Santa Claus

Despite the lack of historical facts about him, he is no doubt the basis for our Santa Claus. The eve of his feast day, December 6, is a children's holiday when gifts are given in the Netherlands, Austria and elsewhere, the custom calling for someone to dress up as St. Nicholas and present the gifts. The English who settled in New York borrowed both the saint and this custom from the earlier Dutch settlers, moving his day to Christmas, their own gift-giving day, and corrupting his name from the Dutch dialect Sint Klaas to Santa Claus.

The $ 64 question

On the radio quiz program "Take It or Leave It," which premiered in 1941 and was emceed by Bob Hawk, topics were chosen by contestants from the studio audience and questions on these topics answered by each contestant on seven levels. The easiest questions was worth two dollars and the questions progressed in difficulty until the ultimate $ 64 question was reached. The popularity of the show added to the language the expression the $ 64 question, "any question difficult to answer," and inspired a slew of similar quiz shows. A decade later came television's "$ 64,000 Question" with its plateaus instead of levels, its isolation booth, and its scandals involving prominent contestants who cheated in cahoots with the producers. Then, after a long hiatus, there was the $ 128,000 Question," but despite these programs with their inflated prizes, $ 64 question retains its place in the national vocabulary.

Auld lang syne, meaning 'long ago.'
In 1788, Robert Burns adapted 'Auld Lang Syne' from 'an old man's singing'. The title, first line and refrain had all appeared before as the work of other poets. Nevertheless, what Burns put together is what people still sing on New Year's Eve. Here is the first verse and the chorus:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And never brought to min(d)?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
And days of o' lang syne.

(Chorus)
For auld lang syne, my dear
For auld lang syne,
We'll take a cup o' kindness yet
For auld lang syne.


"Auld Lang Syne"

Every dog has his day

Dog's Day in the region is called Khich Mavas by the Kashmiris and the Swana Boli by the Nepalese. It is a day when humans pay reverence to dogs as their brothers and sisters among living things. Choice food is set out for dogs; even the mangiest strays get flower garlands hung around their necks and the Nepalese dogs wear the red spot of Hindu holiness imprinted on their foreheads. The following day things get back to normal until the next Dog's Day and the dog lead a dog's life, 364 days of curses, kicks, and stoning from humans who consider them unclean and contemptible.

Addition received with thanks from Tom Murphy:

You attribute "every dog has its day" to Cervantes. I couldn't find a suitable dog reference after a quick search in the Quixote. I am currently in a production of Hamlet and hear him say each evening, "The Cat will mew, and Dogge will have his day". I suspect Shakespeare also as the origin because of the dates. The Quixote is 1615 and the first quartos of Hamlet were 1603 and 1604.

It seems unlikely that disappointed American miners during the '49 gold rush derived the expression to peter out, 'to taper off or come to an end,' from the French peter, 'to break wind.' This would indeed have been an expression of their disappointment when a mine failed to yield more gold, but there were ample American words available to express the same sentiment.
Another guess is that the 'peter' here refers to the apostle Peter, who first rushed to Christ's defense in the Garden of Gethsemane, sword in hand, and then before the cock crowed thrice denied that he even knew Him.
Most likely the expression springs from the fact that veins of ore in mines frequently petered out, or turned to stone. The gunpowder mixture of saltpeter, sulphur, and charcoal, commonly called peter by miners, was used as an explosive in mining operations and when a vein of gold was exhausted it was said to have been petered out.

The word canoe has been traced back to the time of Columbus and is believed to be derived from a Haitian word, canoa, meaning a small handmade craft, originally one made from a hollowed-out tree trunk. The phrase paddle your own canoe - meaning 'mind your own business' - has been traced back to the early nineteenth century, although canoeing as a sport did not become popular until around 1875. It was a favorite expression of President Lincoln and his frequent use of it probably did much to make it popular.

This expression, meaning 'end of suspense,' has been around for many decades. There are various stories to account for its origin, but our own favorite comes from Kiyoaki Murata, managing editor of the Tokyo Times. "I was traveling in Germany and at a hotel my interpreter friend read me a joke out of a German magazine. It went like this: A traveler came to an inn late at night and asked for a room. There was only one available and he was told to be very careful because the guest in the next room was a timid fellow and a very light sleeper, disturbed by the slightest noise. So the new guest made every effort to be silent as he got ready for bed, but because he was so nervous he dropped one shoe, making a crashing sound in the silence of the night. Sure enough, it awakened the man next door and the new guest could hear him toss and turn. So he managed to get the other shoe off in silence and got into bed. Toward dawn he heard his neighbor still tossing about and finally, just about daybreak, he heard a pounding on the wall and a shout: 'When are you going to drop the other shoe?'

