Every day, we speak words and phrases without a second thought. But tucked inside many of those common expressions is a whole world of history, human ingenuity, and sometimes, a little bit of unexpected drama. On Our American Stories, we love pulling back the curtain on these everyday mysteries, revealing the fascinating journeys our language has taken through time and how these words continue to shape our conversations.
Here again to guide us through these linguistic adventures is Andrew Thompson, sharing another engaging chapter from his Ultimate Guide to Understanding These Mini Mysteries of the English Language. From ancient Roman scrolls that gave us ‘in a nutshell,’ to the muddy streets of medieval butchers leaving things ‘in a shambles,’ and even the bright lights of early theater putting someone ‘in the limelight,’ prepare to hear the captivating true stories that shaped how we talk. It’s a journey into the heart of our shared American stories, one amazing phrase at a time.
📖 Read the Episode Transcript
“In a nutshell” means concisely, or in a few words. He might say to someone, “Just tell me in a nutshell.” And it’s said to originate from the ancient story described in 17 A.D. by the Roman Kulopliny the Elder. The story goes that the philosophers Row witnessed a copy of Homer’s epic poem, The Iliad, written onto a piece of parchment and enclosed into the shell of a walnut. Obviously, this is impossible, but it is believed that important documents were folded and inserted into walnut shells and bound so that they were waterproof and could be taken long distances without damaging them. Shakespeare referred to the expression in his 1603 play, Hamlet, and that immortalized the expression. “In a shambles” means a state of complete disorder or ruin, and it derives from the open-air meat sellers of medieval times. The word “shambles” derives from the Old English word meaning “footstool,” which came from the Latin word meaning “small bench.” Most towns at that time in England had streets designated to a single type of vendor. There were streets for grocers, streets were bread sellers, butchers who all offered their wares from street-side workbenches. These streets were known as “shambles,” but it was the butchers that became particularly associated with the term, as they were supplied directly by the slaughterhouses. The meat shambles were renowned for being a complete mess of blood and offcuts. By the 1400s, the word “shambles” had become synonymous with general mess and disorder, and the town of York, England, to this day has a street called “Shambles.”
“In cold blood” means deliberately and without emotion. Is often related to murders. For example, he murdered the man “in cold blood.” It’s an expression the dates from the early 18th century, and began with the belief that a person’s blood heated up when an act of great emotion or passion was committed. This was based on the reddening of the face and the feeling of heat that a person experienced. It was thought that when one could carry out a violent crime without excitement or emotional involvement, the person was acting “in cold blood.” The term was first used in the English publication, The Spectator, in 1711.
To say something is “in the bag” means a successful outcome is absolutely certain. And while there are different theories on the origins of the phrase, including those relating to baseball and hunting, the early days of the British Parliament as the likely birthplace. On the back of the Speaker’s chair in Parliament hung a velvet bag, and all successful petitions that were brought before the House of Commons would be placed in that bag. Because it was known that all such petitions had been successful, they became known as “in the bag.”
If you say to someone, “I’m in the doghouse,” it usually means you’re disgraced and out of favor, usually said by a husband to a wife. And “in the doghouse” as a phrase that has literary origins. It derives from J. M. Barry’s 1904 book, Peter Pam. Mr. Darling, the children’s father in the book, is particularly unpleasant to Nana, the family dog. His children then fly off with Peter Pan, and as a self-imposed punished and for his behavior, he goes out to live in the doghouse until the children returned from Neverland. Peter Pam was obviously a very popular book, and as a result, the expression quickly came into widespread usage.
If you say “in the doldrums” or you’re feeling “in the doldrums,” it means to feel unmotivated or depressed, and it relates to a region by that name, which is located slightly north of the equator between two belts of wind. Sailors use the term because winds there met and neutralized each other, which resulted in ships becoming stranded and sitting around idly, virtually unable to sail. Many assume that the expression comes from the name of the region, but it’s actually that the region came to be named because of its nature. “Doldrum” comes from the Old English word “doll,” meaning “dull,” and that led on to the word “Doldrum,” and the phrase was then used in the figurative sense by the early 19th century.
“In the groove” is an expression which means is to function perfectly or with little effort, and it stems from the early vinyl record days. Records are made with a number of grooves cut into the material where the music is recorded. The record is played by a stylus or needle, which must sit neatly in the groove to ensure good sound quality. If a stylus is worn, making its tip too wide, it will not sit in the groove and the sound will become distorted. Equally, if the record is scratched, the stylus may slip out of the groove and the record won’t play. The phrase took on its idiomatic qualities with the arrival of jazz in the 1920s. The free-spirited nature of jazz bands and the way they played with each other led people to describe them as “in the groove.”
“In the limelight” means at the center of attention. You may say, “John loves being in the limelight.” And this is one of the very first phrases I ever learned. It has its origins in the theater, when calcium oxide, more commonly known as lime, is heated, it produces an intense white light, and this process was first used to effect by a man named Thomas Drummond in the 1820s. He was a Scottish army engineer who used heated lime as an aid in mapmaking. Because of the bright light was visible at a distance. The technique was then adopted in theaters to illuminate the stage, and was first used in Covent Garden in London in 1837. The actors who were the center of attention on the stage were said to be standing “in the limelight.” And that saying now applies to anyone who’s the focus of attention.
If you say something is “in the offing,” you mean it as likely to happen sooner as imminent. And it’s a nautical expression originating in the early 1600s that came into widespread usage by the late 1700s. The offing is that part of the sea that is visible from or off the shore, the area between the shore and the horizon. In other words, a ship that was “in the offing” was within sight.
A special thanks to Greg Hengler for the production on the piece, and a special thanks to Andrew Thompson, heir of The Dog to Paint the Town. Read The Curious Origins of Everyday Sayings and Fun Phrases. Go to Amazon.com or any of the usual suspects the story of the English language, or at least its curious sayings and phrases, here on Our American Stories.
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