The Forgotten Sources of 12 Common Phrases

The English language is bursting with colorful expressions that come from strange and surprising places. Many of them once had literal meanings that the general public has long since forgotten. 

This list, adapted from the above episode of The List Show on YouTube, is all about why we say what we say—from the poem that gave us albatross around your neck to the hands that gave us hands down.

1. Slush Fund
2. Albatross Around Your Neck
3. Silver Screen
4. Bucket List
5. Kick the Bucket
6. Egg on Your Face
7. Egg on
8. Apple of My Eye
9. The Writing on the Wall
10. The Land of Nod
11. Close, But No Cigar
12. Hands Down

Slush Fund

The origin story of slush funds features way more animal fat than you probably thought. Nowadays, the phrase typically describes a fund used to pay people off in underhanded political  deals. But beginning in the 1700s, sailors used the word slush to describe the fat or grease left over after cooking meat. The cook would save up all the slush produced during a voyage and sell it to manufacturers, who needed it to make candles and other products. The money was used to buy things that weren’t built into a ship’s budget: books, rugs, cushions, musical instruments, and so on. By the 1800s, sailors had started calling this fund a “slush fund.”

From there, the definition broadened to cover any supplemental source of cash, especially one used for government workers. It’s not totally clear how slush fund got its modern connotation involving bribery and corruption. But there was a lot of bribery and corruption in 19th-century American government. And, honestly, probably in 19th-century nautical trade deals, too.

Albatross Around Your Neck

If someone has an albatross around their neck, they’re bogged down by a burden or source of guilt they can’t shake. Either that, or they’re wearing a dead bird as a necklace—which actually is the case for the narrator of Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner.”

In the poem, an albatross brings good fortune to the crew of a ship. Then, after a sailor shoots it with a crossbow, the voyage is plagued by bad luck. As punishment, the sailor is forced to string the bird’s carcass around his neck so:

Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.

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Silver Screen

Calling movies “the silver screen” gives the whole operation a glitzy Old Hollywood vibe that seems fitting. When the expression was coined in the early 20th century, it was more than a vibe: Movie theater screens were often coated in silvery metallic paint that were supposed to help heighten the image contrast and cut down on blurriness. Silver-colored screens are mostly obsolete these days, but they do come in handy for 3D films. 

Bucket List

Without the (figurative) silver screen, we might not have bucket lists. In 1999, screenwriter Justin Zackham wrote a list labeled “Justin’s list of things to do before he kicks the bucket.” He then shortened that to “Justin’s bucket list,” which inspired the title for his 2007 Rob Reiner–directed film The Bucket List. In it, Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson play men with terminal cancer who try to complete their own bucket lists. Though Zackham wasn’t the first person to ever put the words bucket and list together, he is generally credited with coining the phrase in its current sense. 

Kick the Bucket

That story raises an interesting follow-up question: Why does kick the bucket mean “die” in the first place? One of the theories floated over the years, one likely origin involves an alternate definition of bucket dating back to the 16th century: a beam you can hang something on. During slaughter, a pig or other livestock suspended on a beam by its feet could be said to “kick the bucket”—either in struggling to free itself or twitching after death. 

Egg on Your Face

Having any kind of food on your face can be embarrassing, so how did we land on egg specifically to convey the feeling? Well, for one thing, chucking eggs at people—be it talentless performers or prisoners in the town square—is a time-honored tradition that’s been around since the Middle Ages at least. Women in the 19th century and later were even known to fend off harassers by smashing eggs in their faces.

But not all egg-on-face scenarios involved two people and a well-aimed toss. Sometimes a person just forgot to wipe their mouth after a meal. In the early 20th century, this could cause shame beyond the normal there’s-something-on-your-face variety. Back then, cold storage was still relatively new and eggs weren’t always cheap or easy to come by, especially in the winter. A little egg residue near your mouth might signify an unwisely lavish lifestyle. 

A 1911 issue of Kansas’s Atchison Weekly Globe reported that “An Atchison young man … was upbraided this morning for being extravagant. ‘Why, you had egg on your face this morning when you came to work,’ he was told.” According to the young man himself, it was just “mustard from a 5-cent ham sandwich.” 

Egg on

While we’re on eggs, let’s just quickly cover what the deal is with egg on, meaning “to incite or urge on.” Like, The expression has nothing to do with literal eggs: It’s from the Old Norse word eggja, meaning “edge,” and it’s been around since the 1200s. Egg as in “pelt someone with eggs” didn’t pop up until the mid-19th century. 

Apple of My Eye

Let’s jump to another roundish food item. Apple of my eye doesn’t derive from eyeing the most delicious apple at the farmers’ market. Ever since the days of Old English, the word apple has been used to describe any kind of fruit, or various spherical objects. This included the pupil of the eye, once believed to be its own separate orb inside your eyeball. The apple of your eye was viewed as an especially cherished part of the body—seeing as it allowed you to, well, see. 

Eventually, people started using the phrase metaphorically to describe an especially cherished anything, especially people. It’s been around for more than a thousand years: The earliest known reference is from the 9th-century work of Saxon king Alfred the Great. It also comes up in the King James Bible.

The Writing on the Wall

Which brings us to the writing on the wall, originally from the story of Belshazzar’s feast in the Bible’s Book of Daniel. In the story, the Babylonian ruler Belshazzar throws a lavish feast at which he and his lords drink from holy chalices taken from a temple in Jerusalem. During the feast, a hand appears and writes an unintelligible message on the wall. A spiritual man named Daniel eventually translates the words, revealing that Belshazzar is fated to lose his kingdom. He’s murdered that very night.

The above is not the most comprehensive retelling of the story, but it’s enough to explain how the writing on the wall got its current meaning: “warning signs of disaster or misfortune.” 

The Land of Nod

We also have the Bible to thank for the land of Nod, the classic whimsical way to describe going to sleep. In the Book of Genesis, it’s the region east of Eden where Cain heads after he kills his brother, Abel. Nod comes from a Hebrew word meaning “wandering.” Jonathan Swift is probably the most famous example to recognize the pun potential of the place. In his 1738 book A Complete Collection of Genteel and Ingenious Conversation, a character says he’s “ … going to the Land of Nod.” He means he’s going to sleep—presumably a nod to nod off.

Close, But No Cigar

The land of carnivals, meanwhile, gave us close, but no cigar. In the early 20th century, cigars were a common prize at carnival games, like those where players aimed at targets. If you fell a little short of winning one, the carnival barker might shout, “Close, but no cigar!” By the late 1920s, people had started using the expression figuratively in reference to any near miss.

Hands Down

If you win one of those games by a large margin, on the other hand, you might call it a “hands-down victory.” These days, hands down can describe anything effortless or indisputable. Initially, though, 19th-century English speakers invoked it for a certain kind of horse race—one in which a horse wins by such a large margin that the jockey slackens the reins and crosses the finish line “with hands down.”