Cloud Nine

c The expression 'up on cloud nine' to describe a feeling of euphoric exaltation and joy is based on actual terminology used by the U.S. Weather Bureau. Clouds are divided into classes and each class is divided into nine types. Cloud nine is the cumulonimbus cloud that you often see building up in the sky in a hot summer afternoon. It may reach 30,000 to 40,000 feet, so if one is up on cloud nine, one is high indeed.

The popularity of cloud nine as a catch phrase, though, may be credited to the Johnny Dollar radio show of the 1950s. There was one recurring episode, like Fibber McGee's famous opening of the closet door. Every time the hero was knocked unconscious - which was often - he was transported to cloud nine. There Johnny could start talking again.

He who fights and runs away will live to fight another day

...is such a truism that we'd guess that the first expression of it was grunted by a caveman weary of battle. One of the first recorded expressions, though, is credited to Demosthenes, the famous Greek orator and political leader. When Philip of Macedonia, Alexander the Great's father, attacked, Demosthenes took flight. Reproached for his seeming cowardice, he replied:

"A man who runs away may fight again."

And a poem by our favorite poet, Anonymous, appeared about the middle of the eighteenth century. It ran like this:

He that fights and runs away
May turn and fight another day:
But he that is in battle slain
Can never rise to fight gain."

Crazy as a bedbug

How does it happen that people say So-and-so is crazy as a bedbug? Are bedbugs any crazier than other bugs? Quite to the contrary. We called a local exterminator, thinking he'd be an authority on the subject, and he told us that they are among the brightest bugs around. Ingenious, too. When one sets pots of water at each bedpost to act as a sort of midnight moat, the pesky things climb to the ceiling and drop down on the bed. However, he added they are rapidly being eliminated in most parts of the country by the, entomologically speaking, lethal sprays.

Stopped by 'entomological'? Well, sit still a minute for the favorite joke of dictionary editors.
"Pop," says the lad, "what's an etymologist?"
"Son," answers the learned father, "an etymologist is a man who knows the difference between an etymologist and an entomologist."
What's an entomologist? Simple. A bug expert.

Not worth a red cent

American pennies - once made with more copper, and thus redder - were formerly called reds, which is what a Californian describing a card game in 1849 meant when he observed, "Silver is not plenty ...on the tables and anybody can...bet a red on any card he chooses." This accounts for the expression not worth a red cent, which has roots in the British 'not worth a brass farthing' and which remains a good descriptive phrase because the penny still has enough copper in it to appear reddish.

Tomorrow is another day.

The last words of the film GONE WITH THE WIND (1939), spoken by Vivian Leigh as Scarlett O'Hara, are: 'Tara! Home! I'll go home, and I'll think of some way to get him back. After all, tomorrow is another day!'. The last sentence is as it appears in Margaret Mitchell's novel, but the idea behind it is proverbial. In Rastell's Calisto & Melebea (c 1527) there occurs the line: 'Well, mother, to morrow is a new day.'

Here's a pretty kettle of fish!

Meaning 'here's a nice state of affairs, muddle, mess!'

In the 1740s, Henry Fielding uses 'pretty kettle of fish' in both Joseph Andrews and Tom Jones, so it was obviously well established by then.

Brewer has a plausible explanation, saying that 'kettle of fish' is an old Border country name for a kind of fete champetre or riverside picnic, where a newly caught salmon is boiled and eaten. The discomfort of this sort of party may have led to the phrase.

A 'fish kettle' as the name of a cauldron for cooking fish has been a term in use since the seventeenth century, though it doesn't appear to have anything to do with this expression.
Rather preferable is the explanation given in 'English Idioms' that kettle comes from 'kiddle' (a net).
So all one is saying is: 'here is a nice net of fish', as one might on drawing it out of the sea, not being totally sure what it contains.

Addition received with thanks from Dale Hill

A kiddle (or "kittle") was a net or basket used by poachers to trap salmon and other fish. If, instead, the poachers were trapped, they were at least thrown off the land, if not executed.

My source is Dorothy ____ , a Welsh woman whose name I don't remember and whose books I don't have. Her writings and line drawings explained everything about ancient British culture.