BET YOU DIDN'T KNOW THE SOURCE OF THESE IDIOMATIC EXPRESSIONS

email | 8-29-13 | no idea

[paterfamilias]

An entertaining email, to be sure, but at least three are not true: Brass Monkey, Save Face, and Gossip. I didn’t have the time to look up the rest.

[TBP]

I did know most of these.

[Sergio]

Cool...thanks for sharing.

[mountainlion]

Printers also used the watch your ps and qs as they were hard to sort after a print job.

[BenLurkin]

“balls to the wall”

First time I heard that expression it was a Navy guy saying it.

And he wasn’t a pilot.

[Dr. Bogus Pachysandra]

” Did you know the saying “God willing and the creek don’t rise” was in reference to the Creek Indians and not a body of water? It was written by Benjamin Hawkins in the late 18th century. He was a politician and Indian diplomat. While in the south, Hawkins was requested by the President of the U.S. to return to Washington . In his response, he was said to write, “God willing and the Creek don’t rise.” Because he capitalized the word “Creek” it is deduced that he was referring to the Creek Indian tribe and not a body of water.”

I read a long site a day or so ago, disputing this. Gave lots of examples, and sited lots of research.

[shove_it]

Thanx. This will keep my smartass liberal sister-in-law busy for quite a while fact checking all this stuff.

[I cannot think of a name]

The only one up there that I know to be true is the 27 feet of ammo and the expression “the whole nine yards.” But it only applied to the P-51 Mustang. Other aircraft had differing amounts.

And the most common use of the phrase was after a young pilot got caught sneaking onto the base after a night out with his English girl friend. To a common question, “well, did you get into any trouble?” The usual reply was, “yea, they brought me up in front of the old man and he gave me the whole nine yards.”

[Slump Tester]

Since when do libtards care about facts?

[Pajamajan]

bookmark

[Ol' Dan Tucker]

This stuff is almost as bad as the ‘pluck yew’ email that makes the rounds every couple of years.

[cookcounty]

The Las Vegas triple-A baseball team has a nickname of the “Las Vegas 51’s.” Now, is this a reference to Tin-Foil Hatness (as in Area 51), or a reference to being one card short of a full deck?

[shove_it]

This one does. Snopes is her Bible. And we know how unbiased Snopes is.

[Slump Tester]

My favorite pilot line is the one I've always used with my girlfriend: "Stick with me, and you'll be farting through silk."

She just commented the other day about how the people who know where came from are dying off. (Pilots had access to silk when it was hard to find.)

[bk1000]

I always thought “balls to the wall”, or “balls out”, referred to the governor on a steam engine running full speed. Pretty sure “losing face” is wrong, as it has been used in Asian cultures for ages. Fun to talk about these things anyway.

[Ticonderoga34]

At local taverns, pubs, and bars, people drank from pint and quart-sized containers. A bar maid's job was to keep an eye on the customers and keep the drinks coming. She had to pay close attention and remember who was drinking in 'pints' and who was drinking in 'quarts,' hence the phrase 'minding your 'P's and Q's'.

I heard a different story about 'minding your 'P's and Q's'.

The story I heard was that the British Royal Navy used to give its sailors a rum ration everyday.

If a sailor was on duty, he got a pint of rum. If he was off duty, he got a quart of rum. Hence the saying, 'mind your 'P's and Q's'.

[posterchild]

I thought ‘balls to the wall’ was in reference to ball speed governors for steam engines. The balls spin and centrifugal force makes the balls go out and this action can be used to limit a throttle.

[Ol' Dan Tucker]

During WWII , U.S. airplanes were armed with belts of bullets which they would shoot during dogfights and on strafing runs. These belts were folded into the wing compartments that fed their machine guns. These belts measure 27 feet and contained hundreds of rounds of bullets. Often times, the pilots would return from their missions having expended all of their bullets on various targets. They would say, �I gave them the whole nine yards, meaning they used up all of their ammunition.

Most fighters of the day in WWII fired .50 BMG ammunition. The average ammunition load per machine gun was 300 rounds per gun. For example, the P-51 Mustang carried 4 - .50 M1 machine guns and a total of 1260 rounds or 315 rounds per gun.

The base of the .50 BMG is .804" in diameter.

315 X .804" = 253".

253" / 12" = 21'.

So, a belt of 315 rounds of .50 BMG ammunition is actually, at minimum, 7 yards, not 9.

Calculations for .30-06, which is the other commonly used aircraft ammunition, comes up with a similarly different number than 9 yards.