Commonly used phrases with hidden meanings

There you sit, one hand holding a cell phone, the other floating above your laptop keyboard. Your eyes are open as you stare at the countdown clock. The numbers flash zero, and those concert tickets you've been saving for are soon to be yours, and just as suddenly as you're in the queue, they've sold out. Now the resale prices are triple the original price, and you think, "I'm paying through the nose for these seats!" as you max out your credit card.

In essence, it just means you're being charged far more than the value of something. The phrase dates back to at least the 1600s, but its exact origin is unknown. Dictionary and Grammarist both point to a popular story that people's noses were once slit from tip to top if they didn't pay their taxes, but there's little historical evidence it ever happened.

The phrase "drinking the Kool-Aid" originated from a much more dangerous place than refined sugars.

On Nov. 18, 1978, more than 900 people, more than 300 of them children, died after drinking a cyanide-laced punch under the direct instruction of cult leader Jim Jones, who then died of a gunshot wound, in what is known as "The Jonestown Massacre." Though often called a mass suicide, many survivors and historians describe it as a murder-suicide, since many of the victims were coerced. This idiom was born from their deaths. However, they mostly drank Flavor-Aid, not Kool-Aid.

As you may remember from your elementary school's spring carnival, a cakewalk is a game where people form a circle and walk or dance to music until it stops. Whoever lands on the winner's circle by the time the song ends wins a cake. The rules are simple, the game's basis is chance, and it requires little effort to win, which explains why people started calling an easy victory "a cakewalk."

The story behind the cakewalk dates back to slavery, in which plantation owners hosted these types of contests for those they enslaved. Later, white performers in blackface copied the dances born from cakewalks in minstrel shows.

The phrase, a simple way to say it's been a long time since you've seen someone, first appeared in print in a 1900 frontier memoir by William Drannan (one that historians have long doubted), in which Drannan uses the phrase as part of a dialogue with an Indigenous American. But a theory that contradicts that origin claim says it comes from the pidgin English Chinese people used when encountering the British Royal Navy. Either origin suggests the phrase was born from English speakers mimicking, and often mocking, people of color.

Friends, family members, and carpoolers have all fought for the illustrious title of "shotgun!" (meaning you're riding up front on the passenger side). The one riding shotgun is the navigator of the voyage, if you will. Riding shotgun during the times of stagecoaches, however, meant you were responsible for holding the gun during the journey, and it was your job to defend against robbers.

As children, when it came to choosing team captains or who was up to the plate first at kickball, one of the easiest solutions was to play "Eenie meenie minie mo," a simple rhyming game in which whoever was counting pointed at a different person on each beat, naming whoever landed on the last word "it."

However, the lyrics we remember as children are not the ones that spread across the U.S. in the late 1800s and early 1900s. While the children's rhyme had us all trying to catch a tiger by the toe, those earlier words were overtly racist and utilized a slur instead of "tiger."

Anyone with a quick wit and an even faster mouth has likely heard someone tell them, "That's enough from the peanut gallery." The phrase refers to the house's cheapest seats, where the hecklers sat. The elder Muppets, with their judgmental scowls, guffawing over everything and anything from their balcony box, carry on the tradition.

Before movies, television, and social media, there was vaudeville. Performers took to the stage in front of a live audience and entertained the crowd with jokes, gags, dance, and more. However, at the time of vaudeville, the section wasn't just for critics or hecklers. In many theaters, it was where Black people were forced to sit.

"The paddy wagon" refers to the van or police vehicle used to transport people under arrest. In more recent years, police have used them to haul away protesters arrested in large numbers. The origin of the paddy wagon harkens to a time when Irish immigrants were arriving in America in droves.

A "paddy" was a derogatory term for Irishmen, whom people stereotyped as always drunk and often violent. Whether the name referred to the Irish being arrested or the many Irish Americans who served as police officers is disputed, but either way, it's rooted in a slur.

The Jimmies are more of an East Coast thing, but as a kid, if you were hitting the ice cream shop and you wanted chocolate sprinkles, you didn't ask for chocolate sprinkles. You asked for the Jimmies.

