“Nest Egg & No Dice” and the Wonderful Origins of Everyday Expressions (Pt. 15)

This is Lee Habib, and this is Our American Stories. And we tell stories about everything here on this show, including your stories. Send them to OurAmericanStories.com. They’re some of our favorites. Up next, we continue with our recurring series about the curious origins of everyday sayings: the stories behind them. Here to join us again is Andrew Thompson, as he continues to share another slaves from his Ultimate Guide to understanding these mini mysteries, these mini stories of our precious English language.

A nest egg is savings that are set aside for later use, which a person tries to add to, and that phrase has been used from as early as the fourteenth century in England. In those days, before commercial factory chicken farming, chickens would lay their eggs in nests in a coop. A means of giving the chickens hope and encouraging them to lay more eggs, farmers used to place a porcelain or china egg in the nest or the coop area. The dummy egg was known as a nest egg, and did often induce the chickens to be more productive. The expression then came to mean someone’s financial savings by the late 1600s. ‘In the nick of time’ means without a second to spare, and it began in England. In the Middle Ages, at that time, during team games, there’d be a tallyman to keep score. He would carry a tally stick, and each time a team scored, he would carve a small nick, or notch, or groove into the stick. If the winning nick was added just before the end of the match, it was known as ‘the nick in time.’ The expression later became known as ‘in the nick of time.’ ‘Nineteen to the dozen’ means to be going at a very fast pace, and it originated in the Cornish copper and tin mines in the eighteenth century in England. Pumps were a necessary piece of equipment at the mines and were used to clear out the excess water that had been used in the mining or that had come in as a result of flooding. Hand pumps were used to clear the water until the advent of steam-driven pumps. While the traditional hand pumps were slow and labor-intensive, the steam pumps were fueled by coal and highly efficient. When running at maximum capacity, they could clear 19,000 gallons of water for every 12 bushels of coal burned, and that’s where ‘nineteen to the dozen’ came from. To say ‘no dice’ means something is futile or nothing is happening, and it began in America in the early twentieth century. Gambling was illegal in many states at the time, so if a game was interrupted by the police in a raid, men went to great lengths to hide their dice. When challenged, courts would throw out illegal gambling cases if no dice could be produced as evidence. ‘No dice’ meant no conviction. This led some gamblers to even swallow their dice to avoid arrest. The expression was then used colloquially by the 1920s. ‘No such thing as a free lunch’ means you never get anything for nothing, and there’s always a hidden cost. And it began during the 1840s in America. Bars and restaurants at the time began offering a free lunch to any customer who’d buy a drink. However, the free lunch was usually something insubstantial, like a salty snack, which did little more than encourage the patron to drink more and spend more money. It soon became apparent that after a free lunch, people were spending more money than if they just paid for a proper lunch in the first place. This technique became a lucrative way for U.S. establishments to make money, and many even advertised the free lunch in local newspapers. ‘Not worth his salt’ means to be ineffective or not deserving of one’s pay, and it derives from Roman times. Before the invention of canned goods and refrigeration, salt was a valuable commodity in the preservation of food. Roman soldiers received some of their wages as an allowance of salt. This was known as a solarium, which takes us root for ‘sal,’ the Latin word for salt, and our modern-day word ‘salary’ actually derives from it. If a soldier did not perform well and was not up to scratch, it was said that he was not ‘worth his salt.’ The expression ‘nothing is certain except for death and taxes’ means literally that only those two things are the certain things in life, and it began in 1726 with a book by Daniel Defoe, who wrote Robinson Crusoe, but the book was The Political History of the Devil, where he wrote, ‘Things as certain as death and taxes can be more firmly believed.’ But it was Benjamin Franklin who coined the phrase or made it widespread in writing about the new Constitution. In a letter in 1789, he wrote, ‘Our new Constitution is now established and has an appearance that promises permanency. But in this world, nothing can be certain except death and taxes.’ ‘Off the cuff’ means to carry out a task spontaneously or without preparation. It’s a phrase that relates to public speaking from the 1800s, when men wore shirts with detachable collars and cuffs, which made them easy to clean. Politicians and keynote speakers generally wanted to give an audience the impression that they were good speakers and could hold people’s attention without any preparation or the need to refer to notes. It was a common practice at the time to write notes on their shirt cuffs before a speech. Only they could see the notes, so the audience had be none. The wiser politicians would also make additional last-minute notes on their cuffs to counter the arguments of their opponents, and so the expression came ‘off the cuff.’ ‘On a wing and a prayer’ means to be hopeful but unlikely to succeed, and it’s another expression that stems from World War II. The story goes that an American pilot flew back to base with one wing of his plane badly damaged. The other men at the base remained that he hadn’t crashed, and he told them that he’d been praying the whole way in. Another pilot then coined the phrase when he said, ‘A wing and a prayer brought you back.’ The phrase then got worldwide attention when it was referred to in two Hollywood films: Flying Tigers, starring John Wayne in 1942, and A Wing and a Prayer in 1944. ‘Coming in on a Wing and a Prayer’ was also a patriotic song released in 1943 that popularized the expression.

And a great job is always on the production by Greg Hangler, and a special thanks to Andrew Thompson. He had us laughing out loud here in the studio. The whole crew. So many of these short stories—and they are a series of short stories about phrases—are a laugh-out-loud funny. And Andrew Thompson is the narrator and the voice you were listening to, and he’s written a terrific book called Hair of the Dog to Paint the Town. Read the curious origins of everyday scenes and fun phrases. I particularly was laughing at ‘Nest Egg’ because we’re—well, we’re raising eight chickens, and at key times when we want the chickens to be a little more productive, we throw in a fake egg, and it works. They think somehow that they need another one. We have no idea why it works, but the fake egg has proved to be, well, a great way to get more eggs. So many good stories! Andrew Thompson on the Curious Origins of Everyday Sayings, here on Our American Stories. Folks, if you love the great American stories we tell and love America like we do, we’re asking you to become a part of the Our American Stories family. If you agree that America is a good and great country, please make a donation. A monthly gift of $17.76 is fast becoming a favorite option for supporters. Go to OurAmericanStories.com now and go to the donate button and help us keep the great American stories coming. That’s OurAmericanStories.com.