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Anybody ever wonder where this phrase came from?
Sleddog46
Posts: 1,050 ✭✭✭✭✭
Carnival games give out stuffed animals as prizes nowadays,
but in the late 19th century, the games targeted adults, not kids.
Instead of getting a stuffed animal, winners would get a cigar.
Therefore, if they almost won but didn’t earn that prize, they’d be “close, but no cigar.”
By the 1930s, this phrase extended beyond fairgrounds to every day close shots.
You can't dispel Ignorance if you retain Arrogance!
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Back in Europe some time ago they were running out of graveyard space. So they proceeded to dig up the old coffins to reuse the plot. They found scratch marks on the interior of many coffin lids meaning people had been accidentally buried alive. So a new procedure was adopted of tying a string to the wrist of the newly interred, which led up above ground to a bell. If someone woke up, their frantic movement would ring the bell and alert the person whose job it was to listen for such a thing. The person on the graveyard shift would then dig up the person who was saved by the bell.
If you want to bomb me send it to Tony @0patience
If you are a newbie I got Dem nachos....
I know, You're a big dog and I'm on the list.
Let's eat, GrandMa. / Let's eat GrandMa. -- Punctuation saves lives
It'll be fine once the swelling goes down.
Bandy was a medieval bat-and-ball game, similar to hockey. To ‘bandy’ words is to knock them back and forth as one would bandy a ball.
Unwelcome guests were given "the cold shoulder" of mutton.
Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy cigars and that's close enough.
bells and whistles - "The Central Pacific company had thirty locomotives gayly decked ranged on the city front, and at the signal of a gun announcing the driving of the last spike on the road the locomotives opened a chorus of whistles, and all the bells and steam whistles in the city joined." May 10, 1869.
World War II Fighter pilots received a 9-yard chain of ammunition. Therefore, when a pilot used all of his ammunition on one target, he gave it “the whole 9 yards.”
Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy cigars and that's close enough.
Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy cigars and that's close enough.
-- Winston Churchill
"LET'S GO FRANCIS" Peter
Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy cigars and that's close enough.
Thought to originate from centrifugal governed steam engine. More power applied moved bearings to the outside thus letting out or limiting steam production
Middle English, to bark, probably of Germanic origin
The throttle controls were round knobs and would hit the firewall at full throttle.
@peter4jc is correct.
Balls out refers to the centrifugal governor on engines, that were balls that would spin and move out to limit the rpm of the engines.
Hense, balls out meaning as fast as it would go.
Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy cigars and that's close enough.
I do not vouch for the veracity of the following information.
I learned/ heard, somewhere along the way, that cannon balls were stacked on platforms made of brass, which were somehow dimpled to accommodate the balls, and these were called "monkeys", for whatever reason. As the balls were made of iron, they changed in size at a different rate than the brass monkey and rolled out of the depressions in the temperature dropped sufficiently.
Seems possible.
"If you do not read the newspapers you're uninformed. If you do read the newspapers, you're misinformed." -- Mark Twain
Before the Battle of Agincourt in 1415, the French, anticipating victory over the English, proposed to cut off the middle finger of all captured English soldiers. Without the middle finger it would be impossible to draw the renowned English longbow and therefore be incapable of fighting in the future. This famous weapon was made of the native English Yew tree, and the act of drawing the longbow was known as "plucking the yew" (or "pluck yew").
Much to the bewilderment of the French, the English won a major upset and began mocking the French by waved their middle fingers at the defeated French, saying, "See, we can still pluck yew! "PLUCK YEW!"
Over the years some 'folk etymologies' have grown up around this symbolic gesture. Since 'pluck yew' is rather difficult to say (like "pleasant mother pheasant plucker", which is who you had to go to for the feathers used on the arrows for the longbow), the difficult consonant cluster at the beginning has gradually changed to a labiodental fricative 'F',and thus the words often used in conjunction with the one-finger-salute are mistakenly thought to have something to do with an intimate encounter. It is also because of the pheasant feathers on the arrows that the symbolic gesture is known as "giving the bird".
And yew all thought yew knew everything!
Pretty sure none of it's true...
I know, You're a big dog and I'm on the list.
Let's eat, GrandMa. / Let's eat GrandMa. -- Punctuation saves lives
It'll be fine once the swelling goes down.
WW2 barracks slang for a dummy that might choose the wrong product to shine his shoes.
Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy cigars and that's close enough.
Great stuff guys...
Except that the phrase 'the whole nine yards' was already in use in the early 1900's.
Interesting. I found a couple of examinations of its origin here:
https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/the-whole-nine-yards/
and
https://www.phrases.org.uk/meanings/the-whole-nine-yards.html
Evidently, no one knows for sure.
That's interesting. LOL!
Money can't buy happiness, but it can buy cigars and that's close enough.
Everyone knows that it was invented in the movie with Matthew Perry...