction by human intervention.

Image: Alexander Schimmeck

Similarly to avocados, the "king of fruits" is today considered an evolutionary anachronism, as its large seeds were once dispersed by now-extinct animals. However, as humans fell in love with the tasty fruit, mango species dispersed far from their original range, giving birth to hundreds of different varieties that resulted in an overall sweeter and less fibrous fruit.

Image: Juno Jo

Though little is known about its domestication, pineapples were already a staple crop of South American societies at least a millennia before Europeans arrived. The wild fruit had various uses, including making alcoholic beverages, medicines, and even crafting poison arrows. After contact, Europeans went bananas over this new exotic and strange-tasting fruit, but they were so expensive that most used them only as decoration and did not start to eat them until they began to rot.