One origin theory, put forward by candy maker Just Born, is that the name comes from James Bartholomew, who ran its first sprinkle machine. Other stories point to the term being a subtle allusion to Jim Crow and segregation: The sprinkles were brown, unlike the typical rainbow assortment, and were often left out. There's no evidence to support that story, however, and language historians generally consider it an urban legend.

Calling someone a basket case generally refers to the idea that someone's brain is a mess they can't keep straight. While that's what the phrase means now, it meant something different in WWI, when it originated. First cited in 1919 in the Oxford English Dictionary, from a U.S. War Department bulletin, a "basket case" was rumored to be a term for soldiers who had lost both arms and both legs and had to be carried in baskets. The War Department issued the bulletin to deny that any such cases existed.

"Cat got your tongue?" is one of those snarky things you say to someone who's suddenly gone quiet, like after you've insulted them so successfully they can't come up with a retort. The origin is unclear.

One popular theory traces back to the British Royal Navy, which, as a punishment, would employ a cat-o'-nine-tails flogging device and beat the wrongdoers into submission or silence. But there's no historical evidence linking the two.

When someone "sells you down the river," it's an act of pure betrayal. During the time of slavery, the Mississippi River was considered a major thoroughfare for enslaved people to be shipped down the river and sold to various plantations throughout the South.

When being "grandfathered in," new rules established don't apply to you because you were there before those rules were instituted. For example, if your bank sets new fees, but you are grandfathered in, you won't have to pay.

The term comes from legislation passed by some Southern states that enacted new requirements necessary for people to register to vote, aimed at recently freed Black people. Those laws forced literacy tests and payments of poll taxes, among others. The Grandfather Clause then exempted anyone whose father or grandfather had been able to vote before 1867, so white voters were waved through while Black voters, whose ancestors had been enslaved, were kept off the rolls.

Psychologist Henry H. Goddard is known as one of the leading American eugenicists, part of a pseudoscientific movement rooted in racism. Goddard claimed he could create a "more desirable" human population by weeding out the traits that made someone unworthy of reproduction in the eyes of eugenics.

Goddard is responsible for coining the term "moron," which he used to classify a "feeble-minded person." His work gained him and his team access to the immigrants attempting to enter America through Ellis Island. Through his testing, about 40% of the Jewish, Italian, and Hungarian immigrants he examined qualified as "morons." The following year, deportations for "feeble-mindedness" doubled.

To "paint the town red" is to go out, have an amazing time, and possibly do some things you may regret (or forget) by the morning.

Henry de La Poer Beresford, the third Marquess of Waterford, was an Irish nobleman known as a rabble-rouser in his day. Known as "The Mad Marquess" to the public, he was well known for fighting, breaking windows, and stealing despite in no way needing to financially, and was politely but firmly asked to leave Oxford University. Legend has it that on one night in 1837, the Mad Marquess and a group of his friends went out in the English town of Melton Mowbray and had a destructive night that ended in them finding cans of red paint and painting the town red. It's a good story, but the phrase doesn't appear in print until 1883 in the U.S., so the connection may be legend alone.

More than one woman has been called hysterical in her lifetime, but what does that mean, and where does it come from? Oxford Languages defines hysteria as an "exaggerated or uncontrollable emotion or excitement." Where it gets a little tricky is hysteria's etymology and the way it weaponizes mental health against women.

The term was coined in 1801 in medical Latin to describe a neurotic state believed to be associated with a dysfunctional uterus. The entire premise of the phrase is connected to an inability to control your emotions because you're a woman.

The word "deadline" strikes fear into procrastinators' hearts. A deadline is a due date on which something needs to be ready, turned in, finished, etc. A teacher or editor isn't to blame for this one, though.

During the Civil War, Confederate soldiers held captured Union soldiers as prisoners of war. At camps like Andersonville in Georgia, the Confederates erected crude stockades around the small, cramped area where they held the Northern POWs. The "dead line," a low railing inside the stockade, referred to the promise of immediate death to anyone who crossed it.

While the definition of the "tipping point" calls it the critical point in a situation, process, or system beyond which a significant and often unstoppable effect takes place, the short version just means you've reached your limit.

