Today, a red herring refers to a deliberate misdirection. Red herrings were used in hunting by poachers. Poachers would drag a red herring across the path between the prey and the hunting party. The scent of the herring would throw off the dogs, since the smell of fish was often used in training hunting dogs. The first use of red herring as a misdirection appeared in the Liverpool Daily Post of 11 July 1884:

The talk of revolutionary dangers is a mere red-herring.

No, not really love, but love as in nothing, the score that starts all tennis games. How did the term originate? Some believe that it was adapted from the phrase “to play for love of the game”. Basically to play for nothing. Others believe that it comes from the French word l’oeuf meaning an egg. I guess an egg resembles a zero?

So yesterday I was busy fixing my computer and cables and trying to attach some cable ties to get it all in order when one of my children told me about boy problems she was having. The look on her face instantly brought to mind the quote:

Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned

Will the quote is sometimes attributed to Shakespeare, it is actually from a play called The Mourning Bride, written in 1697 by william Congreve. The entire quote is:

Heaven has no rage like love to hatred turned / Nor hell a fury like a woman scorned

Congreve (1670-1729) was considered a classic of Restoration comedy, way before spray paint was invented!

Since I recently talked about the word pimple, I started wondering where the word zit comes from. Almost every teenager has bought, at one point in their lives, a zit remedy without once knowing what the term even refers to.

No one really knows the origin, but it seems that it originated in the 1960s and may have come from the German word “Zitse” which means teat or nipple. I guess zits can look like that sometimes!

Pimples come in many shape and forms and the clinical terms include acne, nodular acne and acne vuglaris. No one knows where the term pimple originated from, but some think that it may have come from the Old English word pipligende, which means having shingles and originated around 1400. Since both skin conditions can cause bumps, the term could have been used interchangeably for any kind of bumpy skin condition.

The phrase, “As Good Luck Would Have It”, is attributed to Shakespeare who coined many phrases that we use today. It means by fortunate chance. The origin is from The Merry Wives of Windsor, Falstaff speaking:

You shall hear. As good luck would have it, comes
in one Mistress Page; gives intelligence of Ford’s
approach; and, in her invention and Ford’s wife’s
distraction, they conveyed me into a buck-basket.

All things must pass isn’t about colon cleanse reviews, but does mean that nothing lasts forever. The origin of the phrase is again the King James Bible from Matthew 24:6-8:

And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet.
For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places.
All these are the beginning of sorrows.

The phrase was used by George Harrison for the title of his 1970 album.

A drop in the bucket is a phrase that is interpreted to mean a very small portion of the whole. The origin is actually the King James Bible:

“Behold, the nations are as a drop of a bucket, and are counted as the small dust of the balance: behold, he taketh up the isles as a very little thing.” – Isaiah 40:15

Unfortunately, the origin of the term malarkey, meaning nonsense, is something of a mystery. Some think it originated from the Greek word “malakia” meaning soft. I found these interesting stories, but they are probably a bunch of malarkey!

The Mullarky clan in County Clare in Ireland were wealthy land owners with typical serf-tenants of the era (mid 1800’s). They paid their tenants in “Estate Script” which was paper money that could be spent locally. When the Great Potato Famine hit, the Mullarkys just kept issuing this script even though it rapidly became worthless due to the falling fortunes of the clan. Eventually the script was “just a lot of Mullarky,” said with the same scorn as “Confederate Money” in the USA during the Civil War. Something worthless…ridiculous…too silly to be considered. The phrase was carried to the US by the flood of Irish immigrants during the famine. After the famine eased in Ireland, the phrase died out fairly quickly, except in the US.

Both of these stories are based in New York.

One is the story of a fish seller named Malarkey. The story goes that this fellow would display on salted ice, the nice fresh fish, and when the lady of the house made a purchase, he would bag up a rotten old fish from the underside of the fish cart. Upon reaching her home she would open the package only to discover that evening’s dinner was not fit to eat. And thus was born “a bunch of Malarkey.”

The second story involved a cop named Malarkey walking a beat in Old New York. He apparently was assigned to a rural area, where, frankly not much of anything happened. So this fellow started to file false reports indicating that he had done this or that. Over time the tales of his exploits were exposed as false. Thus leading to the saying, “a bunch of Malarkey”.

Another:

Mullarkey was a leader of one of the many attempts to overthrow the English monarchy. He was a powerful orator and pamphleteer. To denigrate him, the English would refer to his writings and speeches as “that’s a lot of Mullarkey.”

Who knows what the true story is!

The term “dead as a doornail” was first seen in print in 1350, but was, perhaps, popularized by William Shakespeare in his play King Henry VI in 1590:

Brave thee! ay, by the best blood that ever was
broached, and beard thee too. Look on me well: I
have eat no meat these five days; yet, come thou and
thy five men, and if I do not leave you all as dead
as a doornail, I pray God I may never eat grass more.

But why compare death to a doornail. Doornails are large nails. The nails were hammered through and then the protruding end was bent over to secure it. After a doornail was used once, it could not be taken and used due to the bending of the nail. Thus, a doornail would be dead (or not usable) a second time.