Perhaps you are one of thousands who have my first volume of Most Comprehensive Origins of Cliches, Proverbs and Figurative Expressions and think you have enough. Well, here’s just a sample of the 1,000 plus new entries in Volume II with their origins:
All bark and no bite
At someone’s beck and call
Be a canary in a coal mine
Beware Greeks bearing gifts
Bless your heart!
Blood money
Blow (or toot) your own horn
Bound and determined
Breathing down someone’s neck
Brothers ion arms
Bum steer
Butter someone up
Call a spade a spade
Calm before the storm
Cardinal rule
Cat nap
Clean someone’s clock
Cock and bull story
Cold as Kraut
Cold hard facts
Conjure up
Cook the books
Cry all the way to the bank
A crying shame
Damaged goods
Darken someone’s door
The devil is in the detail
Digging up bones
Doing a number on someone
Don’t give up your day job
Drama queen
Draw a blank
Drop in the ocean
Dry up and blow away
Duke’s mixture
Dutch courage
Elephant in the room
Expect the best and plan for the worst
Fact is stranger than fiction
The fat’s in the fire
Feed a cold, starve a fever
Fess up!
First past the post
Five o’clock shadow
Flattery will get you nowhere / everywhere
Follow the money
For crying out loud!
From stem to stern
A gentleman and a scholar
Get a handle on something
Get the show on the road
A ghost of a chance
Give away the farm
Going rogue
Good things come in small packages
Grinning from ear to ear
Hard core
Hatched up
Have bigger fish to fry
HAve one’s mind in the gutter
Having eyes in the back of one’s head
Helicopter parent
He who hesitates is lost
Hidden in plain sight
Hog heaven
Hold down the fort
A hop, skip and a jump
Hot off the press
How’s that working out for you?
Hunky-dory
I can resist anything but temptation
If I’d known you were coming I would have baked you a cake
If you don’t like it you can lump it
I’ll be John Brown
In cahoots
Insanity is doing the same thing over and over expecting different result
IN the cold light of day
In the middle of nowhere
Well, I could obviously go on and on! But ‘You get the picture!’ If you don’t have the second volume you are missing a lot!
Both are available right now on Amazon worldwide.