The concept of the tipping point took hold as legal segregation began to crumble, and acted as a precursor to what became known as "white flight." During the '50s and '60s, the phrase came into general use when it was used to describe the point at which white families began to flee their neighborhoods because there were too many Black families moving in.

To quote a Pittsburgh Courier article from Feb. 10, 1962, cited by Merriam-Webster:

"He [a potential new neighbor] was told that he was welcome in Village Creek but not on Split Rock Road because his moving there would upset the delicate racial balance since [Black] occupancy had already reached the tipping point which might turn Split Rock Road into a 'ghetto.'"

The term hooligans is associated with soccer fans in the U.K., but long before the rowdy and raucous crowds took to the pitch, a cartoon of Irish immigrants took to the printers.

The word's exact origin is uncertain, but one theory points to a cartoon. Drawn by T.S. Baker, the cartoon, also called "The Hooligans," depicted Irish immigrants as lazy, oafish drunkards you could barely understand because of their accents, and then offered the proper Englishmen as a contrast. It was a form of propaganda intended to affirm stereotypes and instill prejudice against Irish immigrants. Other theories point to the Irish surname Houlihan or a music hall song about a rowdy Irish family, but all lead back to anti-Irish stereotypes.

Another children's rhyme from nefarious beginnings: "Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear, Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair, Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't very fuzzy, was he?" When you hear it, there's nothing ugly about it. It feels sweet, cuddly, and warm, like the adorable teddy bear the rhyme speaks of.

Rudyard Kipling's poem "Fuzzy-Wuzzy," published in his 1892 collection "Barrack-Room Ballads," is written in the voice of a British soldier who fought in Colonial Sudan. Throughout, he grudgingly praises the Beja warriors who broke a British infantry square, using the term "fuzzy wuzzy" to describe the texture of their hair. Whether the children's rhyme grew directly from that term is unproven, but the nickname began as a racial label.

Over time, "off the reservation" grew to mean someone who had deviated from their party or politics. In the late 19th and 20th centuries, the phrase referred to politicians diverting too far to the left or right of their established belief system.

However, the term traces back to when the United States forced Indigenous Americans into land treaties and moved them onto "reservations" (often remote swaths of poor land) after stealing their homes and destroying their culture. It became a common expression to describe any movements Indigenous Americans made off the reservation.

This ethnic slur managed to bore its way deep enough into the general vocabulary that most people may only know it as a term that means getting cheated, robbed, or swindled. However, the spelling of the word may offer some indication as to where the issue derives.

"Gypped" is a form of the word "gypsy," a derogatory term aimed at the Romani people, or the Roma, whose ancestors migrated from Northern India to Europe. It is steeped in a Western stereotype that implies the Roma are thieves.

If you've happened to see, well, nearly any British movie in the last 20 years, you more than likely have heard the phrase "bugger off" uttered. Today, "bugger" means a mischievous person or a snarky way to tell someone to get away from you.

The historical development of the word comes from something a little less impish, though. The term is thought to have come from an Old French word: the 14th-century "bougre." The word referred to either a heretic or a sodomite, depending on the context.

The technical term for "the itis" is "postprandial somnolence." Having "the itis" typically refers to someone about to slip gently into a long food nap. It means feeling lethargic, lazy, and too full to move. Maybe you unbutton your jeans a little. Maybe you change into sweatpants. Either way, "the itis" got you. The seemingly innocent term is a shortened version of a highly offensive racial slur.

Before Pharrell was "Happy," he was making music with N.E.R.D. and, in 2008, released a single from their album "Seeing Sounds" entitled "Spaz." The song was a loud, chaotic, eclectic mashing of sounds, and the chorus constantly told listeners to "spaz if you want to." At the time, this slang had evolved to mean someone who didn't have a care and would do what they wanted, when they wanted.

The word began as a derogatory term to describe someone clumsy, awkward, unaware of their body, or hyperactive. It was offensive because it originally came from the medical term "spasticity," which describes muscle stiffness and uncontrollable spasms, often in people with cerebral palsy, and can affect a person's speech. It was shortened to "spastic" and further shortened to "spaz."

Story editing by Jeffrey Smith. Copy editing by Kristen Wegrzyn.