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.

Image: Alexander Mils

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.

Image: Paolo Nicolello

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.

Tango, Bravo

Codewords decoded: How many did you know?

In situations where clear communication is paramount, especially when lives are at stake, professionals often rely on standardized codewords and phonetic alphabets designed to prevent confusion. Either from movies or from personal experience, it's probable that you've heard at least some of these before, and many have found their way into everyday conversation. Let's find out how many of these code expressions you can recognize.

Mayday is the international distress call used when the sender is in immediate, life-threatening danger. Pilots and mariners use it to signal that they require urgent assistance due to situations such as engine failure, fire, flooding, or medical emergencies.

The word was introduced in 1923 by British radio officer Frederick Stanley Mockford, who based it on the French phrase m'aider, meaning "help me," in an attempt to make it internationally recognizable. Hearing this transmission immediately alerts emergency responders that every second counts.

Not every emergency is severe enough to warrant a mayday call. When a crew faces a problem that is urgent but not immediately life-threatening, the appropriate codeword is Pan-Pan.

Like mayday, it comes from French: it derives from panne, meaning a breakdown or mechanical failure. A Pan-Pan call might be used if an aircraft loses an engine but can still fly safely, or if a ship experiences equipment problems while remaining under control. It tells responders that assistance is needed, but that the situation has not yet become critical.

Few emergency signals are as universally recognizable as SOS. Contrary to popular belief, the letters do not officially stand for "Save Our Ship" or "Save Our Souls." It was adopted in 1906 because SOS is an extremely simple, easy-to-transmit, and unmistakable pattern in Morse code.

SOS remains one of the world's most enduring distress signals, and it's still recognized by rescue organizations all around the globe.

In the NATO phonetic alphabet, each letter is assigned a unique word to eliminate confusion when radio transmissions are distorted by noise or poor reception. If you've ever heard someone spell a name as "Mike Alpha Romeo Yankee," you've encountered the NATO phonetic alphabet.

The system was officially adopted by NATO in the 1950s and is now widely used by militaries, airlines, emergency responders, and many police departments worldwide. Using it greatly reduces the chance of misunderstanding important information over radio.

Roger dates back to the early days of radio communication, when the letter R stood for "received." Before the adoption of the NATO alphabet, the US military used Roger instead of Romeo to represent that letter_._

Although modern communications systems have changed and the US military has fully embraced the use of the NATO alphabet, Roger remains standard aviation terminology, and it's one of the best-known radio acknowledgments in the world. It conveys a very simple but important meaning: "I have received and understood your message."

Although many people assume Roger and Wilco mean the same thing, they actually convey different messages. Wilco is short for "will comply." In other words, it tells the sender not only that the message was received and understood, but that the instruction will be carried out.

Saying both Roger and Wilco is technically redundant in proper radio communication, since complying necessarily implies understanding, but the combination is often heard in movies and television.

In the NATO phonetic alphabet, Tango simply represents the letter T. However, US military personnel have also adopted it as a shorthand when referring to a target or a hostile.

This secondary meaning became widely known through military operations in the twentieth century and has since appeared in countless books, films, and video games in phrases like "We've got one Tango moving north."

Oscar Mike, NATO for the letters O and M, is military shorthand for "On the Move." It's a quick way of reporting that a unit has begun moving toward its objective.

The expression is especially common in the US military and has become more familiar to the general public through documentaries, memoirs, and films. It's finding its way into civilian life, meaning simply "I'm heading out."

Ten-codes were developed during the 1930s to allow for brevity and standardization of message traffic in radio communications. They were widely adopted by US public safety departments and by radio enthusiasts.

While the system is being slowly phased out in favor of plain language communications, many local police, fire, and sheriff departments keep using it, and it is still strongly associated with radio culture by the general public. One of the most famous ten-codes is 10-4, meaning "received and understood."

Hospitals around the world use color-coded announcements to communicate emergencies without causing unnecessary panic among patients and visitors. Perhaps the best known is Code Blue, indicating that a patient is experiencing cardiac or respiratory arrest and requires immediate medical assistance.

While some hospitals use their own custom color codes, Code Blue has become so widely recognized that it now appears frequently in television dramas and everyday conversation whenever someone refers to a life-threatening medical emergency.