Famous Sayings #170 — ‘Thanksgiving’

November 24, 2019

Every year, I spend Thanksgiving with my extended family. It’s often contentious, but I love seeing my relatives.

Image by Jill Wellington from Pixabay

In the United States, Thanksgiving will be celebrated on November 28, 2019. For many years, this national holiday has been observed on the fourth Thursday in November, but why is that? There is an interesting history there, but the reason why we celebrate this holiday isn’t as clear as it seems.

Famous Sayings #169 — ‘Fair Play’ and ‘Foul Play’

November 17, 2019

He’s such a great footballer not just because of his skill, but also his great sense of fair play.

His death may have been ruled an accident, but the police have not rule out foul play.

Fair play and foul play often pertain to sports, but they have real-world applications, as well. Image cropped. Original image by skeeze from Pixabay.

This week’s installment of my Famous Sayings posts features two terms that have something to do with sport but often have other real-world applications. Originally, I was going to look at a phrase that involved one of these terms, but I decided to look at these terms first to set up a future post.

Famous Sayings #168 — ‘About-Face’

November 11, 2019

The councilman was opposed to the community garden project before doing an about-face this past week. I wonder what changed his mind.

A drill sergeant teaches a group of Training Corps cadets how to do an about face. Original image via The United States Army website.

Since it’s Veterans Day in the United States, I decided to look at another military term. This time, it’s a term that has been wide-scale civilian use. I first heard of the term in the military sense, but as of late, I hear it more often in civilian use.

Famous Sayings #167 — ‘It’s All Greek to Me’

November 3, 2019

The teacher tried to explain how and when to use certain equations in Calculus, but it’s all Greek to me.

Image cropped with added text. Original Image by Michelle Maria from Pixabay.

This is a famous saying that I had been working on for weeks, but with schedule changes and an increased workload, I hadn’t found the time to do this justice. Fortunately, I had done some prior research, so there wasn’t much to do for this post except write the thing.

Anyway, this is a phrase I have inherently known the meaning of but hadn’t really thought to investigate. One can say that “It’s all Greek to me” is a dead metaphor because of how the idiom has evolved since it first became popular. I’ll explain below.