Sometimes, we encounter these words and we totally forgotten that it has a special meaning. That's because they are called idioms. And idioms are words with hidden meanings which makes a sentence more palatable....maybe because they are in a form of food. Without further ado here's eight words that makes your conversation more tasty.
1. Nutshell - the term "in a nutshell" refers to a short description, or a story told in no more words than can physically fir in the shell of a nut. But the origin of the term tests those limits with the most longwinded of tales. The ancient Roman encyclopeadistPliny the Elder claimed that a copy of Homer's The Iliad existed that small enough to fit inside a walnut shell. Almost 2000 years later in the early 1700s the Bishop of Avranches tested Pliny's theory by writing out the epic in tiny handwriting on a walnut-sizws piece of paper an dlo and behold, he did it!
2. Beans - English speakers have been using the word "spill" to mean "divulge secret information" since 1547, but the spilling of beans in particular may predate the term by millenia. Many historians claim the secret societies in ancient Greece voted by dropping black or white beans into a clay urn. To spillthose beans would be to reveal the rsults of a secret vote before the ballots had been counted. "Kidney he lives, pinto he dies!"
3. Pie - as many of us know from experience, it is not so easy to make a pie. A buttery crust can fal apart in the deftest of hands and around Thanksgiving many pumpkin "pies" might be more accurately deemed punmpkin "soups". On the other hand (or for our purposes) anyone can become an expert at eating a pie. Popularized in the US in the late 1800s, the most notable use of pie is to mean "simple and pleasurable" appears in Mark Twain's The Adventure of Huckleberry Finn. Part of our next food idion makes a home inmany pies, especially in America.
4. Apples - apples and oranges refers to two incommensurable items, ex. a comparison of things that cannot be compared. Though they are both fruits, apples and oranges are separated by color, taste, juiciness and 89.2 million yar sof evolution. The idion first appeared in as apples and oysters in John Ray's 1670 Proverb collection, and equivalent terms exist in many languages: "grandmothers abd toads" in Serbian to "love and the eye of an axe" in Argentine Spanish. What other funny fruits turn unusual phrases?
5. Bananas - not only does going bananas mean "to go crazy", the term can point to things for which you'v egone bananas, or obsessions. According to lexicographer E.J. Lighter, going bananas refers to the term going ape often used in American popular culture in the sceond half of the 1900s. Apes were seen crazy by the mid-century media, and what do apes eat? Bananas! For example, we're bananas for grammar but we go bananas when people end sentences with prepositions.
6. Tea - Though English is spoken all over the world, there are certain idioms that recall its, well, Englishness. Popularized in British Edwardian slang, cup of tea originally referred to something pleasant or agreeable. The negative usage as in not my cup of tea arose during World War II as a more polite way to say you didn't like something. "You don't say someone gives you a pain in the neck," explained Alister Cooke in his 1944 Letter from America. You just remark, he's not my cup of tea.
7. Cheese - perhaps the savoriest idion on this list, teh word cheese can refer to a person or thing that is important or splendid as well as to the delicious dairy product. The usage is thought to have origins in Urdu, from the Persian chiz meaning "thin". In common usage, "the big cheese" is a person of importance or authority, and cheese is often associated with smiling, based of the "say cheese" method of posing for pictures. Sometimes they use it as an adjective saying "cheesy" meaning the person is odd.
8. Eggshells - our final idiom is our most delicate: walking on eggshells or taking great care not to upset someone. It is thought to have originated in politocs when diplomats were described as having the remarkable ability to tread so lightly around difficult situations, it was as though they were walking on eggshells.
In a nutshell, we hope you go bananas for our foof idioms. Whether or not they'r eyour cup of tea, these terms are easy as pie to use and remember and they'll make you the big cheese of any conversation! So go ahead and spill the beans, it' sjust like apples and oranges anyway. Hehehe.
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