Charles the Horse and Other Oddities of Speech

I’m not even going to start on explaining how our language came to include the expression “Charley Horse” to describe a painful leg cramp, except to say that apparently it first came into use amongst baseball players in the 1880s.

It used to be that voting involved dropping white or black marbles or beans into a box, after which they would be counted. If you knocked over the box prematurely so as to reveal the likely result, you were said to “spill the beans”.

In pioneer days, a loose axe head could become very dangerous if it would “fly off the handle”. In medieval times it was illegal and harshly punished to cheat customers, so bakers would often throw in an extra loaf or bun, making a “baker’s dozen”, or thirteen.

Pirates, boarding an opposing ship, would have pistols stuffed in their belts, a sword in each hand, and a knife held between their teeth. They were “armed to the teeth”.

Given that the normal calendar and the lunar calendar are not exactly the same, it occasionally happens that a full moon occurs twice in a month. Not frequently, but “once in a blue moon”.

In battles of the sixteenth through eighteenth centuries, without the benefit of anesthesia, soldiers were given a bullet to clench in their teeth while they endured anesthesia-free surgery. They were said to “bite the bullet”.

At local fairs, fraudsters would offer to sell you a piglet in a sack. If they weren’t careful, the bag would fall and open and it would be revealed they had substituted an ordinary housecat for a valuable piglet, thus “letting the cat out of the bag”.

In the Malay language “amok” meant homicidal madness, hence “running amok”. In a similar vein, ancient Viking armies included crazy men who would charge wild-eyed into battle wearing only shirts made of bear skins. They were known as berserkir.

Let me assure you that these thoughts have not been jotted down in haste on my shirtsleeves “on the cuff”.