Do you know how to rub glasses? Expressions You May Not Know Originated

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

These expressions are familiar to us from childhood, but where did they come from?

Hedgehog is clear

“And a no-brainer” - this expression became famous thanks to Mayakovsky's poem (“It's clear even a hedgehog - / This Petya was a bourgeois”). It appeared in Soviet boarding schools for gifted children. They recruited adolescents who had two years left to study (grades A, B, C, D, E) or one year (grades E, F, I). The students of the one-year stream were called “hedgehogs”. When they came to the boarding school, biennial students were already ahead of them in a non-standard program, so at the beginning of the school year the expression “no brainer” was very relevant.

Rub glasses

In the 19th century, gamblers resorted to tricks: during the game, with the help of a special adhesive composition, they applied additional points (red or black signs) of powder to the cards, and, if necessary, could erase these points. This is where the expression "rub in the glasses" comes from, which means presenting something in a favorable light.

Whipping boy

Whipping boys in England and other European countries of the 15th - 18th centuries were called boys who were brought up with princes and received corporal punishment for the prince's offenses. The effectiveness of this method was no worse than the direct flogging of the culprit, since the prince did not have the opportunity to play with other children, except for the boy, with whom he established a strong emotional connection.

Tunic in tunic

Tyutelka is a diminutive of the dialectal tyutya ("hit, hit") the name of an exact hit with an ax in the same place during carpentry work. Today, the expression "tuft to tuft" is used to denote high accuracy.

Nick down

Previously, not only a part of the face was called a nose, but also a tag that they carried with them and on which they put notches to keep track of work, debts, etc. Thanks to this, the expression "hack to death" arose.

In another sense, a bribe, an offering, was called a nose. The expression "stay with the nose" meant to leave with an unacceptable offering, without an agreement.

Play on your nerves

After doctors discovered the antiquity of the nerves in the human body, they named them by their similarity to the strings of musical instruments with the same word - nervus. Hence the expression for irritating actions arose - "playing on the nerves."

Out of place

Today in French in everyday life, the word assiette means "plate". However, earlier, not later than in the XIV century, it meant "the seating of guests, their arrangement at the table, that is, near the plates." Then, with the expansion of the circle of connections, assiette became the "location of the military camp" and then the city. In the XVII century. the word absorbed all the "concreteness" of possible "positions" and began to denote any "position" in general … In the same century, assiette also acquired a figurative meaning - "state of mind."

The Russians in the bar, who spoke and even thought in French, apparently did not particularly care about the accuracy of the Russian language, and even in the 18th century. in their own way they "translated" the French turnover: into the Russian phraseological unit from the original language, instead of "position", it got … "not a plate of its own." It is thanks to their negligence that such a wonderful figurative expression appeared in the Russian language!

Pour in on the first number

In the old days, schoolchildren were often flogged, often without any fault of the person being punished. If the mentor showed special zeal, and the disciple was hit especially hard, he could be freed from further vice in the current month, until the first day of the next month.

Kazan orphan

After the capture of Kazan, Ivan the Terrible, wishing to bind the local aristocracy to himself, awarded high-ranking Tatars who voluntarily came to him. Many of them, in order to receive rich gifts, pretended to be badly affected by the war. Hence the expression "Kazan orphan" appeared.

Run like a red thread

By order of the British Admiralty, starting in 1776, in the production of ropes for the navy, a red thread must be woven into them so that it cannot be removed even from a small piece of rope. Apparently, this measure was intended to reduce the theft of ropes. From here comes the expression "to run like a red thread" about the main idea of the author throughout the entire literary work, and Goethe was the first to use it in his novel "Selective Affinity".

Give good

In the pre-revolutionary alphabet, the letter D was called "good." The flag corresponding to this letter in the naval code of signals has the meaning "yes, I agree, I agree." This is what caused the expression "to give the good".

Beluga roar

Belukha

The silent beluga fish has nothing to do with the expression "beluga roar", which means to scream loudly and strongly, cry. Previously, not only a fish was called a beluga, but also a toothed whale, which today is known to us as a beluga whale and is distinguished by a loud roar.

Blue blood

The Spanish royal family and nobility took pride in the fact that, unlike the common people, they trace their ancestry to the West Goths and never mingled with the Moors who penetrated into Spain from Africa. Unlike the dark-skinned commoners, blue veins stood out on the pale skin of the upper class, and therefore they called themselves sangre azul, which means "blue blood." Hence, this expression to denote aristocracy penetrated into many European languages, including Russian.

Reach the handle

In Ancient Russia, rolls were baked in the shape of a castle with a round bow. The townspeople often bought rolls and ate them right on the street, holding this bow or handle. For reasons of hygiene, the pen itself was not consumed, but given to the beggars or thrown to be eaten by dogs. According to one of the versions, about those who did not disdain to eat it, they said: got to the handle. And today the expression "to reach the pen" means to completely sink, to lose a human appearance.

Spread the thought along the tree

In "The Lay of Igor's Campaign" you can find the lines: "Boyan the prophetic, if someone wanted to compose a song, Mysiya spread along the tree, like a gray wolf on the ground, a gray eagle under the clouds." Translated from the Old Russian "cape" is a squirrel. And because of an incorrect translation in some editions of the Lay, a joking expression appeared “to spread the thought along the tree”, which means to go into unnecessary details, to be distracted from the main idea.

Skeleton in the closet

"Skeleton in the closet" is an English expression that means a certain hidden fact of the biography (personal, family, corporate, etc.), which, if made public, can cause significant damage to reputation.

The emergence of the expression is associated with medicine. Doctors in Britain were not allowed to work with dead bodies until 1832. And the only bodies available for autopsy for medical purposes were the bodies of executed criminals. Although executions of criminals were by no means uncommon in eighteenth-century Britain, it was unlikely that a particular doctor would have had many corpses at his disposal for his work history. For this reason, it was common practice for a doctor who had the good fortune to dissect the corpse of an executed criminal, to preserve the skeleton for research purposes. At the same time, public opinion did not allow doctors to keep the skeletons in sight, so they had to keep them away from prying eyes. For this reason, many suspected that the doctors kept skeletons somewhere, and one such place could be a closet.